Breakdown of Los niños practican con sus patines en el parque después de clase.
Questions & Answers about Los niños practican con sus patines en el parque después de clase.
In Spanish, you usually use a definite article (el, la, los, las) when you talk about a specific group or a general category of people:
- Los niños practican… = The children practice… / Children practice… (as a group in general)
If you drop the article and just say Niños practican…, it sounds incomplete or like a fragment (more like a heading than a full sentence). So Los niños is the natural subject form here.
Practican is:
- present tense
- 3rd person plural (they)
- of the verb practicar (to practice)
So:
- (ellos / ellas) practican = they practice
In Spanish, the present tense is used both for:
- habitual actions: Los niños practican… = The kids practice… (regularly)
- and things happening now: context decides
You normally don’t need están practicando unless you really want to emphasize right now, at this very moment.
In Spanish, when you say you practice a sport or an activity using something, you typically use con (with):
- practican con sus patines = they practice with their skates
If you said practican sus patines, it would sound like they practice their skates, which is incorrect. The direct object of practicar is usually an activity or skill, not the equipment:
- practican patinaje = they practice skating
- practican con sus patines = they practice (skating) with their skates
Sus is the possessive adjective for his / her / its / their in plural:
- sus patines = his skates / her skates / their skates
It agrees with the noun it modifies (patines, plural) and not with the owner:
- su patín (one skate)
- sus patines (several skates)
You do not say los patines de ellos here unless you really want to stress “their, not someone else’s.”
Los patines alone would be the skates (no clear owner). Sus patines clearly means their skates in this context.
Patines is the plural of patín and can mean:
- roller skates (quad skates)
- inline skates (rollerblades)
- ice skates (in some contexts)
In practice, in everyday Latin American Spanish, if you say:
- patines with no context, people usually think of roller or inline skates, not ice skates (unless you’re clearly talking about ice).
Other related words:
- patineta = skateboard
- patinar = to skate
- en el parque = in the park / at the park (location)
- al parque = to the park (movement, direction; contraction of a + el)
The sentence describes where the activity happens, not where they’re going:
- Los niños practican con sus patines en el parque
→ The kids practice in/at the park.
If you wanted to say they are going to the park, you’d use al:
- Los niños van al parque después de clase.
→ The kids go to the park after class.
Both are grammatically correct, but they feel a bit different:
después de clase
- more general: after class (after classes are over, after the school day)
- very common in spoken language
después de la clase
- more specific: after a particular class (e.g., after math class)
In Latin American Spanish, después de clase is very natural when you mean “after school / after classes in general.”
In Spanish, después is almost always followed by de when it introduces a noun:
- después de la cena = after dinner
- después del trabajo = after work
- después de clase = after class
Without de, después is more adverb-like, meaning “later / afterwards,” not “after something”:
- Te llamo después. = I’ll call you later / afterwards.
Here we’re saying “after class,” so we must use después de clase.
Yes. Spanish word order is flexible with time expressions. You can say:
- Después de clase, los niños practican con sus patines en el parque.
This is completely correct and might even sound more natural in some contexts. It’s like starting with “After class, the kids practice…” in English.
These words are close but not identical:
- niños = children (age focus: kids, usually pre-teen)
- chicos (or muchachos in many places) = kids/guys, more informal; can be older (teens, young adults)
- hijos = sons / children specifically as someone’s kids (family relationship)
In this context we’re just talking about children as a group in a neutral way, so niños is the most straightforward choice.
Yes. In standard Spanish:
- a group of only boys → niños
- a group of only girls → niñas
- a mixed group (boys + girls) → grammatically niños (masculine plural is the default mixed form)
More explicitly inclusive options you might see or hear:
- niños y niñas
- niños, niñas y niñes (in some inclusive-language contexts)
But in traditional grammar, niños covers a mixed group.
Yes, but the nuance changes:
Los niños practican con sus patines…
→ general/habitual: The kids practice with their skates… (after class, as a routine)Los niños están practicando con sus patines…
→ right now, at this moment: The kids are practicing with their skates…
With después de clase, we normally talk about what they regularly do, so the simple present practican is more natural.
In Spanish, possessive adjectives like mi, tu, su, nuestro, sus almost always come before the noun:
- sus patines = their skates
- nuestro coche = our car
- mi casa = my house
You can put a possessive after the noun (los patines suyos) but that’s more emphatic or stylistic, and less common in everyday speech. For a normal sentence, sus patines is the standard order.