Spanish lessons and classes for children in Earlsfield, Southfields, Wandsworth, Clapham, Wimbledon, Putney, Fulham area

Author Archives: Josefina Garcia

No time to come to our Spanish classes? are you already attending but want more?

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I am so excited to share our news!

We have been working hard to extend our programme provision and be able to offer parents, nurseries and childminders and exciting educational membership to access all our resources from home.

Nano Spanish Club will provide easy to follow lessons and activities for you and your kids to learn Spanish together.

All our vocabulary will be also featured in a series of fun videos that will encourage the children to participate and be interactive.

Have a look at our website Nano Spanish Club and register your interest so we can keep you posted.

Join our FB group: Nano Spanish Club to start benefiting from some fun activities we are offering.

Hasta pronto!

Josefina

Give it a go

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You learned a language at school, you loved playing around with the different sounds in your mouth, a bit like chewing gum:

“Bonjour mon ami” pursing your lips, bringing the ‘r’ down to your throat, giving your hair a flick in real French Style.

“venga chicos!!” doing a bit of an Ole move at the end. “Andiamo signori! La stracciatella é molto buona ” hands flying in the air, singing your sentence in bouncy tones.

“Guten Tag, Ich heisse Frau Merkel” getting all serious reporting for duty.

Well, it was fun, wasn’t it? It is like playing a part in a play, or becoming someone different for bit, it was a bit of a game.

Well, that’s it, why not keep playing?? Particularly if you have children and think it’s a good idea to start learning a language as young as possible. Continue reading →

Piña means pineapple

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When I started  thinking about working for myself and how scary it all seemed having worked at a school for so many years, the one thing that made me have the courage to try, was all the people I started reading about that had been just where I was then and didn’t regret having started their journey.

I have since, personally and virtually met amazing people with great ideas that I am always keen to rave about!

Cristina is one of them! I am in love with her range of children’s clothing, and if you and your little one are attending our Nanos classes, I am sure you will too!

Here is a bit about her:

Continue reading →

Would you like to be on TV?

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Pregnant- are you due in April or May 2017? 

Nutopia, a London based television production company, recently got in touch with me about an exciting new 12 part documentary television series about the science of babies.  The series will follow babies development in the first year of their life.

The producers are looking for a wide range of families to be involved and are interested in families who intend to speak more than one language to their newborn, which is why they got in touch with Nanos Spanish.

One of the fascinating areas they will be exploring is the science behind how babies can learn more than one language from the moment they are born. I am keen to support anything that promotes the benefits of children learning languages and am therefore eager to help the producers in their quest to find expectant mums. Personally, I’m really interested to learn more about the science and the series will feature insight from experts around the world on language and other areas of baby development.

They are looking specifically for mums who are due to give birth in April and May 2017– if this is you or you know anyone who might be interested then please get in touch with Cammy from Nutopia- babies@nutopia.co.uk  with your name, telephone number, location and due date. If you would like to find out more about the award winning production company Nutopia then please take a look at their website www.nutopia.com

“A phrase a day” with Larry Lamb

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Yes I admit it, I was hooked to ‘I am a celebrity, get me out of here!’.

I did find it painful to watch but it was one of those programmes that I endure, and end up enjoying, to get some common ground with my teenage daughter.

We started watching with our usual setting of chocolate or popcorn ready, which of course we ditched by episode two, ending up by discussing our favourites, screaming under the blanket and being told off by husband for waking up Oscar,  my youngest

Both, my daughter and I, agreed that our favourite was Larry Lamb, although Gloria hesitated between Joel Dommett and Mr Lamb, I wonder why?

We later found out about his love for languages and his support of the British Council’s initiative to encourage language learning using the motto of “A phrase a day”.

Supporting the Council’s campaign, Mr Lamb said: “Languages, for me, are about opening the world up. It gives you another soul, it gives you another person. My teacher, Miss Smith, started to teach us French.”

“From learning French, I learnt German, from being in Germany I found out about amateur theatre and here I am today, talking to you about learning languages having had a career that’s gone on for 40 years now.”

I now like him even more! he absolutely shares my views on the amazing opportunities that learning languages can can bring.

Convinced? there has never been a better time to learn languages as you go, I hope I have had these when I was learning English and German!

