Back in the spring, I was invited by New Futuro to participate in a really cool event hosted by Que Rica Vida in Chicago with the purpose of providing information and tools to Latino parents to be able to help their kids succeed. Aptly named Infórmate y Edúcate, the free event conducted solely in Spanish was a huge success with over 500 people in attendance.

I must say I was honored to be in the company of some great Latina women who also participated in the event including Ileana Rodriguez, Vice President of College Board; Clara Lopez, Vice President of Children’s Programs and Services at El Valor; Dra. Isabel Gomez-Bassols, host of Univision Radio’s El Angel de la Radio; and Ana Martinez-Dassow, Founding Principal of Rowe Elementary. I also had the pleasure of meeting fellow Latina journalists Lucía Navarro and Dra. Marisa Azaret of CNN en Español. Oh, and I even got to meet Sonia Manzano, of Sesame Street fame. That was super cool!

But I must say that the highlight of the event was being able to talk to Latino parents (and their children) about the bilingual resources available online so they can help their children succeed. I was super happy to see a great turnout and even happier when the children started participating by asking questions and suggesting additional online resources to the ones I shared during my presentation.

Now that we’re all in Back to School mode, I figured it’d be a great time to share these resources with you. Some you might already know, but I bet you’ll find at least a couple new ones. I know I did while compiling the list. I’ve divided them into categories to make it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for. I think these are great resources for anyone with bilingual kids, but especially for those of you with kids in dual language immersion schools.

Hope you find these resources helpful! Please feel free to add any others ones you and your children use so we can make this list even more comprehensive. ¡Gracias!

READING/WRITING

1) COLORIN COLORADO

2) EL RINCON DE LOS CUENTOS

3) READING IS FUNDAMENTAL (¡LEAMOS EN FAMILIA!)

4) BIBLIOTECA DIGITAL INTERNACIONAL PARA NIÑOS

5) PLAZA SESAMO

MATH/SCIENCE

1) AAA MATH

2) PBS PADRES — MATEMATICAS A TEMPRANA EDAD

3) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

SOCIAL SCIENCE

1) PROYECTO ILLINOIS EARLY LEARNING

2) MAPA HUMANO

GAMES/ACTIVITIES

1) CHILDTOPIA

2) PBS KIDS: MAYA Y MIGUEL

3) BRAIN POP

4) DISCOVERY FAMILIA

{Photo via IICD}

When my eldest daughter and son began to read in kindergarten a couple of years ago — in English— I was ecstatic. I love books, and had been reading to them in both Spanish and English since they were little. And then, it hit me. When would they begin to read in Spanish?

Being able to read in Spanish is not just an advantage during travel in Latin America or Spain. It’s so much more! Reading (and writing) in Spanish means our kids can send emails to their cousins, or write Christmas cards to their abuelitos — actively maintaining relationships (and their language skills) when school life is full of English. Being biliterate gives our children the opportunity to fully participate in Latin culture, by mastering the nuances of the language and appreciating children’s literature in its original form (not through translations!). Reading is an extremely efficient way to expand vocabulary and familiarity with spelling and the written language. Furthermore, as our children read more in Spanish, they will be exposed to styles and varieties of the language that they might not hear otherwise, and books offer them access to words and syntax that are different from what they might hear at home.

During graduate school, I had read numerous times that children who can read in one language can normally transfer their reading (decoding) skills to the second language without much difficulty — as long as the languages use the same alphabet, of course. While some parents begin to practice flashcards of Spanish words with their toddlers, a slightly easier route is to wait until the child can read in the majority language (or in our case, English) before reading in their weaker language (in our case, Spanish).

The summer after kindergarten I was confident that my kids had mastered the basics of reading: they knew we read left to right, they understood that the letters represented sounds, sound chunks put together would form words, words had meanings…. I armed myself with numerous “beginning to read” books that I had bought in Mexico, and we began our journey towards biliteracy.

We began to read even more in Spanish. As I read, I let my children follow the text with their fingers. We requested books in Spanish from the library that covered topics my kids were interested in: animals, princesses, soccer.  As I read, I point out phonetic differences “No pronuncies la ‘h’ en español.” “See how an e at the end of the word is not silent in Spanish?”

The more a child reads (in any language), the more likely she is to reach a reasonable level of writing and spelling. We played word games in Spanish, like hangman, Scrabble, and Scattergories. I call out words while I’m cooking, and they spell them with magnetic letters or practice writing with dry erase markers on our placemats. Using Discovery’s Puzzlemaker, I make up Spanish crossword puzzles or wordfinds. Now that they are becoming more proficient in reading Spanish, they can read the easier books to my younger children.

Once your child begins to read in Spanish — don’t stop reading to them! It may take a while before their reading fluency is at a level to pay more attention to the story than just the language. Find stories written by Spanish-speaking authors, such as acclaimed children’s author Jaime Alfonso Sandoval, from Mexico. Choose stories to read aloud that challenge their language and might be too difficult for them to read themselves. Although originally written in English, this summer we are tackling Harry Potter in Spanish. My kids are so excited and motivated to get to the next chapter, they are the ones reminding me to read books before bed.

