Daily Blog

Every year when we open up our box of Halloween pumpkins, ghosts, spiders and bats, we also take out the Día de los Muertos skulls and skeletons we pack in the same box. The day before trick-or-treating, we set up our ofrenda: a memorial or altar that pays tribute to family members and friends who have died. The ofrenda is a collection of treasures, pictures, food, special items and candles to remind the families of their loved ones. Learning aboutRead More ...

Being a bicultural Latina raising biracial kids while living 300 miles from our nearest Spanish-speaking family means that any opportunity to celebrate our Latino roots is one I cannot pass up. My 3 year old daughter is becoming increasingly aware of holidays and traditions, so I felt it was imperative to celebrate Día de los Muertos. Before adorning her beautiful face with calaca face paint, Alina and I spent some time talking about the holiday and traditions associated with DayRead More ...

Can you believe that? Can you believe that if you have a deep passion for a cause — any cause, in any place — your voice can be an instrument for change? I didn’t believe that. It took me until just recently in my life to finally realize that it doesn’t take an extraordinary act of outward advocacy to create change. All it takes is a desire and an audience of any size — your family, school or church group,Read More ...

As members of the Hispanic community, we know that being Hispanic is not an ethnicity, but rather that we are made up of many different races. Black Hispanics, Asian Hispanics, White/European Hispanics, etc. Most of us get it. I don’t question where someone is from or what their background is just because I had a different perception. And that goes for what language they speak. I am Chilean of German grandparents and my son, whom I have spoken only Spanish to since birth,Read More ...

My family and I just got back from a 7-day Royal Caribbean cruise that took us to Labadee, Haiti and Cozumel, Mexico. (The ship was supposed to dock in Falmouth, Jamaica also, but Hurricane Sandy had other plans.) As you can see from the photo above, we went aboard the Allure of the Seas — the biggest cruise ship in the world! While I’ll attempt to give you a sense of what it was like through a series of photos,Read More ...

Last week a Colombian friend of ours decided that it would be a great idea to have a pre-Halloween party for the kids. She’s always coming up with the best ideas to keep the kids entertained and en español. This time, she came up with the idea of having a comparsa-style party, meaning that the whole family would have to come dressed up under one theme and put together a show to perform in front of everyone. Yikes! As funRead More ...

After listening to a podcast of The Parent’s Journal with Bobbie Conner and her guest Tracey Wood (July 16, 2012), a children’s reading specialist, I realized I needed to stop dragging my pies and begin to investigate how to implicitly teach Sofía to read.  Yes, she’s only three-years-old, but really the reading process begins at birth (if not before) by constantly reading, rhyming, singing, reading, reading, and reading to our bebés. There are also many studies that indicated that children, who learnRead More ...

I have to admit that I tend to plan for everything.  My friends tease me saying that I even have a back-up plan for my plans, and truthfully, I do.  A couple months ago one of my posts included the current plan that I have in place for raising bilingual children.  For me having different approaches and strategies are essential for success, and giving my children the gift of bilingualism is an important goal. Recently I have been thinking aboutRead More ...