Collage Mania...with a Spanish twist

For sometime I had been feeling guilty for not taking the time to teach my kids spanish. Being raised in a bilingual home I knew firsthand the advantages of being able to speak another language...in applying for jobs, in learning at school, understanding that there are different cultures and being able to connect with them, having opportunities that I may have not had otherwise...I always swore I would pass that on to my kids. Fast forward to a few months ago...Mike and I are conversing in Spanish in attempts to talk about our kids in front of them with out them understanding, when Josh asks "why haven't you taught us Spanish?"....enter guilt.
So in that instant I  decided with summer coming up that I would buckle down and DO IT while I have them at home with no other school responsibilities and fewer scheduled activities. But how?... I mean I'm fluent, it should be easy right? Wrong. I needed some structure (to make sure I was going to follow through and do it) so I researched and bought a curriculum. Now I just needed to make it fun and interesting.  So in mentioning my summer plans to teach my kids spanish to some of my lady friends... they showed interest in having their kids learn spanish too and asked if  I would have their kids join in on the "spanish lessons"....FRIENDS!! that was exactly what I needed to add the fun & interesting factor. So I sent an email out and found that there were quite a few kids from our church that were interested. And so spanish explorers program was born.
Over the last 2 1/2 months I have had the pleasure of introducing spanish to some really FUN kids! I had a younger explorers class of 6 kiddos including my girls B and S (3-6 yr) and an older explorers class of 12 kiddos including my boys J and Z (7-11yrs).Each class came over for 1 to 1- 1/2 hours once a week and  we played games,learned some pretty silly/sometimes cheesy songs, made up silly memory tricks to help them remember the sp words, and with the littles we danced a lot! This last week we had our class fiesta and boy was it fun! I will miss you my little and big explorers! Till next year!

The Younger Explorers

for the party we had chips and queso and salsa, tres leches cake, made a tamborine, sang, dance, and a pinata (wouldn't be a fiesta with out one!) We were missing Ez

 

The Older Explorers

for the big kids we played spanish jeopardy to review what we learned, spanish bingo while they had horchata (sp cinnamon rice drink)  flan (spanish dessert), and a pinata. We were missing Sarah and Micah.

 

and the reason I did this....

post edit- excuse ALL of the collage pictures lately- not very aesthetic- I know. It's a little much, even for me... BUT  it's ten times faster than up loading  individual pictures. It's better than nothing I guess :)