This summer, immerse your family in children’s literature in Spanish, and witness your children emerging as biliterate readers and writers.

{Images courtesy of Becky Morales}

Thanks,

Rebekah”

Hi Rebekah. I have a very similar problem! My husband is Colombian and we are raising our son bilingually. Unfortunately, since my husband is perfectly comfortable in English as well as Spanish (and I suppose the same is true for your husband), it is very easy for him to slip into English when speaking with our son – especially since our son is more fluent in English and tends to want to speak more English than Spanish. Unfortunately, one of the best solutions for your problem is mainly in the hands of your husband. If you can get him to speak Spanish exclusively to your daughter, you would see her proficiency improve and she might feel more comfortable speaking the language. You don’t say how old your daughter is, but I would guess that her reluctance to speak Spanish doesn’t really have much to do with not seeing the need to speak it. She is most likely just more comfortable/proficient in English. You can also buy books, videos, toys and other materials for her in Spanish as a means of “sweetening the pot!” We offer our son “free screen time” (i.e., extra time on the computer) if he plays games or views videos in Spanish. Some of his favorite sites are:

SuperSaber: http://www.supersaber.com/

Club Penguin (in Spanish only!): http://www.clubpenguin.com/es/

Isla Megatrix: http://www.antena3.com/islamegatrix/

GoGoLingo: http://www.gogolingo.com/

BrainPOP Español: http://esp.brainpop.com/
As for Dual Language Immersion schools, I don’t know what area you live in, but you can research that for yourself with an excellent database from CAL – the Center for Applied Linguistics. The searchable database is called the “Directory of Foreign Language Immersion Programs: and it can be accessed online at: http://www.cal.org/resources/immersion/. Good luck!

Lori Langer de Ramirez.- -Bilingual educator who began her career as a teacher of Spanish, French and ESL. She holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics and a Doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is currently the Chairperson of the ESL and World Language Department for Herricks Public Schools, New York. Lori is the author of Take Action: Lesson Plans for the Multicultural Classroom and Voices of Diversity: Stories, Activities and Resources for the Multicultural Classroom, as well as several Spanish-language books and texts. Her interactive website (miscositas.com) offers teachers over 40 virtual picture books and other curricular materials for teaching Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish and Thai. Her areas of research and curriculum development are multicultural and diversity education, folktales in the language classroom and technology in language teaching. You can read her answers here and submit your own question for any of our experts here.

These are exciting times for parents looking for resources to teach Spanish to their children. More and more major media companies are venturing into creating content suited to the needs of Spanish-language learners. They are most likely paying attention to the fact that one out of four children in the U.S. are Latinos and Spanish is the second most spoken language in this country. (In fact, the U.S. only trails Mexico as the country where the most Spanish-speakers reside in the world.)

Noah Comprende Launches on PBS Kids Go!

We applaud PBS for the launch of a new web-original series on PBSKIDSGO.org aimed at introducing 6-9 year old children to the Spanish language:  Noah Comprende. The interactive episodes teach kids Spanish words by engaging them in a way they will never know they’re actually “learning” something.

Noah is a 9-year-old boy who doesn’t speak Spanish but is learning it thanks to his Abuela and her neighbors who don’t speak English. I love that they’ve integrated many of the methods, or tips, that we here at SpanglishBaby are always sharing as musts for a successful bilingual upbringing–immersion, especially through a family member such as the Abuela, being one of the keys.

The webisodes have the added bonus of embedded games that make them completely interactive and fun for our active niños. The arcade-style games, such as Word Games which simulates an Atari-like car race, puts your kids directly in the Spanish-language-learning action.

Parents and teachers alike will find the activities area especially useful. Each webisode has an accompanying activity that reinforces the vocabulary words and concepts that were learned. PBS has organized it all neatly and provides printable PDFs of everything you will need for the activities.

The Parent Show Debuts on PBS Parents

On the same week PBS Kids launched Noah Comprende, PBS Parents announced the launch of The Parent Show, a new parenting show hosted by Angela Santomero, better known as the creator of the hit shows Blue’s Clues and Super Why! We were particularly excited about this announcement because I had met Angela back in January when I was invited by PBS to attend an event in Los Angeles. While there, I was asked if I wanted to chat with Angela about raising bilingual kids; that’s when I first found out about The Parent Show. Needless to say, I was completely unprepared, but there was no way I was going to pass up a chance to tell the PBS audience about the thriving community bonding over bilingual and bicultural kids at SpanglishBaby.

Months later, the show finally launched and it included the SpanglishBaby interview as one of the two shows they premiered with! Not only that, but they included great reference links and articles to explore more about bilingualism and the Spanish-language as part of the webisode’s page. How’s that for a lot of bilingualism and Spanish-language love from PBS?!

If you haven’t seen the interview, you can see it below now. We would love your comments as a way of showing how much we all support these efforts and to encourage more media outlets to create quality content for our niños.  (If you’re reading on a feed and it doesn’t show up you can go here to view it. )

Watch the full episode. See more The Parent Show.

