Customer Reviews

Play and Learn Spanish (Book + Audio CD): Over 50 Fun songs, games and everdyday activities to get started in Spanish (Play and Learn Language)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is a TERRIFIC cd!

It covers 28 scenarios:

Good morning
Ready for the day
Let's Go Outside
Let's Cook
Lunchtime
Dinnertime
In the Kitchen
Bath Time
Good Night
Playtime
Let's Be Firemen
Let's Imagine (pirates, princesses)
In the Car
Playing Sports
Going Places
Let's Go to the Park
Let's go to Fun Places
Let's go to the Museum
Visiting Family
Animals
I Don't Feel Well
Happy Birthday
Let's Go to the Beach
In the Spring
In the Summer
In the Fall
In the Winter

In each scenario there's a dialogue between a mother and child using everyday vocabulary. For instance in the dialogue about getting dressed (Ready for the Day):

Time to get dressed!
Let's look in the closet.
Let's see - pants, skirts, shirts, t-shirts...
What do you want to put on?
Do you want the red skirt?
...
Very good. Put in your arm.
Put in your other arm.
Put in your head. All done!
...
Wow, how nice you look!

There are about 20+ songs interspersed between the dialogues. There's a really cute one about putting things away that we use often. ;) Also, there are cultural notes, little cartoons, suggestions for teaching your child Spanish and main vocabulary words with illustrations. (English translations only in the book, but not on the cd which I like - except for a brief intro.)

What I really like is that instead of just going over words on their own, with this book, one can learn to put them to use - really using the language.

I'm currently teaching my sons (3,6) Spanish and this is by far one of their favorite cds. I'm looking forward to more Spanish-language materials from Sra. Lomba.

Well, not only is this a GREAT teaching resource, but Ana's website is also a wealth of information and links for the parent and/or teacher looking for resources to teach preschoolers (and young children) Spanish as a second language. A little over a year ago I started my own program teaching Spanish to young children and this is a main resource I use to plan thematic curriculum. For parents who are concerned about their Spanish skills, the included CD makes it an even better bargain! Gracias por todo! Ana is now focusing on publishing 2nd language materials and resources for children. I can't wait to see what she comes out with next.

This is an excellent tool but it is not the most useful if you are NOT the basic caregiver of the student. It is set up to wake the child, wash him, have breakfast, get dressed, etc. all done with Spanish songs and expressions, as you would do as the parent in English. But as a teacher, you would have to "act out" these scenarios- if you are not the one who oversees his daily activities. I am teaching my grandsons. It was fun for them to pretend they were waking up or dressing to go outside in the hot/cold weather, but it was not frequently repeated (and therefore reinforced) because I am not part of these routines. Accordingly, this is most useful for a parent who wants to introduce Spanish smoothly into a child's daily life, raising them "as if" bilingual.

As a non-Spanish speaker (French is my second language), I was looking for a gentle way to introduce Spanish to my 6yo daughter. In many ways, Play and Learn Spanish works for this.

The cd is of excellent quality and the use of amusing songs engages my child. The pronunciation of the verbal tracks are clear, not too fast, but of a reasonable conversational speed.

The various "conversations" that could be used in daily life are useful and we are slowly incorporating them into our practice. There are a few things that I'd like to have scripted - the book includes nothing about pets, though there are things about farm animals. A few other phrases have come up for which we don't have the vocabularly or sentence structures from the book.

However, there are a LOT of useful word constructions, which we could expand upon with the help of an English/Spanish dictionary.

This is not a book if you want to know the "why" behind the language - there are no explanations of verb tenses and forms.

However, it is a gentle introduction to the use of Spanish in an informal home setting, where the practice can be integrated into daily life. This allows for a "natural" immersion into the language, which makes it less stilted and easier to introduce, especially to a child.

I already speak Spanish fluently, but if you don't and you want to teach your children how to speak Spanish well, this is a wonderful guide. I teach Spanish to preschoolers and use this book as the 'textbook' that goes home with every child (ages 3-6). There is a CD where the authors speak Spanish so that parents can practice & learn in order to teach. I also highly recommend their philosophy of Easy Immersion. I agree 100% with their approach - it is exactly how I teach my children and students Spanish - by speaking to them in Spanish in lots of different situations (play, meal time, bath time, etc.) There is only one way to learn a language, and that is to USE IT IN REAL LIFE SITUATIONS! A great resource.

This book and CD has changed the way I think about teaching the Spanish language at home. The language presentation allows you to enter the child's world in the Spanish language in a simple yet meaningful way. By using a natural context within themes that are important and real to the child, the language comes alive. This is not the traditional drill or list method of teaching (which I have found does not work with young children), but rather a way to allow children to acquire the language in a natural way.

