“Mami todavía no vamos a ir a home porque estamos buscando un treasure.” This is what my almost 4-year-old said to me last week as we were heading back from our regular afternoon stroll to the duck pond by our house. I was floored. I know this is totally normal in the journey of those becoming bilingual. I’ve researched and read enough to know there’s nothing to worry about, but I can’t deny I was pretty surprised. I mean, I’veRead More ...
4 Things to Consider When Your Child Mixes Languages
YOU ARE VERY SPECIAL
Mi Abuelita: Who was your Tita?
Tita was mi Abuelita. She was a vivacious, loud, loving bull of a woman. She lived with my family since before I was born, and until she died when I was 16 and she was 83. We slept in side-by-side twin beds until my brother moved out when I started high school. Late at night, we would talk about nothing and everything–she would teach me Spanish prayers and make the silliest jokes that made us both giggle. When my fatherRead More ...
Abuelas as the Unsung Heroines in Cultural and Language Retention
Editor’s note: Mother’s Day is this Sunday and we decided to celebrate a las madres de las madres–las abuelitas. This week we have two posts focusing on grandmothers as providers of cultural identity and a link to our heritage language. Today’s post is by Dominican/American mother of four, Angélica Perez-Litwin, who just launched Modern Familia-an amazing multicultural blog dedicated to cultivating confident and happy families. We invite you to visit our amiga´s site where we can almost guarantee you´ll feelRead More ...
Resources for Bilingual Homeschoolers
We hope you’ve enjoyed and learned a few things during our bilingual homeschooling week. As I mentioned at the beginning of the week, although there are tons of resources for those homeschooling their children, there are not a whole lot when it comes to doing it in two languages. Either way, we’ve put together a list of links that we hope will be of some use to you. Some of them are just great links of homeschooling in general, othersRead More ...
Celebrating Día, Libraries and Bilingual Homeschooling
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 ...
A Creative Activity for Bilingual Homeschoolers
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 ...
Your Story: A Generation of Bilingual Homeschoolers
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 ...