Helpful Tips, Smart Strategies & Learning Hacks!
Tips
- Make a rule and start today. Any TV and Movies that your kids watch, must be in Spanish! It’s that simple. Then, change your audio setting for your profile to “Spanish” so that any tv shows or movies that are dubbed in Spanish will automatically play in Spanish. You can also change the audio for each individual show or movie. This works in almost all live and streaming video services.
- Did you know that you can also watch TV and Movies in Spanish by changing your country on Netflix? Don’t miss out!
- Use your Spanish dictionary, google translate or any other online search for “____in Spanish” and label items around your house. You can also use sticky notes to put on mirrors, refrigerators, and other places to remind you of vocabulary words, phrases or complete sentences in Spanish! Don’t have one, purchase a Spanish Dictionary on our store and have fun labeling.
Tricks
- Change the settings in your phone or your teenagers’ phone to “Spanish” so that they have to figure out what it means. While they can text in English, they will see the commands every day for ‘texting’ or ‘home screen’ or ‘email’ etc all in Spanish. Soon, it will be second nature to them.
- You can also change your email language to Spanish. Again, while the actual email is typed in English, everything else will be in Spanish. You will quickly learn that “reenviar” is the same as “forward” an email!
Hints
- When out shopping, simply read and say the bilingual signs out loud that are labeling the isles or items in a store.
- Put your radio station to Spanish music or news when driving around town, to and from work, or picking up / dropping off your kids from school and after school activities.
- Use a Spanish dictionary to lookup random words in English (or Spanish) and translate them to figure out what they mean. Then repeat them a few days in a row, adding a new one each day.
- Build Spanish into your routine. Make “Spanishtime” a daily part of your life.
- Recite a simple vocabulary word or phrase, read a quick story, listen to an interesting Spanish podcast, or play a game like bingo or Mastermind in Spanish.
- Read an animated storybook in Spanish and watch the same language subtitles on the screen to practice your reading comprehension in Spanish. You can purchase downloadable video ebooks in our store.
Quick Ways to Learn Spanish
Have you ever wondered how to learn more Spanish vocabulary words, but you aren’t interested in sitting down with a bunch of flashcards? I’m a busy mompreneur of two active kids and like you I don’t have any extra time. So here’s my tips on how to enhance your child’s learning, increase your own Spanish language learning, and fit all of this into your busy, active life!
If you’re like me and multi-task, you cook dinner, pay the bills, throw in a load of laundry, all while planning your kids’ extra curricular activities and coordinating pick ups, drop offs, and any other errands you need to get done. So, why not put on some Spanish music in the background, you know the cool latino rock song, the salsa mix, or the country tunes that you can belt out while you run around the house and no one is there! Or turn on the kitchen TV and change the audio to Spanish. You’re not really watching in anyway since you’re doing a million other tasks around the house. Just turn up the volume loud enough to hear the spoken Spanish and see if you can pickup a couple of phrases or Spanish words to add to your aresenal!
Next time you’re out shopping at one of the big box stores, pay attention to the signage. Nowadays, they usually have everything written in Spanish and English, so take a few extra seconds and read the sign, first in English and then in Spanish, and then in English again. Try to remember a word or phrase for next time. This is a good way to add some Spanish vocabulary words to your continually growing Spanish dictionary inside your head. It takes repetition, so just keep practicing over and over again!