Displays and speaks the letters of the Spanish alphabet (in small letters not capital letters).
Displays and speaks something that starts with each letter in Spanish.
How to play :
After the game has loaded, click on the big red button in the middle of the screen to start playing, or click anywhere on the game screen with the mouse.
Bang keys on the keyboard or click anywhere on the game screen with the mouse to make the next letter appear.
If you hit the key for a letter of the alphabet, then that is the letter that will appear.
When the child on the screen is talking, the next letter will not appear, so that we can hear all of this current letter.
The Spanish words are displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen, as is the English translation.
You can hide the Spanish and English by clicking on the text “click to hide words” above it. Then you can guess what the words are in Spanish without seeing the answer.
To see the Spanish and English text again, click on the text “click to show words” in the bottom right corner.
Ages :
from 9 months - 5 years
Download time :
Game size is 638 KB.
On a high-speed internet connection the download seems instantaneous. Download takes about 1 minute on a 56K modem the first time you play this game. Every time after that the game will normally open immediately.
Play ideas :
Show your baby how to bang the keyboard and click the mouse, to make things happen on the screen.
He likes learning that he can make things happen by carrying out actions himself.
An older toddler will start to become familiar with the shapes of the letters of the alphabet.
With an older child, ask them to find a given letter on the keyboard. Press that key to see if it is the right one. The child on the screen will tell you which key was pressed if it was a letter.
After the child on the screen speaks in Spanish, you can repeat it in English. Your child will think that she understands what was said in Spanish, and before you know it, she is understanding Spanish.
If she feels like it, let her repeat the words in Spanish in her own way.
We experience children becoming bilingual this way in Montréal, Canada.
Early childhood development benefits :
With the alphabet games, not only is your child (and yourself) exposed to the sounds and the words of a language, your baby is also reminded of the concept that things have names, and is encouraged to become familiar with the types of shapes that our languages’ letters are made up of. This familiarity will help make learning to read and write come more naturally later on.
Best of all, baby will have fun banging on the keyboard and clicking with the mouse, realizing that he has control over this terribly interesting world around him.
Children of all ages will be soaking up words and sentences of a new language - Spanish - as will you too.
Research by Ellen Bialystok has shown that knowing a second language can really help a child comprehend written language faster. It seems that bilingual preschoolers can read sooner than monolingual children.
Further literature by Ellen Bialystok shows how learning another language is a very positive thing for you too.
One of the benefits of exposing your baby to a foreign language is that it will facilitate foreign language learning later on in life. The book “What’s Going On In There?” by Lise Eliot, pages 368-369, explains how this works:
“Babies are thus «citizens of the world» when it comes to phoneme perception. But this remarkable facility doesn’t last long. Infants’ ability to discriminate foreign speech sounds begins to wane as early as six months of age. By this age, English-learning babies have already lost some of their ability, still present at four months, to discriminate certain German or Swedish vowels. Foreign vowels are the first sort of phoneme to go. Then, by ten or twelve months, out goes the ability to discriminate foreign consonants, like /r/’s and /l/’s for Japanese babies or Hindi consonants for English-learning infants... Phoneme perception is thus another example of «use it or lose it» in the developing brain... This very early shaping of phoneme perception has important implicatons for foreign language learning. Obviously, the better you can hear the sounds of a foreign language, the easier time you will have learning it.”
Research carried out at McGill University in the bilingual Canadian city of Montréal has exploded myths about babies learning more than one language, and has come to the following conclusions:
Bilingual children do NOT have delayed language acquisition.
Learning more than one language at a time is NOT difficult for small children.
Bilingual children DO master both languages just as well as one.
Lovely books :
The following lovely books and products have similarities with this game. You may like to check them out.
This game can be played on all Windows, Macintosh and Linux computers with Flash Player 5 or higher.
Most computers come with the standard free Flash player so you probably already have it.
If you’re not sure, then click here. If it brings you to the baby games list, then you have Flash Player 5 or higher. If not, then you can download the Flash Player here.
For those of you who are curious about Linux, the Sams book or the Dummies book get you up and running in no time.
Both books include Linux on a cdrom, tell you how to install it on the same machine as your Windows machine, and are written for people who don't have much experience with computers.
Gestalt processors, usually called right brained, are able to take in the big image, feel the emotional connections, access intuitive understanding and need to learn kinesthetically through movement. In art, music, dance and sports they access the passion, movement and big picture - all elements which are crucial to creativity...
Gestalt learners more than logic learners are affected by the early push, between ages 5 and 7, to learn linear functions both in language and math. These children begin to judge themselves as "dumb" and develop "learned helplessness."...
Gestalt learners have to struggle to make it through our educational system. I believe Albert Einstein was a gestalt learner. His early academic failures are legendary, and he frequently referred in later life to his reliance on visual imagery rather than linear logic. "The words of the language," he said, "as they are written and spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanisms of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be voluntarily reproduced or combined." Fortunately, he sought out holistic learning situations that fed his curiosity and lust for understanding.
Small children should be supervised by a caregiver when at a computer,
to ensure no accidents occur that could hurt the child and that no equipment gets broken.
