The show can be viewed in 45 cities through LATV U.S. Network. No worries if it´s not available in your area because we are giving two readers the chance to win a set with a DVD and a CD from Dos y Dos´first season.

The DVD is Cosas Diferentes and has two full episodes:

Episode 1 – Frutas y Vegetales
Episode 2 – Igual y Diferentes

The CD is titled Dos y Dos Moviéndose and has songs from the episodes “Cuando Sea Grande” y “Medios de Transporte.”

The Giveaway

This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to our winners:  Griselda Wong and Angelina.

Here´s your chance to win one of two sets with a DVD and CD from the Dos y Dos show. All you have to do is leave a comment telling us which of the videos on their site you and your child enjoyed the most.  Check them out here.

That’s all you have to do to enter this giveaway. If you want to up your chances at winning, then this is how you can get additional entries (only after you´ve completed the step above):

**Please leave a separate comment for each so we can count them and avoid mistakes.

1. Subscribe to our feed via email or RSS and leave us an extra comment letting us know you did so or that you’re already a subscriber.

2. Follow us on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway including a link to the post.

3. Blog about this giveaway making sure to include our link, and you’ll get TWO additional entries.

This giveaway ends Monday, July 12 at midnight EST and you must have a valid U.S. address to enter.

Disclosure: A sample product was provided for review purposes; all opinions are 100% ours. Check out our full Disclosure + Privacy Policy.
If you click on a link above and it takes you to La Tiendita and you purchase a product, we will hear pennies fall in el cochinito.

For the part that nobody likes, but we’ve gotta have, check out the Giveaway Rules.

Once that hurdle was passed, and I could convince her to watch the show with me, I can honestly say she enjoyed it and asked for más. What got her for sure was the singing and dancing, and what got me was that it is all in Spanish, with the occasional, not accidental, word or phrase in English. I do wish they would have been more careful when syncing the songs to the video, but that only annoyed me. My daughter could have cared less.

From the site:

Dos y Dos is designed to build skills deemed critical for early childhood development. As the cast solves the “Riddle of the day”, they teach fundamental core values like sharing, helping, and the importance of teamwork. Every show has three music videos performed by the cast in Spanish, with one of those music videos performed also in English, making a total of four educational music videos per half-hour episode.

Dos y Dos is being broadcast through LATV U.S. Network in 45 cities. Check here to see if yours is included.

If the show is not being played in your area, you can always check out the videos on the website.  Enjoy this music video in Spanish from Dos y Dos.  It´s perfect for this World Cup season when our kids really know what the word GOL means by now!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM_H52lkWAQ&feature=related

Her original name was not Dora and Latina she was not.

More than 10 years ago and after working with outside creators to come up with new ideas, Nickelodeon’s Valerie Walsh Valdes and Chris Gifford were given the opportunity of a lifetime: to develop their own show. This is what they thought up: a show about a preschool girl who has a bunch of animal friends and goes exploring every day. Her name was Tess.

But the network’s executives had other ideas. They had just come back from a conference which dealt with the fact that Latinos were the most underrepresented minority on television. What to do about it? Convert ‘Tess’ into a bilingual Latina girl called Dora. The problem? Neither Gifford nor Walsh Valdes were bilingual. So they hired a Latino writer and several Latino-savvy consultants, including Spanish language experts, and Dora the Explorer was born.

“We wanted to give an authentic cultural identity to the character, but also to the world around her,” said Walsh Valdes, the co-creator and executive producer of both Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go.

Making the character a 7-year-old bilingual Latina was Nickelodeon’s response to the lack of positive Latino roles in the media.

“The idea was to make learning a second language appealing,” explained Walsh Valdes. “We were trying to make that [being bilingual] into a positive, something you should be proud of.”

But the idea was also to make Dora universally appealing.

“We didn’t want to alienate audiences who don’t speak another language, who are not bilingual,” said Walsh Valdes.

Which is the reason why Dora the Explorer is not really about teaching Spanish, it’s more about a little girl who goes on a different adventure in each show and happens to be bilingual in English and Spanish. However, since learning at this stage of a child’s life is something fun, the creators of the show definitely take advantage of that, according to Walsh Valdes.

