April Spanish Activities for Bilingual Families

Now that spring break is over, April is generally a busy month in dual language classrooms. Children may need a little time to refresh their Spanish skills when returning to school after the break, especially if they haven’t heard much Spanish over the week. This is the perfect time to build in a few Spanish activities in the home to help boost your child’s transition back to school. Our April Spanish activities are designed for dual language families and are perfect for you even if you don’t speak Spanish.

Our Spanish April activities focus on a variety of holidays celebrated in both Spain speaking countries and America. We also include a variety of ways to extend the learning for children just beginning their Spanish dual language program to those who are fluent Spanish speakers.

Planning simple ways to play with Spanish at home will help your children to improve their vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure in Spanish while also enjoying their new language. We hope that these April Spanish language activities will help you to bring language learning into your home and give your children the boost they need.

Language Development for Dual Language Learners in April

You may see a bit of a step backwards in April, especially if you are just returning from spring break where you focused mostly on English at home. Your child may forget certain words in Spanish or even spend a few days doing more listening again. This is completely normal and nothing to worry about as most children quickly reacclimate to their Spanish classes.

If you notice that your child seems a little more hesitant with using their Spanish after spring break, take a breath. We’ve got your covered. Use our April Spanish activities to pick a few fun ways to incorporate Spanish into the home. With a little extra support at home, your child will recover their Spanish language in no time.

How Can Parents Help Children in their First Year of Dual Language during April?

It truly is amazing how much your child can learn in another language during just one year. Not only are they learning Spanish, but they are learning in Spanish as well. You may notice that your child is only comfortable using a few words or short phrases in Spanish. This is very similar to how your child learned English as well. The more your child hears and speaks in Spanish, the quicker they will begin to use more of the language.

At this time, your child is still learning. So do expect many grammatical and structural errors when speaking and writing. If your child doesn’t conjugate a verb correctly or even forgets to conjugate a verb, don’t worry. Try to use the correct conjugation when you speak to help your child learn the grammar of Spanish, just like you did with English when your child was first learning to speak.

Continue to build your child’s vocabulary in Spanish. Everywhere you go, try to name a few objects or actions in Spanish. Even if you use Google Translate to translate into Spanish for you. Use the word in Spanish, encourage your child to use the Spanish word, and if your child is ready, try the word in a sentence or two.

Whenever you can, read or listen to a book in Spanish. The more Spanish language your child hears, the easier they will pick up the new language. If you are shy about reading Spanish, give it a try with a shorter book or nursery rhyme. These can be great ways to begin to read Spanish with your child. Of course, you can also listen to a book read aloud using YouTube or Razkids as well.

During the last few months of school, you may notice your child code switching more. Code switching is when your child mixes up Spanish and English or uses both Spanish and English when writing or speaking. This is very common. As your child begins to read and write more, you may notice that they mix up the vowel sounds or even some of the consonant sounds. Many of the letters make the same sound so those that are different, especially the vowels, can cause confusion for kids.

How Can We Challenge our Older Learners with Spanish April Activities?

You may also notice a similar hesitancy with using the Spanish language with your older children after a break from school. If they haven’t heard or used Spanish in a week, they may need a little time to reorient themselves to their second language.

Use this time to refocus your child’s energy on Spanish. Spend time at home practicing Spanish using their school educational apps, listening to music in Spanish, watching Spanish tv, or reading in Spanish. These activities help to keep your child’s ear and brain working to comprehend both English and Spanish.

We love to focus on new academic vocabulary in Spanish with our children. Hopefully you’ll notice a big difference if you focus on these words too. Start with common question words that your child will encounter on their assignments, directions, and tests in class. Our Academic Vocabulary post is a great place to start.

Next, focus on the content specific vocabulary words, names, places, and dates that your child is learning about in Spanish. Not only does the vocabulary change between languages, but the names of people and places are also different, which can be confusing for your child. Dates can be tricky, especially when discussing BC vs AD because these are different in Spanish.

Discussing your child’s new language in English is wonderful if you are unsure of your Spanish. As your child ages, teachers spend less time bridging new learning into English, so discussing with your child in English helps them to make this transition. Not only will your child learn the names of places and people in both Spanish and English, but they may be able to dive deeper into the content in their native language.