Here are our top Free language Apps for adults, a review on children’s resources will come soon.

a-prase-a-day

Duolingo is my favourite free programme. It is extremely good structured. you will be learning and practising words, phrases,  grammar and translations! the app makes it fun to learn on your own or in a group, with friends. There are levels and competitions that you can use and can get addictive, which is what you need to be when learning a new language.

What can you learn: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish.

Busuu

New to the App scene but not new in on the web is busuu. Practice speaking with native speakers and apply what you have learnt. Use the listening, reading, writing and speaking task to improve your language skills, take on interactive learning exercises and quizzes and stay motivated with regular feedback. The community has over 35 million native speakers, so there are plenty of help to practise speaking the lingo.

What can you learn: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Portuguese

I have just started using Mesmerise. It combines, listening, visual, reading and writing skills and it offers a summary of what you have learnt at each stage. So far so good.

What can you learn: Mandarin, Japanese,Korean, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Swedish,  Norwegian, Danish, polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal) and English.

Other Language free resources largely recommended if you have the time to allocate weekly and you are not just using the odd 5 minutes here and there would be:

BBC Languages

Interactive lessons and games with sound clips and videos for learning basic phrases in Spanish, French, English, German, and Italian.  “Mi Vida Loca” is great fun if you have some knowledge of Spanish.

Extra

A series that you will be able to find in Youtube,  available in Spanish, French and German. My teenage students used to call it “Friends”. Watch it with subtitles in English or without if you feel confident enough.

Netflix

My great last discovery on Netflix, second to the Spanish series “Velvet” with English subtitles available, is that you can switch languages on the settings controls, and enable English, or other languages subtitles.  It doesn’t work on all programmes, but it is worth trying.

No more excuses! make yourself proud by learning a language in 2017 or your toddler will soon catch up if you are joining us in our classes!

It will take you into a journey with unknown outcome I can assure you, so Ready, Steady, Go! enjoy the ride!

Josefina Garcia

Founder and Managing Director of Nanos Spanish

 

Songs, songs and more songs!

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simon and Nano

Music is a great learning channel, I always surprise myself singing along to songs that I haven’t heard in ages or even to songs I didn’t even know that I knew the lyrics to!

Growing up I also learned English songs which I didn’t understand completely but I remembered the pronunciation well enough to work out later what exactly they were about.

Our songs are an important feature in our learning programme. An arrange of original songs, adapted traditional nursery Rhymes or modern Children’s songs are chosen to suit our learning objectives and are constantly being revised, reshuffled or restyled according to our very picky and expert fans, our young learners.

We are lucky to have a talented and creative team of musicians, singers and lyricists that make our regular visits to the recording studio a fun  and nearly always a successful event.

 

 

We are not lounging around… well Nano is!

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It’s mid August and I am all set to get our new exciting term ready!

Check out our classes for this September:

Mondays 9.45 am and 10.20 am. 1 to 3 year olds at Earlsfield Library. 276 Magdalen Rd, London SW18 3NY

Tuesdays 3.30 pm. 3 to 5 year olds at St Barnabas church, Lavenham Rd, London SW18 5PE

Wednesdays 11 am. 1 to 3 year olds at St Luke’s Hall.194 Ramsden Rd, London SW12 8RQ

Fridays at 9.45 am. 1 to 3 year olds at Mansel Centre. Mansel Road, London SW19 4AA

Get in touch at josefina@nanospanish.com to check availability

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Nanos Spanish: How much our toddlers learn!

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Our Nanos Spanish programme was born with the clear believe that languages are best learned when they are introduced at an early age.

Babies and toddlers learning to speak their mother tongue are constantly figuring out what surrounds them, sounds, words, concepts. Exposing them to another language will not add extra work, they are experts at making connections, listening, absorbing, making sense to it all and with no fear of getting it wrong!

The wonderful linguistic ability of babies and toddlers is extendedly been researched and documented. At Nanos Spanish we witness their immense capacity to learn every day.

We are very proud to be offering a very stimulating and entertaining learning environment in our classes.

Here are some lovely parent testimonials

We will be offering free trials next week from Monday 8th of February 2016

Join us!

Get in touch: josefina@nanospanish.com