I might just have to move to Illinois. In case you didn’t know, earlier this month, Gov. Pat Quinn, signed a bill, which aspires to strengthen bilingual education in that state. Illinois plans to do that by first evaluating the state of bilingual education in its schools and then presenting a report to lawmakers and state education officials by Jan. 1 with their findings and recommendations. I’m not going to lie, listening to Gov. Quinn make the following remarks during theRead More ...
Bravo to Illinois for Understanding Why Bilingual Education is Crucial!
How Soccer Motivates My Kids To Be Bilingual
One of the best ways to motivate kids’ Spanish speaking is to find a way to tie the language to their interests. My sons love soccer. My husband grew up playing soccer and loves to watch the games, which is how my sons became interested in the sport. My boys love it, whether it is watching the game, kicking around a ball, or actually playing. Aside from being probably the most popular sport in the Spanish speaking world, there isRead More ...
Week in Links for #BilingualKids — July 22
Why English Is No Longer Enough from The Huffington Post — Not that we need to be convinced, but it’s always nice to hear others saying it. Interesting read! Bilingual Fluency & Disparities in Fluency from Latinaish.com — Our friend Tracy López writes about the differences in her children’s levels of fluency in Spanish. I’ve always found this topic super interesting because in my own household growing up my siblings and I all had different levels of fluency in SpanishRead More ...
Pen Pals: A Great Idea for Bilingual Kids
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 ...
Why Do We Teach Our Children Spanish?
I read with great interest the Wall Street Journal article featured in Spanglishbaby’s Week in Links regarding parents who move to China so that their children can learn and improve their language abilities. Learning another language and experiencing another culture can be a great experience for anyone, and it is especially valuable for children who tend to have an advantage at second language acquisition. The question that I was left with after reading the article was: Why Chinese? NoneRead More ...