Monthly Archives: April 2010
April 30th marks the celebration of Día del Niño/Día del Libro, an annual celebration of children, families and reading held at libraries nationwide. Here at SpanglishBaby, we’re wrapping up a week-long exploration into the world of bilingual homeschooling and the families who are living it. We’ve emphasized this week that one of the biggest hurdles for bilingual homeschoolers is the lack of resources and curriculums available to them. A library with a decent collection of Spanish material can be aRead More ...
Editor’s note: As you know, we’ve been dealing with the subject of bilingual homeschooling all week. By now you’ve probably realized that although there are tons of info on homeschooling in general, unfortunately, the same is not true for bilingual homeschooling. The reality is that homeschooling parents who are raising bilingual children have to come up with their own bilingual curriculum by researching a lot and by getting very creative. The following post, by our regular contributor, Susan O. Stephan,Read More ...
When I was ten years old, after eating breakfast and saying good-bye to my older siblings who headed out for high school, it was time for Spanish dialogue class with my dad. He had a book of dialogues he had used while learning Spanish to be a missionary in Mexico. We memorized dialogues and I had to put dramatic expression and movements to them. I still remember the dialogue about waiting in line for a buffet lunch, “Ay, que colaRead More ...
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” — Mark Twain One of the main purposes of SpanglishBaby’s existence is to share with our readers the kind of useful information that can make the journey to raising bilingual children a bit less daunting. Education is not a new topic to this blog. We write about it often and, in fact, we’ve even dedicated a whole week to exploring the topic of bilingual education. If you’d like your childrenRead More ...
“He’s confused.” This seems to be the refrain of my interactions with monolinguals these days. Talking is the big milestone for two-year-olds and would be the topic of conversation even if I weren’t speaking Spanish with my son. Because I am, though, it feels like a rather contentious subject. SpanglishBaby readers are already familiar with the debate over code-switching and its role in fluency. We know that experts confirm that mixing languages is a sophisticated linguistic skill, not a signRead More ...
Since I have made the deliberate decision to raise a trilingual baby so many realizations have blossomed especially as I near the end of my pregnancy. So, as a result, what did I do? I did what aspiring doctoral students do best: research about trilingualism and parenting. In fact, I found a way to combine this interest with one of my graduate courses and am in the process of creating an annotated bibliography about trilingualism, which I am more thanRead More ...
A few days ago I went to the parent-teacher conference at my daughter’s preschool. I can’t believe she’s nearing the end of her first full year in preschool. Besides the fact that I was told a few things I already knew and expected—Vanessa knows what she wants and she’ll try everything until she succeeds—other things were a bit of a surprise for me. I should start by saying that we use the mL@H method, so the only English she’s exposedRead More ...
Due to both my location (the wonderfully diverse Washington, D.C. area) and my occupation (Spanish interpreter), I have many friends who are also raising bilingual children. They are my support group, and when we get together the conversation invariably turns to our children’s bilingualism, our experiences and challenges. I was chatting with one such friend and we started discussing the deluge of English in schools, how it will be hard to keep the Spanish going at home, how we’ll haveRead More ...