April Hispanic Holidays Celebrated Around the World

Easter is a big holiday celebrated in most Hispanic countries. While Easter sometimes occurs in March and other times in April, it is a holiday to be included on any Hispanic holiday list. Pascua (or Easter) as well as Le Samana Santa (Holy Week) are a large part of Hispanic traditions and culture.

April 1st: Día de Inocentes or April Fools Day in America

April 11th: Battle of Rivas Day Costa Rica

April 18th: National Piñata Day in America

April 19th: Landing of the 33 Patriots Day (Uruguay)

April 22nd: Earth Day

April Dual Language Writing Prompts for Kids

April begins with April Fool’s Day or the Día de Inocentes. We like to trace out one of our smaller children to fill with all the pranks that your children envision. We use the writing prompt “Por diversión, me gustaría…” or “For fun, I would like to…”

With Earth day coming up, you could create a large circle to use as your writing space. Outline the continents and ask your child to use green and blue markers to write their ideas. Use the green markers on the continents and blue markers when writing in the ocean. We like the prompt “Podemos cuidar la Tierra por…” or “We can take care of the Earth by…”

April is a time where we tend to get a lot of rain. Our children love to play outside because the weather is warming up but are often kept inside due to the rain. This is the perfect time to write about what to do on a rainy day or even what we need for a rainy day. Some of our favorite prompts include, “Cuando llueve, podemos…” or “When it rains, we can…” or “Cuando llueve, necesitamos…” or “When it rains, we need…” We love to write our ideas on a large cut out umbrella or raindrop.

How Can You Adjust for Younger Learners?

Hopefully you will see some amazing progress from the beginning of the year writing to now. April is a wonderful time to encourage your child to write their ideas in a complete sentence. It’s okay to use the same basic sentence or try to vary the sentence a little.

Right now we are really focusing on building their vocabulary and knowledge of words in Spanish, so if your child isn’t ready for sentences yet, that’s okay too. You can work together to write the words and ideas, then use your child’s ideas throughout the week by talking about them using simple sentences.

Continue to try to focus on the present tense verbs for writing prompts so your child can begin to learn some conjugations. As they become comfortable conjugating verbs, which we noticed in about 3rd grade, you can really start to introduce past and future tenses as well.

How Can You Modify for Older Learners?

Begin by encouraging your older children to write a variety of sentences. They can begin to change the sentence stem and add explanations to their ideas.

If your child needs to look up a new word in Spanish, ask them to circle or underline the word. Draw their attention to the new word to see if it is a cognate to a similar word in English. Does the new word include a prefix or suffix? What can we use about the new word to help us to remember.

Another great area to focus your older learners attention is on verb conjugations and gender of nouns. These are two skills that take time to learn and often times still cause difficulty for native speakers. Challenge your child to include an article with each noun to show the gender. The Spanish articles include (el, un, los, unos for masculine and la, una, las, unas for feminine).

You can also challenge your older learner to try to write the sentence for different people or use different tenses to focus on verb conjugations. Instead of writing using the pronoun I, write about we or what a little brother or sister can do. Instead of writing what I do now, ask them to write about what they did or will do. This asks your child to use the same verb but conjugate the verb for a variety of different tenses or people.

Spanish Kid Songs for April

Spanish music is an amazing way to learn Spanish with your child. You can add in some Spanish music while driving, during meals, cleaning around the home, and even getting ready for bed. There are so many wonderful songs written in Spanish and Spanish translations of English songs for you to enjoy with your children. We find so many Spanish songs available on YouTube, Pandora and Spotify.

In the month of April, we focused on songs about spring, baby animals, and the Earth with Earth Day approaching.

