Monthly Archives: November 2009

I was recently talking to somebody of Hispanic descent who wasn’t taught Spanish at home, but learned it later on in life. She vowed she wouldn’t follow her parents’ footsteps, but ended up doing exactly the same thing with her kids who are now elementary school-aged. “And, now it’s too late!” she lamented. I immediately reassured her that it’s never too late – that’s just a common myth. It is, however, definitely much easier the younger they are. If you’reRead More ...

The 2009 Holiday season has officially begun and the conversation with children during this time is all about Santa Claus.  My girl is only two, so this is the first year she’s uderstanding the concept. Her first introduction to the man from the North Pole was with this new Disney movie that came out this week:  Santa Buddies-The Legend of Santa Paws. It’s basically the classic Christmas story but this one features the Buddies-those adorable and super popular talking puppies. Read More ...

For some reason I can’t even explain, I’ve always said Thanksgiving is not a holiday I feel connected to…until now. You see, even though I’ve never hosted a Thanksgiving feast, I’ve always attended one. It’s usually over at my sister’s who loves to entertain and always has the best and most delicious concoctions for any feast. This year, however, she’s not around and for the past couple of weeks, I’ve had this strange feeling, a kind of empty feeling everyRead More ...

This post was originally published on June 22nd, 2009. One of the most helpful and resourceful experts we met while doing research for these articles on language immersion programs was Cristina Aguilar Allen. She is the Dual Immersion Facilitator for the Glendale (California) Unified School District’s Foreign Language Academies of Glendale (FLAG) which offers elementary language programs in Spanish, Korean, Italian, German and Armenian. Cristina has 25 years of experience as a Spanish bilingual teacher and a Master’s Degree inRead More ...

Last Saturday, Univisión premiered the second season of the Emmy nominated, family show “¡Viva La Familia! de Todobebé.”  If you´ve never had the chance to watch it-it airs every Saturday at noon/11am Central-you´re missing a very entertaining, heart-warming, star-studded and informative show in Spanish for the whole family. It’s hosted by two beautiful mamás: famous Mexican actress Aracely Arámbula and renowned parenting author, bilingual mother of two and founder of Todobebé, Jeannette Kaplún. I´ve been lucky enough to meet JeannetteRead More ...

Last week I was invited to be part of a small group of Los Angeles mom bloggers to go on a tour of a local Ronald McDonald House.  The outing was in support of this year’s McHappy Day- McDonald’s signature fundraiser to call attention to the needs of children that’s happening this Friday.  I was skeptical at first, or just plain ignorant, because we don’t want to be giving away our article space to shamelessly promote big-buck companies.  I finallyRead More ...

The following is a guest post by bilingualism expert, Dr. Fred Genesee, Professor of Psychology at McGill University in Canada. There are many good reasons for raising children bilingually. First and foremost are personal and family reasons. If members of the immediate family or extended family include people who speak other languages, then it is a benefit for everyone if your child speaks their languages. This is especially true if some family members speak only one language and might beRead More ...

We apologize to those of you who follow SpanglishBaby and are already accustomed to watching our Video of the Week on Tuesdays. Starting this week we´ll be changing things around a bit to make it more exciting to all. You can still expect to get a muy cool video clip in Spanish every single week to watch with your kids. This week, Disney*Pixar´s beautiful movie UP was released for home viewing. We were lucky to get two clips in SpanishRead More ...