Daily Learning

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 ...

One of the things that scared me the most about raising my son to speak three languages was that he would speak them all incorrectly. When I heard him say “parqueadero” for parking instead of estacionamiento I didn’t know what to say, I almost cried! Now that he is 9 years old, he is making fewer and fewer mistakes and I am not worried about his misuse of words anymore. Kids just mix them as they learn and it isRead 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 ...

  My son is only 17 months and I find myself already thinking of preschool applications! Yes it is true, if I want Enzo to start next year, I have to apply now.  I cannot believe I have to start thinking about what school I would like him to attend next year. I mean, I feel like I am just discovering what kind of kid he is becoming! As I have started this process, I have so many thoughts aboutRead More ...

A few months ago I was texting back and forth with my good friend Melanie of ModernMami and she came up with the excellent idea of getting our girls to become pen pals. Although they’ve only met each other once when we visited Disney last year, we figured it’d be a good way for them to keep in touch and practice their Spanish at the same time. Plus, I have such fond memories of my own pen pals growing up (IRead More ...

Vanessa has always had a hard time pronouncing the letter R. Lately, though, she’s become keenly aware that she can’t roll her Rs. Out of the blue, she’ll repeat words like perro and carro and rápido and ask me if she’s saying them right. Unfortunately, she’s not. But I’m not freaking out just yet because I’ve read this is normal since Spanish speaking children typically don’t learn to roll their R’s until they’re between 5 and 7 years old. ThisRead More ...

If learning more than one language were a product, and some would argue that it is, I think the label would read something like this, Trilingualism: the key to the past, present, and future! My bebita has reached the phase (17+ months) where the use of language is supposed to take off. That being said, I have gotten a little obsessed with trying to count the number of words she can say or comprehend but does not verbalize, yet. IRead More ...