1. Los Pollitos Dicen is a famous Spanish children’s song about hungry baby chicks.
2. Lluvia Vete Ya is a popular Spanish children’s song similar to Rain, Rain, Go Away in English.
3. De Colores is a Spanish nursery rhyme set to music describing all the colors of spring.
4. La Granja by Calico Spanish Songs for Kids is about life on a farm in the spring.
5. Carta al Viento by Cantoalegre describes flying a kite with a special letter attached.
6. Somos Como Las Flores by Charolette Diamond describes our relationship to Earth and nature vocabulary to delight your children.
7. Planeta Tierra by Mariana Iranzi is all about planet Earth.
8. Madre Tierra by Chayanne is a beautiful song about enjoying all the wonders of life.
9. La Tierra by Rockalingua helps to teach children different ways to take care of Earth.
10. Sol Poniente by Café Surá highlights a Costa Rican singer with a song about never giving up.

April Books to Read in Spanish

Our April book picks for our April Spanish activity guide for Dual language families includes some wonderful books to enjoy with your children. We focus on rain and spring weather, spring, Easter, Earth Day, and Costa Rica. These books will delight your child and bring more Spanish vocabulary into your home.

Llueve, Llueve by Maria Aduke Alabi and Andy Rosario is a humorous introduction to rain for children. This books describes the disadvantages of rain along with all the amazing benefits of rain for nature. This books helps us to celebrate the rain and remember all the wonderful blessings it gives to our Earth even when our plans must change.

Llueves o Hace Sol by Mireia Vidal brings the weather to life for your child. This books explores both the rain and those special sunny days. How are they different while still being similar? What things will you do when it rains and what will you do when it’s sunny?

Lluvia! Rain! by Linda Ashman is a bilingual English and Spanish book. This book brings to life a rainy day through the eyes of a young boy as he brings joy to others while enjoying playing in the rain.

Lluvia by Carol Thompson brings the rain alive for your child through the use of their five senses. The author describes the many sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the rain that young children will enjoy exploring. The beautiful illustrations are another reason to add this book to your must have Spanish April books.

Y De Pronto es Primavera by Julie Fogliano is another beautiful story about springtime. The poem within the book takes you through the seasons as a little boy watches how his seeds grow throughout the year with his trusty animal friends. This is such a great book for introducing some wonderful spring vocabulary with your child.

La Primavera está Aquí by Graciela Castellanos introduces your child to the many wonderful activities that they can enjoy in the spring. Throughout this story your child will see the beauty in the outdoors and fall in love with nature.

Salta y Corre, Conejito by Cottage Door Press follows a cute bunny and his bird friends on their search for Easter Eggs. This board book is a wonderful addiction to a young child’s library. The simple vocabulary will help your child to learn new words to talk about Easter.

Día De La Tierra by Erika Manley teaches young child all about Earth Day in Spanish. Your child will learn how Earth Day came to be and a variety of ways that people celebrate Earth Day. This nonfiction book is a great compliment for young readers and the simple sentences and vocabulary will help your child to grow in their Spanish language skills.

Yo Soy Tierra by James McDonald introduces your child to some basics of Earth science and how we can care for our Earth. Your child will learn different ways that our planet is unique and some simple ways that they can take care of their planet and help the animals.

Cocori by Joaquín Gutiérrez is a favorite book by the people of Costa Rica. The author is from Costa Rica and shares a story about a little boy from Costa Rica meeting a tourist. This books explores differences in culture, race, and ethnicity while introducing your child to the beauty of Costa Rica.

Spanish Nursery Rhymes for April

We have found that including Spanish nursery rhymes into our month really helps our children to learn more Spanish vocabulary and use Spanish throughout the day. They can easily remember these simple Spanish nursery rhymes and repeat them which helps them to build confidence in their new language.

Our list of nursery rhymes includes examples from a variety of different Spanish speaking countries. Some are specific to one country while others are more generally known in Hispanic culture. The words may change from one country to the next, but the overall meaning and theme are the same.

Aquí Puse La Pajarita el Huevo is all about what happens to the egg of a little bird.

Aquí puso la pajarita el huevo.

Éste lo agarró,

éste lo partió,

éste lo cocinó,

éste le echó la sal,

y este pícaro gordo

se lo comió.

De Colores comes from Spain in the sixteenth century about all the colors of spring.

De colores, de colores se visten los campos en la primavera.

De colores, de colores son los pajaritos que vienen de afuera.

De colores, de colores es el arcoiris que vemos lucir.

Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí.

Canta el gallo, canta el gallo con el kiri, kiri, kiri, kiri, kiri.

