Daily Learning

  I have nothing against technology when raising bilingual children. Apps, online games and movies in Spanish are a great supplement in this journey — but they’re just that, a supplement. It is a mistake to think that just sitting your child in front of the television set to watch a show in Spanish or to let them mouse around with a bilingual computer game will expose them to the kind of vocabulary needed to become proficient in the minority language.Read More ...

Last week, I wrote a post about some of the things I’ve done to ensure my daughter Vanessa loves reading in Spanish. One of those things is leading by example. But since I read a lot more eBooks than regular books these days, I figured the time had come to show Vanessa what I’m doing every time she sees me with my Kindle. I mean, I think she had an idea because I might have shown it to her before,Read More ...

How do you enforce bedtime for a 6-year-old who’s begging you to let her read two more pages? You don’t. Or, at least, I don’t. Vanessa gets so excited about what she’s reading that I have a really hard time telling her she has to stop. I mean, it’s not like she’s staying up way past her bedtime. I’m just allowing her to stay up an extra half an hour or so. And, you know what? I’m totally fine withRead More ...

I’m not a huge breakfast eater — unless I go to the French bakery by my house, which is run by a couple from the south of France who moved to Denver five years ago. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but the bakery is on my way to Santiago’s preschool and so I stop in there regularly to devour freshly-baked croissants and the best baguettes I’ve ever had outside of France. But one of the other reasonsRead More ...

Handy Manny was the first to render me speechless. My twins were toddlers, and my mother-in-law had given them a Handy Manny tool box for Christmas. Awesome gift, hours of play time ensured. We ripped it open, started in with all of Manny’s tools, his martillo, his…his…. A whole set of toys were splayed before me and I didn’t know the Spanish word for any of them. El serrucho y el destornillador - somehow those words never made it into theRead More ...

When Aidan (my now 4.5 year old) was 3 years old, he decided that he was going to refuse to do anything “Chinese”. He used to lower his head and shove his hands deep into his pockets when asked to speak Chinese. He one day declared that he didn’t want to speak Chinese anymore. My son decided Chinese wasn’t cool, or hip, or relevant to anything he was interested in. Everything fun was in English, his Chinese friends all spoke EnglishRead More ...

Parents and bilingual teachers have a problem. At the beginning of a relationship, kids establish the language they want to use to communicate with an adult. Once established, it is not easy to convince the children to speak another language with them. Given this situation, what can parents and teachers who want to use two languages with the children do? One solution is to introduce the children to a puppet that only speaks the target language.  Many adults remember aRead More ...

Do you love trabalenguas? I do, but it never really occurred to me that tongue twisters are a great tool to reinforce my kids’ Spanish. I mean, I’ve recited a couple of my favorite here and there, but I hadn’t taken the time to formally introduce Vanessa to them til this weekend. About four weeks ago, my family and I went to San Diego for my stepson’s graduation from the Marines. Although we were only there for a long weekend,Read More ...