“I would like to teach my kids to read in Spanish. Any suggestions on materials to use? Thanks.”

Hi Leticia! I love your name! Leticia is one of my favorite cities in Colombia – it’s in the Amazon region and it’s a very beautiful place!

With regard to your question, there are tons of great sites online that can help kids read in Spanish. Here is a collection of some of my favorites. You can also check out my Delicious bookmarks (http://www.delicious.com/miscositas) and my website for updated links that seem to pop up every day! ¡Buena suerte!

America Reads Spanish: this is a great place to start looking for reading materials. On this site you can download a book called: Essential Guide to Spanish Reading for Children and Young Adults, which is an annotated bibliographic list of great reading in Spanish sorted by age level and recommended by librarians and educators from around the country!  http://www.americareadsspanish.org/

World Digital Library: this site makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world; materials are available in Spanish and several other languages.  http://www.wdl.org/en/#

International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL): A digital library of outstanding children’s books from all over the world; read full texts with accompanying images; search archive by country to find books in Spanish – and many other languages.  http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

StoryPlace: A digital online library for kids with stories, games and activities; kids can read along with the story as the audio portion plays. http://www.storyplace.org/sp/

BookBox: A neat site with interesting stories in different languages, with subtitles or without them; you can access a sample of the story for free, but the full story is $2.99 to download and keep; free games and other materials as well; materials available in English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindi and 21 other languages. http://www.bookbox.com/

MisCositas: My site! I have over 20 “virtual picturebooks” that students can read, with challenging vocabulary words linked to a pop-up picture dictionary; after reading the “book,” kids can view the accompanying video on our YouTube channel. http://www.miscositas.com

Lori Langer de Ramirez – Bilingual educator who began her career as a teacher of Spanish, French and ESL. She holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics and a Doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is currently the Chairperson of the ESL and World Language Department for Herricks Public Schools, New York. Lori is the author of Take Action: Lesson Plans for the Multicultural Classroom and Voices of Diversity: Stories, Activities and Resources for the Multicultural Classroom, as well as several Spanish-language books and texts (Cuéntame – Folklore y Fábulas and Mi abuela ya no está). Her interactive website (miscositas.com) offers teachers over 40 virtual picture books and other curricular materials for teaching Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish and Thai. Her areas of research and curriculum development are multicultural and diversity education, folktales in the language classroom and technology in language teaching. You can read her answers here.

Photo by shutterbugMike

We hope all of you are having a great Independence weekend and that you were lucky enough to see some amazing fireworks – as we were It was truly something else to see Vanessa’s amazement and to hear sus gritos de plena felicidad!

Today’s links to everything bilingual include a bit of everything, including a reminder to enter our last Bilingual Summer Fun giveaway and an exciting announcement about the week ahead.

1) Bilingual Readers: Freebies for Bilingual Families – “We were so excited to find two great websites full of free activities for helping parents develop children’s reading levels. Both sites are available in English and Spanish (one is available in French and German too!), and both are 100% free.” Gracias for these and more resources from our friends at Bilingual Readers! These are all definitely worth checking out!

2) Mashable, The Social Media Guide: How To Learn and Practice Languages Using Social Media – “Given the globalized online world we live in, learning a new language has never been easier — nor as interactive, interesting, and social! From Twitter to blogs to social networks, there are numerous ways you can start your social language learning and keep it up while making new friends. A roundup of ways that you can use social media to learn a language and connect with native speakers. This is just a taste of the many language learning sites available across the social web. Wow! I am impressed! I had no idea! Has anyone ever used any of these? I know I will soon and I’ll definitely let you know what I think…

3) RLPR: Peanut Butter and the Art of Cultural Adaptation – “We speak español at RLPR, though we sometimes misinterpret each other. Tal vez es porque hablamos argentino, peruano, panameño, mexicano, salvadoreño, puertorriqueño and more – so we have to do some work to decipher each other’s dialects. While this is unquestionably conducive to our ability to do good work, it comes with its challenges. On more than one occasion we’ve been distracted by the impromptu Independence Day celebration in the kitchen with pisco sours – not to mention the dispute that arises when the drink’s origin gets called into question (Peru vs. Chile, anyone?).” This was hilarious and so true! We’ve talked about this topic before here and I know we will continue to do so. BTW, not only are Pisco Sours Peruvian, so is Pisco…I should know, right?

4) Bilingual Summer Fun Week of Giveaways – Our whole week of giveaways ends tonight at midnight EST. You can still enter to win two fabulous premios: one for the pequeños and one for YOU!! I promise you’ll love both of them. So, what are you waiting for? What to do: go here and here for more details!

Finally, I just wanted to let you all know that we’ve prepared a whole week dedicated exclusively to the most popular method used out there by those of you raising bilingual children. We’re talking the One Parent/One Language (OPOL) method. We have all kinds of posts prepared for you regarding this topic, as well as more giveaways! So we hope to see you around here next week. Promete ser una semana interesante…

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