La gallina, la gallina con el cara, cara, cara, cara, cara.

Los pollitos, los pollitos con el pío, pío, pío, pío, pío.

Another Hispanic nursery rhyme for April is El Patio de Mi Casa all about enjoying being outside in the backyard.

El patio de mi casa

es particular.

Cuando llueve se moja

como los demás.

AgEl patio de mi casa

es particular.

Cuando llueve se moja

como los demás.

Agáchate

y vuélvete a agachar

que los agachaditos

no saben bailar.

Salta la tablita.

Yo ya la salté.

Sáltala tú ahora.

Yo ya me cansé.

Caballito Blanco is the story of a little white pony and three little lambs.

Caballito blanco

sácame de aquí,

llévame hasta el pueblo

donde yo nací.

Tengo, tengo, tengo.

Tú no tienes nada.

Tengo tres ovejas

en una manada.

Una me da leche,

otra me da lana,

otra mantequilla

toda la semana.

In honor of National Piñata Day on April 18th, La Piñata tells all about the fun of a piñata.

Ándale amigo, no te dilates

con la canasta de los cacahuetes.

Ándale amigo, sal del rincón

con la canasta de la colación.

No quiero oro, ni quiero plata,

lo que yo quiero es romper la piñata.

Dale, dale, dale,

no pierdas el tino,

mide la distancia

que hay en el camino.

April Crafts with a Language Focus

With the rainy weather in April, we love to have a few crafts to keep our children busy inside when they are unable to play in the beautiful spring weather outdoors.

Start by making piñata for National Piñata Day with your children. For a simple piñata start with a cardboard box. If you want something more complex, you can use cardboard boxes to build a specific design. You can cut off the shorter flaps to make the piñata easier to break or leave all the flaps on for a more difficult piñata. Then fill the box with candy (or plan to cut a hole to fill later). Tape everything closed. The more you tape and the stronger the tape you use, the more difficult the piñata will be to break open.

There are so many ways to decorate a piñata. Before beginning, be sure to add the handle. We use some twine, but ribbon or yarn can work as well. Cut two small holes in one side of the box and string with your twine. Be sure to tie inside the box for a prettier look. We found that the easiest way is to give your child streamers to cut or rip, then glue all over the box. If your child is a little older, they can cut slits in the streamers about 3/4 of the width every 1/4 of an inch or so. This does not need to be precise. Glue the cut streamers in layers to create a beautiful piñata.

In honor of Battle of Rivas Day in Costa Rica, you could ask your children to create the Costa Rican flag. Costa Rica actually has 2 national flags, “bandera nacional” simply shows the color stripes while “pabellón nacional” includes the Costa Rican coat of arms. The flag is quite simple to create and could be made with a few painted, colored, or glued strips of paper. You will need 2 thin blue strips to represent the beautiful sky, 2 thin white strips for peace and happiness, and 1 thick red strip to represent love and generosity when making the Costa Rican flag. You can glue the Costa Rican coat of arms in the center of the red strip or leave it off depending on your child.

While not a craft in the traditional sense, we love to get our kids outside in the garden. Bring out some seeds and plot out your own garden to enjoy all summer. While planting seeds, name everything you can in your garden using both English and Spanish.

We’d Love to Connect with You!

Always remember, anything extra you do at home is remarkable! Just enrolling your child into a dual language program is a gift and a wonderful cultural experience. Our goal is to make your journey to bilingualism just a little easier. Each guide comes with new ideas to help you build your child’s Spanish language skills.

Find more vocabulary ideas in our post on Vocabulary for Dual Language Learners. Want to help your child master reading in Spanish, visit our parent’s guide for beginning reading in Spanish. Searching for other Winter Break activities for your kids while they learn a second language, we’ve got your covered. Worried about your child’s slow progress in their second language? Read what the research says about language development.

We’d really appreciate if you would take a moment and drop us a comment below. Let us know your favorite ways to practice Spanish vocabulary and your favorite Spanish spring songs, books, and poems. Have other tips, let us know that too! Want more inspiration and some done for you ideas, subscribe to our newsletter below. We love to send our CreatingButterflies subscribers practical solutions you can use right now and some downloadable freebies from time to time.