Preschoolers are introduced to a new Spanish word or phrase which Dora uses repeatedly throughout each particular episode. Although Walsh Valdes said they’ve never “claimed to be teaching Spanish,” countless parents around the country credit Dora the Explorer with helping their children learn lots of vocabulary in Spanish.

The show is not only insanely popular in the U.S. – according to Nickelodeon, it’s the top preschool show on all of commercial television – but also at the international level. And it might have to do with the fact that bilingualism is a pretty normal way of growing up in most of the rest of the world.

“It’s not just kids who speak Spanish that identify with Dora,” explained Walsh Valdes. “Other bilingual kids see themselves in her.”

The co-creator of this show credits its unthinkable success to a couple of reasons. The first one is that each show presents “really great stories for that age group” – universal stories that appeal to preschoolers no matter their background. The second one is the “interactive” nature of the show. In other words, the fact that Dora always asks for the audience’s help so the adventure can move along, hence the short silent period right after a question is asked.

Although my daughter, Vanessa, didn’t really start “watching” TV until after she turned two – meaning it’s only been about a year – I have noticed how much more motivated she is to respond to Dora’s request now that she is a little older and has a larger vocabulary.

Gifting her daughter with bilingualism

Ironically, even though Walsh Valdes is not bilingual – despite taking four years of high school Spanish, as she says – she is raising her 2-year-old daughter to be, thanks to the creation of Dora the Explorer. Remember the Latino writer they hired back when Dora was being created? She married him. So now, thanks to her Cuban-born husband and their Latina nanny, Walsh Valdes is experiencing first-hand the amazing ability of children to learn two languages at once.

“I don’t speak Spanish, but I’m learning more from my daughter than I ever did in high school,” Walsh Valdez shared. “My husband says she is as verbal in Spanish as she is in English, which is amazing!”

Valerie Walsh Valdez

VALERIE WALSH VALDES is creator and executive producer of preschool phenomenon Dora the Explorer.  She is also the creator and executive producer of Nick Jr.’s hit preschool series Go, Diego, Go!.
A graduate of New York University, Walsh Valdes earned a master’s degree in Film and Dramatic Writing, and a master’s degree in Education.  While at NYU, she was a member of the Creative Arts Team, an educational theater company dedicated to creating and performing issue-based dramas in New York City schools.  Walsh Valdes has also worked in independent film and theater and produced numerous short films, directed both theater and independent features, and written several screenplays.
Walsh Valdes lives in NY and LA with her husband and daughter.

FYI: We’re giving away FIVE copies of “Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom” – the latest special episode in the Dora the Explorer series which airs Sunday on Nickelodeon – over at our new sister site, SpanglishBabyFinds, where we review the coolest products made with Latino and/or bilingual kids in mind. Don’t miss out!

Last week V-me launched a new parenting series of mini-episodes in Spanish called Las Aventuras de eebee which is hosted by a superstar Latina we all know well-Thalía.

Thalía, whom we know mostly as a pop singer and from her successful roles in Mexican telenovelas, became a mamá two years ago and now is sharing screen time with an adorable and colorful baby puppet called eebee-”the baby’s baby”-in entertaining vignettes that help parents of infants aged 6 months and up transform everyday moments into learning that lasts. Activities based on the latest early child development research provide enriched play experiences for parent and baby alike.

I’m glad to see V-me continue to enrich their daily Spanish pre-school block and parenting shows, which already includes the original and award winning series “Los Niños en su Casa“, and to see a Latina with a superstar following shine her spotlight on our niños.  To me this is a sign that more and more attention is being given to us parents raising our children to speak Spanish as well as English and to give us valuable resources for our journey.

If you haven’t already, you can catch Thalia in her new role with eebee from Monday to Friday on V-me. Click here to check your local listings.

Oh, and I just noticed V-me has created a new Facebook group for Padres. It looks like it’s so new that word still hasn’t gotten around. How about if SpanglishBaby friends make some noise and we become the first Fans on their page? This is a great place to get your voice heard. Go here to join.

What´s happening at SpanglishBabyFinds today?  We review and giveaway THREE Dan Zanes and Friends ¡Nueva York! CD.  It’ll have your family grooving to cool Latin rhythms.