Daily Learning

The research I've read - and there isn't a lot out there - talks mostly about families using the OPOL method and it suggests that parents tend to be less strict about using the method once a sibling is born. Since this is not our case, I don't really know what happens in families using the mL@H method. I mean, we pretend to continue doing the same thing we've been doing all along, mostly because as I've explained in the past, it's what comes naturally to us. In terms of what happened at this weekend's party, I had actually expected Vanessa to use mostly English. But I was happily surprised, again! She actually did her own share of code-switching between English and Spanish and for no apparent reason. I wonder i ...

On a recent Friday while we were under house arrest thanks to a major snow storm in the middle of the spring, the following conversation took place at the dinner table: Papá: ¿Lo quieres con aguacate? – wanting to know if Vanessa wanted a tortilla chip with some avocado. Vanessa: ¿Ah? Papá (realizing that’s not the word Vanessa knows for avocado): ¿Lo quieres con palta? Vanessa: Papá, ¿qué dijite? – Huh? Papá: Aguacate. Vanessa: ¿A-GUA-CA-TE?? Papá: Si. Vanessa: ¿Qué eso?Read More ...

I love Vanessa’s escuelita for a lot of reasons including the fact that I was able to reserve a space for her three times a week next school year. Considering I’ll be back to infinite days of diaper-changing and breastfeeding, this will be a life-saver, if you know what I mean… But the biggest reason I love her preschool is that they are in constant communication with parents. Recently, I had the chance to attend a mini parent/teacher conference. First,Read More ...

Sorry…this giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner-Jennifer Short. Although we are – THANK GOD – past this stage at our house, some of you might be thinking about starting potty training or maybe are in the middle of it right now and if you are Latina, you might be able to relate to the following story. Besides, I’ll be going through it all over again soon, as I am four months pregnant with my second child!! So, IRead More ...

The following is a guest post written by Suzanne G. Mateus, a doctoral student in Bilingual and Bicultural Education and a bilingual teacher. She is a supporter of dual language immersion schools. You can find out more about her through her blog, Interpretations of a Bilingual Life. Saludos! I’m excited to share with all of you, the readers of SpanglishBaby, my volunteering experience with Magellan International School (MIS), a dual language immersion school in Austin, Texas, that is scheduled toRead More ...

First in an occasional series… Since we all have different stories to tell and our own ways of raising our kids bilingual, from time to time, we will invite a guest to contribute to SpanglishBaby. Today, we introduce you to the first one. We hope you enjoy it! The following is a guest post written by Karen:  Spanish learner, mother of two boys and blogger at Teaching and Learning Spanish. I have to admit that it is difficult to teachRead More ...

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about something I read recently. As I have already mentioned, since starting SpanglishBaby, I feel like I spend most of my waking hours here, surfing the internet. Every single time I sit in front of my laptop’s 13-inch screen, I find something new and interesting regarding bilingualism, languages, Spanglish. Anyhow, I still don’t know how I feel about the blog entry in question; the one I can’t get out of my mind. IRead More ...

Last year, after my daughter Vanessa turned two, I enrolled her in a Parent’s Day Out (PDO) program at our local church. She goes once a week for 4 hours and seems to get a kick out of it. During orientation, we made sure her teachers were aware that, up to that point in her life, she had been exposed only to Spanish with very few exceptions here and there–we live in Colorado, after all. The first day of theRead More ...