English & Spanish Kids' Games

Dora (Nick Jr.)

• The Nickelodeon Kid's website has flashy games featuring the whole cast and crew of the network designed to entertain the nation's children, including bilingual games featuring Dora the Explorer and her cousin Diego. Dora and Diego's games are simple enough for children aged 4 or 5 to play with the help of a parent, or for slightly older kids to play alone. Dora speaks some greetings and vocabulary words in Spanish throughout "Dora's Great Big World."

Spanish for Kids

• The collection of Spanish games at "123: Teach Me" really run the gamut: there are matching games, color and shape games, quizzes, flashcards, word scrambles and photo puzzles. Most of the games are pretty simple, but reinforce the basics of the language and feature audio cues for pronunciation. The emphasis of the games is on building vocabulary, a vital step for second-language learners.

Apples for the Teacher

• The games page on "Apples4TheTeacher" has a foreign language section and Spanish subsection that has links to hundreds of Spanish-English games. The games are grouped by lesson types--this is a page designed by teachers, after all--and you can choose from games to learn parts of the body, colors, sports, weather or things to say at the post office. There are even dictation "listen and spell" games to review key vocabulary.

Juegos

• Once your child has a basic understanding of Spanish, trying out a game that's entirely in Spanish is a good test of their level. "Juegos.com" is a Spanish page that's easy to use, even if your child doesn't understand all of the words on the page. There are pictures for each game, which are organized into typical game categories (action, adventure, puzzle) and have Spanish instructions. The animation is flashy and bound to be interesting to kids and might be a nice break from dull grammar review games.