Daily Blog

One of the best ways to motivate kids’ Spanish speaking is to find a way to tie the language to their interests. My sons love soccer. My husband grew up playing soccer and loves to watch the games, which is how my sons became interested in the sport. My boys love it, whether it is watching the game, kicking around a ball, or actually playing. Aside from being probably the most popular sport in the Spanish speaking world, there isRead More ...

My 7-year-old daughter sat at the base of the slide, letting the other kids run by, and watching as they laughed and played. Some older boys got a little too close and she asked them to be careful with their ball: “Please- you’ll scare her…. she’s protecting her babies.” Vivi took her self-appointed position of bodyguard seriously; she wasn’t going to let anyone near the mother duck, who had unfortunately chosen the base of the stairs to lay her eggs.Read More ...

Season 43 of Sesame Street premieres on Monday, September 24th on PBS Kids and we were excited to see that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an inspiration to all women and Latinas, will be making her second appearance on the show. This time around, she’s on the “Word on the Street” segment talking about the word “Career,” perfectly suited for the beloved “Wise Latina.” The new season will feature an exciting segment, “Elmo: The Musical!”, a new S-T-E-A-M curriculum, andRead More ...

One of my biggest challenges this summer has been cooking for three kids, three times a day. Although I like to cook when I have time, space and money, those factors have been seriously lacking of late. We have certain staples that are always a hit (cinnamon pancakes…for dinner!), but I’ve discovered a roadblock that I didn’t expect. The greatest obstacle to keeping their bellies happy? Requests for Latin foods that I don’t know how to make, or (more often)Read More ...

This summer has included a multitude of events with my busy toddler including the way she has made sense of the exposure to several languages. I have watched her transform what once sounded like babble to actual words and to no one’s surprise she includes Spanish, English, and French in her speech (though mostly Spanish). What amazes me the most is how she is incorporating English into her linguistic repertoire. I have witnessed (as many SB readers probably have) howRead More ...

One of our favorite animated characters, the lovable Pocoyó, is celebrating the Olympics with a suite of games, printables, videos and all-around-fun with the Pocoyó Games 2012. When you visit the Pocoyó Games site  – available in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Italian — your child can have fun doing any and all of this: Pocoyize! Create your own avatar and have it flaunt a tshirt with the flag of the country you’re rooting for. Once you create your avatar, youRead More ...

There are rites of passage in many cultures that are sure to raise eyebrows, and even judgmental comments, from others. Many are justified for being inhumane and even torturous, but I refuse to believe that piercing my daughter’s ears when she was an infant falls within that spectrum. If I sound defensive right off the bat, I might be just a tiny bit. This week I wrote an article over at my Babble Voices blog – Besos – titled “HowRead More ...

Do you ever wonder how your identity would be altered had you been born and raised in a different part of the country? The American Latino experience is vast indeed, but poignantly so when comparing the experiences of Latinos living on the polar coasts of our great nation. As a Cuban growing up in the beach suburbs of Los Angeles, many years before communities such as ours at SpanglishBaby existed, there was truly only one reality for the Latino experience:Read More ...