Bilingual Picture Cards: English and Spanish

Two words sit under every picture on this kindergarten sheet of zoo animals: the English word in dark lettering and the Spanish word in teal beneath it. There are eight cut-out cards, and on this print the pairs are bear and oso, lion and león, jaguar and jaguar, kangaroo and canguro, rhinoceros and rinoceronte, orangutan and orangután, otter and nutria, koala and koala. A small legend above the cards reads English and Spanish. The child cuts the cards apart, says each word in English, then in Spanish, and keeps the set for the word wall.

A two-language card does something a picture dictionary cannot: it puts both names on one object the child can hold, so the Spanish word is learned as another name for the same bear, not as a translation of an English word. The draw here is kind to a beginner, since several animals share a name or nearly share one across the two languages, and the accents in the Spanish forms are printed as a Spanish reader would expect them. In a dual-language or Spanish-immersion class the cards go up in both languages at once; in an English classroom they are a first Spanish set.

Color print on card stock, and keep the pairs intact rather than cutting the two words apart. The picture word cards base set is the one-language version of the same layout, and the syllable cards at first grade break the English words into parts. Cut-out cards, nothing to write; crossword and word-search pages in a second language are a separate family.