Spanish New Year’s Activities For Kids
New Year, new goals? Right? Maybe one of your New Year’s resolutions this year is to work on your child’s bilingual language skills at home. You can start off the New Year right with these New Year activities for kids in Spanish!
I’m always looking for ways to incorporate more Spanish into our days so that my daughter gets as much Spanish language exposure as possible. One of the ways that I can make Spanish learning more relevant is to create Spanish activities around fun family celebrations – like the New Year!
In this article we’ll go through some common Spanish New Year’s traditions, the basic Spanish words and phrases used to talk about New Year’s and then I’ll share several Spanish resources that can support further work with New Year’s vocabulary in Spanish!
Using the holidays to practice your Spanish with these New Year’s activities is a great way to start speaking Spanish today! Feliz Ano Nuevo!
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Spanish New Year’s Traditions
There are lots of New Year’s traditions in every country and every region. Here are a few kid-friendly Spanish New Year’s traditions that we talk about in our home:
12 Grapes
Our favorite Spanish New Year tradition is eating 12 grapes at midnight. The 12 grapes are for each month of the year. Some say that you need to eat all 12 grapes at midnight, one each time the clock strikes, but other traditions say in the 12 minutes leading up to midnight.
Either way, a fun way to gear up for the new year is to munch on some grapes with your child and talk about the 12 months of the year. We also use the ‘grape’ theme in some of our New Year’s crafts/activities.
Eating Lentils
Another New Year’s tradition is to eat lentils. Some say that the lentils are small and round and shaped like coins, meaning that they’ll bring wealth and money to your home in the New Year. Lots of Spanish countries eat the lentils in a soup, sometimes with chorizo as lunch or dinner on New Year’s Eve.
This is a fun and easy tradition to celebrate for my family in January seeing as the temperatures are usually quite cold and hot lentil soup is a win!
Cleaning House
Cleaning the house and starting the New Year off on a fresh start is a tradition that happens in many countries.
When I celebrate with my daughter, we usually try and clean in the typical sense of cleaning the house, but we also try and ‘clean out’ by donating unused things so that our home is also cluttered.
There are so many New Year’s traditions in Spanish speaking countries. Some of them are more common and others are more specific to one country or region. These are just a few of the ones that I talk about with my daughter. If you’re interested in learning more about New Year’s traditions in Spanish-speaking countries I suggest checking out this article- New Year’s In Spanish: Latino Traditions For Good Luck.
New Year’s Vocabulary In Spanish
If you’re looking to celebrate the New Year in Spanish, here are some common New Year’s Spanish vocabulary words and phrases to get you started!
la Nochevieja (New Year’s Eve)
la medianoche (midnight)
el día de Ano Nuevo (New Year’s Day)
Feliz Ano Nuevo (Happy New Year)
celebrar (to celebrate)
brindar (to toast)
comer (eat)
doce uvas (12 grapes)
beber/tomar (to drink)
el cava (champagne)
besar (to kiss)
los propósitos (the resolutions)
mis propósitos de Ano Nuevo son (my New Year’s resolutions are)
Este ano, voy a (This year I am going to)
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Spanish New Year’s Activities For Kids
New Year’s Resolutions!
Every year my daughter and I talk about our goals for the coming year. Talking about goals and writing them down is a great way to talk with children about things that are important and priorities in our life.
Since 12 is often associated with the New Year and with the Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes at midnight, we often come up with 12 resolutions together.
Last year my daughter and I made a New Year’s resolution craft where we each wrote simple resolutions on 12 grapes (we did 6 each) and we hung them on the refrigerator so that they would remain a focus for the whole year.
We spent a lot of time talking about how we can have resolutions that are about things we want to improve about ourselves and resolutions for how we can make the world better. Some of my daughter’s included:
Ser valiente (be brave)
Aprender a dibujar (learn to draw)
Cuidar Juju (take care of Juju – the cat!)
Jugar con mis amigos (play with my friends)
Aprender a hacer rompecabezas (learn to do puzzles)
Ahorrar dinero (save money)
Make a banner to ring in the New Year
My kiddo loves to make decorations for the house and New Year’s is another banner excuse for her!
Decorating with banners/poster is a great way to add more Spanish environmental print to your home and is also great for reading and writing practice. In past years I have written the words and she’s read and decorated them. This year, her writing skills are stronger and she’s writing the words on the banner and then decorating.
We usually hang our banners and posters in doorways or across the window in the living room so that they add to the décor of the room 😊
Year in review worksheet
This is a great activity that I first saw online. After researching several of them, I decided to make my own with the elements that I most appreciated and of course I made it in Spanish!
Not only is the New Year a great time to make resolutions and goals for the upcoming year, it’s also a great time to reflect on how the past year went.
SUBSCRIBE HERE to get “Mi Ano en Resumen” plus access to all my subscriber-only free printables!
It’s a fun way to look back, think about how the year went and it makes a great keepsake for future years.
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Ring in the Noon Year
Since my daughter is still pretty young, she’s never actually stayed awake until midnight. Since I also want her to join in the fun of a countdown and celebrating the New Year, we usually ring in the “noon” year!
We prepare everything for the day and start to do out countdown at 11:59am and ring in the New Year at noon on December 31st. It’s fun because the clock still strikes 12:00 and it’s something that we can do without having to worry about whether or not she’ll actually be able to stay awake for midnight.
There are so many ways to incorporate Spanish vocabulary into your New Year’s celebrations! Start small and keep practicing your Spanish with these simple starts.
Happy Learning!
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