My son loves playing and living in Spanish. He is starting to really take off in his langauge production. This is not the type of book you can give or read to a child but rather a book that can become part of your daily routine, play, and life. You must be willing to act, play, and practice with your child, but the rewards are endless. My son now loves to speak Spanish and has gained a confidence that he never had with the language. He especially loves the "Apurate" fire truck song and will often be heard singing "la luna la luna salio' de paseo. . ."

Ana and Marcela's material is based on sound and accurate research yet is fun, interactive, and accessible to parents. I strongly recommend their products to anyone who really wants to engage their child in the Spanish language.

Senora O (Spanish teacher)

It's touted as the fun way to get kids started, but it's a book on tape without even signals after each page. The dialogue was too fast and there's no explanation or instruction, just spanish dialogue printed next to English translation. If your child isn't a fluent reader, forget it.
It'd be good for an older child or adult already learning Spanish who wanted to work on pronunication.

This is a WONDERFUL reference for my Spanish classes - it gives much more usable phrases than the average children's or school textbook. Being bilingual, but not a native Spanish speaker, I can see a grand difference in what texts say and what people actually say, and this book is right on the money to teach your child what he'll actually hear in a conversation.

I love the full color pages and all the tips along the way. I do think it's a bit overwhelming - each page has so many phrases and new words to use, and not a lot of phonetic spelling for the more timid parent that may not be familiar with pronunciation (but it does come with a CD - I just never have listened to it yet.) *I'm adding this part after a while - we are using the CD now in my classes, and the pronunciation is very clear. I liked it - basically, though, it's vocabulary phrases being acted out - the lady's voice is nice, but her voice is also the child's voice - I actually didn't pick up on it, but my five year old said, "Why is the lady sounding like a kid?" So I still use the CD, but I preface it with, let's listen and see what you can pick up! Rather than pretending that it's an actual mom and child. Still, lots and lots of worth as lessons go!

My children don't care to look at the pages much (they're all under five), and I break the lessons up quite a bit from the way they're presented in the book for the younger classes, when I use this book. However, for my students ages 7 and up, they DO enjoy looking through the book and finding phrases to say and use in daily life. For a younger student, of course I recommend Flip Flop Spanish, which is more set up as a complete curriculum rather than a reference. Elementary aged students, though, I would expect to flourish from using this book with an enthusiastic teacher.
Sra. Gose
Teacher & Author
Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 6-9: Level 1 (Book + Audio CD)
Spanish Fun Activity Calendar

This book is the best book for helping one pick up the Spanish language. It beats everything, especially the boring textbooks I had in high school Spanish class. Thanks to a year abroad in Barcelona, Spain, I now speak Spanish fluently.

Their method for picking up Spanish is perfect. They call it "easy immersion": "using simple language constructions to describe obvious situations: 'I'm drawing a circle,' you may say while actually drawing a circle" (p. 1). This is how we picked up our first language. There are over 50 pages of Spanish dialogues (with English translations) that model real-life sentences and phrases that parents and children actually exchange. This is real language, not some made up dialogue about a few characters you care nothing about. Their recommendation: "Start with the expressions or vocabulary words that you think will be most appealing to your child and then build by using the expressions in other situations as well" (p. 2). If you added a new phrase/sentence of 3-5 words a week to your repertoire, then in a year you will have picked up over 150 to 250 words. That's pretty good, especially when you consider that about 85% of everyday spoken Spanish is made up of around 1000 words! (That's a research bit from a book by Mark Davies, A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish).

The CD included with the book has over a dozen great songs that kids will enjoy listening to, dancing to and singing with. Also on the CD is all of the Spanish dialogue from the 50+ pages. That is a great asset, because listening to Spanish is the best way to improve one's pronunciation of Spanish, not "listening and repeating." (If you want more info on the best way to learn--actually pick up--a language, read Stephen Krashen's works on second language acquisition.)

Also, a word of caution about picking up a language: we naturally go through a "silent period" when we are first introduced to a language. Children typically don't begin speaking a few words in their native language until 9-12 months old. Your child will begin imitating what you've been saying in Spanish when s/he has internalized it fully and is ready to speak. The only way to speed up a child speaking sooner in Spanish is for her/him to hear more and more Spanish that they understand.

If you only buy one book to help you and/or your child to pick up Spanish, buy THIS book! You will be so glad you did!

This material was a little bit hard for me to use since I have very little Spanish background. I think that this would be a good book to use if the parent has some basic Spanish knowledge already. I like the immersion concept, but it requires that the parent do a lot of self study ahead of time (to learn the materials).