Have your students make flashcards of things that they see, and then tape them to objects that match the words. You can also print out pictures of the words or cut pictures out of magazines. Go through the flashcards, say the words aloud and have the students repeat after you. If a student is ready, you can point to a word and ask her, "What is this?" Students can use the flashcards when completing the sentence: "This is a ______" for various objects.
Staple pieces of construction paper together to create a booklet, using as many pages as you would like the dictionary to be. Use categories instead of letters to enable students to find the words easily. Make a "food" page where students can find pictures of different foods and write the names of them in different languages. Make a "toy" page, a "nature" page and a "household items" page to include words with which the students are probably already familiar. Students can add to their dictionaries whenever they want to, making them more meaningful.
Students can practice their writing skills by creating bilingual menus. They can write menu items in one language on the right sides of their menus and the same items in another language on the left sides. They can include pictures from magazines or create their own. Show the students sample menus from restaurants to show them what the finished product should look like. Laminate the menus and have the students use them to play "restaurant." Have the students take their menus home and play restaurant with their families to get more practice.
Attribute charts are useful to help bilingual children write down vocabulary words associated with a specific object or experience. Have your students choose a picture depicting an animal, the beach or anything else you may be studying as a class. Put the picture in the middle of a large piece of chart paper with enough room surrounding it to write words. If the picture is a fish, draw a line from the eye of the fish out to a blank space where the students can write the word for "eye" in the two languages being spoken. Continue to do this with as many parts of the fish as you want. This can be done with any picture and will allow bilingual students to write and read words in both languages while seeing a concrete picture of each word.