Intro to Spanish at New Song

When I got hired to be part of the New Song team to be the lead teacher at New Song Leadership Academy, I heard that I'd get to teach the kids an elective class in the afternoons. I've taught IN Spanish for the last 19 years, but I've never had the opportunity to teach Spanish as a class. So I looked forward to doing that and designing the class in a unique way for such a unique teaching experience. I thought about how I could make it an experiential learning class that would really stick with the students and whet their appetite to learn another language. 

So Mondays we got out our red Spanish journals and learned a lot of useful phrases and vocabulary that they helped brainstorm with me. Phrases such as: I am, I feel, I like, I don't like, I want, I see, I play, I have, I have to, I'm going to, etc. We also played a lot of "I spy" using shape, color, and number words. 

On Wednesdays, we took out our world maps and our passports and went on virtual trips to the 21 Spanish speaking countries of the world, coloring in the countries on our maps and "stamping" the flags of those countries on our passports. I enjoyed showing them pictures of many of the countries I've visited or pictures of friends that I have from those countries. I also got to show them items that came from many of those places. We even had friends visit from Colombia on the week we studied Colombia, so that made for a very rich experience of a country so precious to my heart. 

Finally on Fridays we went upstairs to the kitchen and cooked a treat from the country we visited together. (I honestly don't enjoy cooking much, but this turned out to be one of my favorite adventures while teaching at New Song this year.) We had a big chart up in the classroom that we added to every week with the country name, flag, and the food we cooked. We had two countries left for this last week of school, so we combined them both and enjoyed a drink from one and a treat from the other. 

We had a lot of fun, and I hope the boys' awareness of the Spanish language will inspire them to keep learning more Spanish and to be adventurous world travelers in the future. It definitely reignited in me a gratitude to God for all the travel experiences He's given me, as well as the many people He has placed in my life from all over the world.