The Beginner’s Guide to SpanglishBaby

Photo credit: http://www.wordle.net

Where to Start?

We’re celebrating our first anniversary this week with lots of new features and awesome giveaways. We know many of you have been following us from the beginning—and for that, we are extremely grateful—but for some, SpanglishBaby is a recent discovery. Regardless of which category best describes you, it’s never a bad idea to get a refresher on some of the great content we’ve covered since inception—after all, it has been a whole 12 months!

If you’re brand new here, I suggest you start with the following general articles related to raising bilingual + bicultural children. These articles contain the kind of background information you’ll need if you’re just getting started:

• Why Raise Bilingual Children and Even More Reasons to Raise Bilingual Kids: The Latest Studies and Yes, it is a Great Idea to Raise Them Bilingual
• Away with the Myths and 3 Common Myths Debunked by a Speech Therapist
• Two Languages, Many Methods
• The Mistakes we Make
• Is There Such a Thing as a Critical Period for Language Learning
• Top 10 Books for Parents Raising Bilingual Children

For tips on how to successfully raise bilingual kids and ideas on how to deal with some of the most common issues/problems related to bilingualism, you can read the following:

• Five Ways to Boost the Minority Language Outside the Home
• Are Playgroups Really that Important
• Simple Tips for when Your Child Refuses to Use the Minority Language
• How to Create a Perceived Need for the Minority Language
• 5 Ways to Enrich Your Child’s Vocabulary
• How to Turn any Event into a Learning Opportunity

We’ve spent a lot of time writing about bilingual education and we’re happy to say we’ve learned a lot along the way. Now you can too:

• Bilingual Education: A Definition
• What are Dual Language Immersion Programs
• Foreign Language Academies of Glendale: A Dual Immersion Case Study
• What if There are No Dual Immersion Programs in Your City?
• Useful Links to Resources: Bilingual Education
• Full Immersion Language Schools: An Explanation

We also spent a whole week writing about the most popular method used by those raising bilingual children, the OPOL method or the One Parent/One Language method:

• An In-depth Look at the Most Popular Method of Raising Bilingual Kids
• Why this is the Way to Go if You’re Raising a Bilingual Child
• Why and How this Method Works for Our Family
• Useful Links: OPOL Method

Finally, we’ve had the opportunity to interview some awesome role models who are poniendo su granito de arena in this great journey of raising bilingual kids. Check them out:

• Jorge Ramos…On Raising Bilingual Children
• Pat Mora: El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros
• Jeannette Kaplun and her Bicultural Family
• How Dora the Explorer was Born
• Alina Rosario: Los Niños en su Casa + Her Bilingual Family

Looks like a lot of reading, huh? The good thing is that now it’s all in one post which you can refer back to whenever you need. Come back tomorrow for  highlights of some of the questions we’ve gotten in our most popular category: Ask an Expert. And don’t forget to check out all of this week’s giveaways in celebration of our very first anniversary! (By the way, thanks for bearing with us while we worked out all the little issues with the new design and the different browsers.)

What would you like us to write about more? We’d love to know, so please leave us a comment!