Spanish Literacy Activities With Harry Potter
I grew up with the Harry Potter series and it’s just one of my favorite book series to go back and reread. I couldn’t wait to share this series with my daughter when she was old enough!
This summer I decided that I’d start and read the first book with her. Since she was just about 5 years old when we started, I knew that she probably wouldn’t fully understand all of the plot twists and literary devices happening in the first book, but I knew that there were many parts that she could appreciate and enjoy and I was excited to start the journey with her.
In this article I’ll share what we read before we jumped into the Harry Potter series in Spanish, our review of the illustrated Harry Potter books in Spanish and some literacy activities that we did to support my daughter’s love and understanding of the first few books.
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Table of Contents
Before We Read “Harry Potter”
Before we started Harry Potter we read a number of other great beginning chapter books to build stamina and comprehension skills. This was an important first step for my daughter because we hadn’t read many full length chapter books before. I wanted to make sure that she had the ability to understand how chapters in a book connect to make a story before jumping into a 200+ page book with many chapters!
Check out some of the books that we read before jumping into the Harry Potter series:
Reading To Improve: Spanish Chapter Books
We also had two other illustrated Harry Potter books in Spanish that we’d been reading since the spring. “Los Cuentos de Beedle el Bardo” (The Tales of Beedle the Bard) helped me to introduce my daughter to some of the common wizarding terms so she had basic vocabulary going into the series. She really enjoys these stories as stand alone stories and our family favorite is, “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot”!
“Animales Fantasticos y Donde Encontrarlos” (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) was actually much more interesting to read alongside the first and second books as a companion. Each time we read about a new fantastic beast we would immediately look it up and read the description!
The Illustrated Editions Of Harry Potter In Spanish
Even though we have the Harry Potter series at home (an embarrassing number of editions in English and Spanish!), I wanted my daughter to have her own set. I decided to buy her the Spanish edition of the illustrated version so that she could start her very own collection and it did not disappoint!
The physical book itself is really large and heavy, making it hard for my daughter to carry around. It’s also not a book that you can easily lay down in bed together and read since the book is large and somewhat cumbersome, but we’ve found that we can read it sitting next to each other in bed or in our reading chair and laying it across our laps.
What we liked about the first illustrated book:
The Illustrations:
Jim Kay truly does an amazing job with the illustrations. He closely follows the descriptions in the book and puts and awe inspiring amount of detail into each picture that he includes.
One of the things that we most appreciate about the illustrations is that there are several full page illustrations that show action scenes in the book, really bringing them to life.
We also like that each chapter often has a small “theme” where he includes a pattern/background/small corner image on each page in that chapter. For example, in the chapter, “The Letters From No One”, there are small owls or letters on each page of the chapter, tying them all together but not overdoing the images and taking away from the print.
The Text:
I really appreciate that the actual text is a little bit larger, making it easy to read and follow on the page. It’s also been helpful as my daughter likes to try and follow along and pull out words that she recognizes.
Another really important part of the text is that it is not abridged; the story is the original story and includes all of the text from the first book.
I did notice when I was reading that some of the words are translated a bit differently from my first Spanish edition book. It seems that they’re both published by the same Spanish publishing company, “Salamandra”, so I’m not sure why there is a difference in the translation.
We’re currently working our way through the second book and we’re loving every minute of it! At this point, I’m thinking of stopping after the second book since I feel like the themes get more mature in the later books.
Harry Potter Literacy Activities In Spanish
After we read the first book we had a big party where we celebrated and watched the first Harry Potter movie – in Spanish!
Since my daughter has really been interested in learning to read in Spanish, I used the party and the general theme of Harry Potter to create many small literacy activities for her to practice.
Character Fact Sorting:
One of my daughter’s favorite literacy games to play is this fact sorting game! It’s a great way to support repeated reading and also comprehension of a longer text.
Materials:
Toilet Paper Tubes
Index Cards
Masking Tape
Pen/Marker
Harry Potter Stamps (optional)
To Play:
We have a cute Harry Potter stamp set that my daughter likes to play with so I used this to make a picture of each of the characters on an index card. I wrote their names underneath and taped them to the toilet paper tube. Next, I wrote facts about each character on small strips of index cards. When we play, we simply read each sentence strip and then sort it into the tube for the correct character.
My daughter loves to read and sort the strips and loves when I add new facts as we read new parts of the book. Since we play the game so frequently, she quickly memorizes the sentences and becomes more and more confident in her ability to read them. One way to make the game more challenging is to include compound sentences or even two sentences per strip, to encourage reading of longer chunks of text.
Find The Golden Snitch!
My daughter loves going on treasure hunts – I actually wrote a lot more about them in a previous post on Spanish reading activities that we do a lot around the house.
