Free educational material for youngins: where to find it?

June 19, 2009 12:56 AM

Where can I find quality printable (free) online (Spanish) literacy, math, and ESL material for kids?

I am about to leave to some very poor regions of South America and would like to have some small gifts to give the children in some of the local villages. Last time I gave out little pads of paper and pens as well as toothbrushes and this went over well.

This time I thought it may be interesting to print out some educational games and worksheets and stuff like this, staple them together into little books and give them out with pens.

I know it may seem corny or something, like that old man with good intentions in your neighborhood who gave out raisins and peanuts on Halloween, but it's not like that at all. These children hardly have any possessions and the quality of education in the region where I'll be living is low.

I agree that the ESL material is not really as important as the literacy/math stuff, but the kids last time were always asking me to teach them English words and this may be a good way to feed their curiosity about the language.

Thanks a lot!

posted by mateuslee to Education (6 answers total)

You could do a Google Books advanced search. If you tick "full view only" and choose the language as "Spanish" in the dropdown, and enter some search terms (if you don't you won't get any results) all of the results you get should be downloadable as PDFs. (All will probably have been printed before 1923, though.)
posted by XMLicious at 4:40 AM on June 19, 2009

Not exactly free but you can find decent kids books on Ebay for almost a song.
posted by JJ86 at 5:39 AM on June 19, 2009

On the ESL stuff: I use the Azar Grammar books in the classes I teach. They're aimed at adults, but I don't see why the beginner materials wouldn't work for kids too. Many of their books are online in PDF form. There's some good stuff here for beginners.

If that's a bit more serious than what you're looking for, there are also some cool games and flash cards here, including some in Spanish.

Good luck! (and I don't think this sounds corny at all!)
posted by Ladybug Parade at 7:44 AM on June 19, 2009

My coworker, Lydia, who manages www.colorincolorado.org (a bilingual site for English language learners (ELLs/ESLs)) had these recommendations:

Here are our recommended websites for teacher activities -- many of these have free worksheets in many different languages:

http://www.colorincolorado.org/web_resources/by_topic/teacher_resources_lesson_plans_activities_strategies

And here are some others (PDFs):

http://www.colorincolorado.org/pdfs/fun_sheets.pdf
http://www.colorincolorado.org/pdfs/fun_sheets_es.pdf
http://www.abcteach.com/directory/languages/

For coloring pages:

http://www.pbs.org/parents/activitysearch/activitysearch_results.html?program=&type=coloring&skill=
http://www.coloring.ws/coloring.html
http://coloringbookfun.com/
posted by sa3z at 8:02 AM on June 19, 2009

From the National Library of Spain:

• Here's a children's book Números : iniciación a la aritmética, very introductory, lots of pictures
• Here's a much more dry 1933 arithmetic textbook

I was also thinking there might be interesting educational stuff on the 4-H web site, in English though
posted by XMLicious at 10:09 AM on June 19, 2009

I have access to scholastic.com, and they have an excellent printables section. For $8.99, you could have access for a month and download tons of worksheets. They have a function to sort worksheets by the type (math, literacy, etc) and age group. I don't think you can access it without working for a school, so Mefi mail me if you want to set something up.
posted by lemonwheel at 4:14 PM on June 19, 2009