Fun Labeling Activities To Practice Spanish Reading With Kids
When we play the Harry Potter version, we simply make the treasure the golden snitch (a Ferrero Rocher candy with wings attached!) and I write her clues to read.
Materials:
Marker
Index cards
Golden Snitch
To Play:
I take the index cards and write out 5-7 clues. The first clue I’ll hand to my daughter, the other clues will be hidden in their specific locations along with the golden snitch. I give my daughter the first clue which she must read in order to find the second clue.
Since her reading skills in Spanish have improved, I usually make a long sentence or even include 2 sentences on a card, “La proxima pista esta en la sala, cerca del sofa” (The next clue is in the living room, near the sofa).
The final clue leads her to the destination of the golden snitch (which she then usually eats!). This is a fun game that gets kids reading and moving.
Lists and Labeling:
While not specific Harry Potter literacy activities, making lists and labeling things in Spanish can be really valuable! Not only do they increase the amount of environmental print that your child sees, but they also reinforce that print has meaning and that words are important.
When we had our Harry Potter party, I tried to label everything that we used. During the movie watching I had made a snack table with some Harry Potter themed snacks and I added a small index card label to each item and referred to it when showing my daughter the snacks.
Some of the activities we did that day were “Hogwarts Classes”. For each of the activities, I would write a page of steps/instructions in Spanish. While most of these were too hard for my daughter to read on her own, she knew that the instructions were important and she was able to pick out many of the words from the page.
Harry Potter Games In Spanish
Since I’m such a Harry Potter nerd, we also have several Harry Potter games that we play in the house that build language skills. Playing board games and family games in Spanish is a great way to build conversational Spanish and it’s a fun way to practice.
Our family favorites are Harry Potter UNO and Harry Potter Spot It! The Uno game is similar to regular UNO but with an extra wild card with the sorting hat on it. Spot it! is also similar to the regular version, it just includes Harry Potter characters/items.
Using our love of Harry Potter has been another great way that we have been able to improve our Spanish skills. Through the books, activities, and games, we have learned new vocabulary and worked on various literacy skills.
If you try some of them out, let me know! And don’t forget to subscribe here so you can get my latest posts and resources delivered right to your inbox!
Happy Learning!
I can see how this can be an entertaining way to improve Spanish literacy for children. It is so important to making learning as fun and as interactive as possible so that it becomes a part of you.
It’s so true – and one of the best ways to learn any language is to be engaged in it!
That sounds like a great way to help a child learn another language. I might to look to try something similar with my eldest who is learning French as school.
It’s great that your kiddo is learning French – there are so many benefits to being bilingual! Supporting their second language learning at home is going to make it even more relevant for them.
Wow I love Harry Potter too but spanish.. I never thought of it. It definitely sounds amazing.
I know, right?! When I first started working on Spanish with my daughter when she was an infant, I couldn’t even read the first Harry Potter book in Spanish, I didn’t know enough words – we’ve come a long way in 5 years! You could always start by watching the movies with the Spanish language option or listening to the book on tape in Spanish but at a slower speed.
That’s great that you are teaching your daughter Spanish by reading her the Harry Potter series. I love that series!
Isn’t it such a great series?! It’s really been helping to improve our Spanish vocabulary, too.
This is fabulous, it sounds so much fun and a great way to learn Spanish. I love that the golden snitch is a Ferrero Rocher with wings attached.
It has been really fun (maybe more so for me than my daughter lol). The Ferrero Rocher is the perfect size to be the snitch and it’s a great reward after doing a scavenger hunt 🙂
Wow, you really make learning fun, I LOVE it! You clearly have such an encouraging attitude and I just know that is going to benefit your child/ren in so many ways. I think it’s great that you can get all the Harry Potter books in Spanish too; if I was fluent in another language, I would definitely want to help contribute translating as many books as possible!
Thanks! There are so many great translations and authentic Spanish books out there – it’s been super helpful as my daughter and I learn Spanish together.
What a great way to introduce different languages through favorite fictional characters. I love the idea of a ferrero roche snitch!
Thank you! We’ve been having so much fun with the series and our Spanish has really improved from all the reading and Ferrero Rocher chocolate 🙂
What a creative way to learn a foreign language. This is great not only for kids but even for adult beginners.
Yes! It’s been a great way for me to learn and improve my Spanish at the same time, since I’m not a native speaker and I’m not fluent yet, either.
This is really useful. My kid (10) is learning Spanish at his school at the moment, but never thought they can learn it in a fun way also. Super! Thanks for sharing.
It’s awesome that your child is learning Spanish! There are so many ways to make it fun and meaningful for kids – I hope you can use some of these activities 🙂