Today was Camila’s first day of 1st grade and I missed it. I’m in Houston due to a family emergency that I will share with all of you another day when the time is right, but for now I can share that I had to miss my girl’s first day of school, but am relishing all the beautiful moments we were able to create this summer.

Of course, I was all over my husband making sure he took pictures of this day and sent them to me immediately. And what I saw in those pictures was a very happy and smiley girl surrounded by a few of her best friends. It’s amazing how only one year after she first walked through the kindergarten gates into this new world of dual immersion in Spanish, new faces, rules and even new sounds of different languages all around her since her school has immersion in French, Spanish, German and Italian, she now walks into familiar territory.

I can’t wait to go back home in a few days and have her tell me in person all about her new maestra and how funny and nice she is. I also want to hear all about her amigas and who she ended up sitting next to. I’m even anxious to get back to our crazy routine of trying to get homework done without a few struggles and snuggling up to read our daily books.

I’m counting on her loving school to not only learn what she’s supposed to learn academically, but for it to continue being our ally in immersing her in Spanish. She had much exposure during the summer thanks to trips to México, visits from familia and the amazing Caja de Arte summer camp. She’s much more comfortable speaking Spanish now and it’s starting to come out more and more often and even feels like a preference. Maybe I failed in teaching her how to really read during the summer so she would have an advantage in first grade, but I did succeed in making sure she connected Spanish with many of the things adores: art, performing, familia and making new memories…like these below…

Camila became Frida and Frida became Camila. She learned all about her at the Caja de Arte camp and became seriously obsessed after they performed a play based on Jonah Winter’s children’s book, Frida.

Lucky for her, a few weeks after she performed Frida her Papi took her to México and they went to the Casa Azul, per Camila’s request!

The trip to México was all about the primos. She’s even talking with the same accent they have!

The prima from El Salvador came to visit with Abuelita. Many, many memories were made then.

We even managed to squeeze in live music with our favorite friends and performers like Sara!

Se nos acabó el verano and 1st grade is awaiting us with much more to learn, live and love…y todo con mucho español!

What are some of your best memories from the summer and are you all ready for back to school?

Summer is officially here and in many parts of the country the first heat waves are already hitting. What better way to cool down than with paletas!

We are sharing five delicious popsicle recipes, some of which might surprise you. Not everyone has a sweet tooth so we are including two refreshing recipes that call for a little chile instead! It’s great to have sugar-free recipes for our niños during the summer. And if you or your niños don’t like chile you can always omit that part from the recipe. Just click on the links below for the recipes by amazing latina bloggers pictured above.

1.Paletas Heladas de Pepino {Con chilito Tajin} by Elida of Simple Y Delicioso.

2. Natural fruit paletas with watermelon and Tajín by Maura of The Other Side of the Tortilla. 

3. Aguas Frescas Popsicles: Sandia & Melon by Angie of Little Inspiration.

4. Paleta de batata (Sweet potato popsicles) by Clara of Aunt Clara’s Kitchen. 

5. Paletas de Fresa y Aguacate by Vianney of Sweet Life. 

What’s summer without a good book to read while lounging under a tree? As relaxing as it sounds sometimes reading is not what our kids have in mind for their summer vacation. This week we are sharing fun activities that will get niños excited about reading, communicating, and learning about animals and insects  in Spanish. Check out each activity below and just click on the links for the full description.

35+ Ways to Keep Your Child Excited About Reading

Latinas for Latino Literature shares a list of 40 simple and easy ways to keep our niños excited about reading. These are great tips to show our kids that reading is fun and not just for homework. Check out their list and make sure to check out their summer reading program for kids!

Printable Spanish Questions with Pictures – Una Preguntita 7

Spanish Playground is currently sharing a series called Una Preguntita which encourages kids to practice their Spanish language skills. Each post in this series comes with a set of questions that parents or teachers can ask and a worksheet with images (see above) so that kids can either point or circle the correct answer. Click here for the latest post in this series and the printable version of this activity. 

Proyecto de Trabajo: Las Obejas

Actividades Infantil is sharing 10 printable activity sheets for our bilingual kids to enjoy that are all about bees. These activity sheets encourage kids to solve math problems, learns a few facts about bees and honey, and learn new vocabulary words.

Learning Spanish at the Zoo: Animals (Animales)

The zoo is a fun and educational place for our kids. Why not make it a Spanish learning experience too! Frances of Discovering the World Through My Sons Eyes shares a simple and fun way for our kids to learn the names of the animals at the zoo in Spanish. Click here for a full description of this fun activity and resources.

Manualidades con Niños: Cuadros Reciclados

Reina of Soy Mama En Casa shares this cute and simple DIY to make a decorative craft  from recycled materials. We love this craft because it is a great way to relax and enjoy a conversation with our kids.

This summer we are bringing back the Culture of Food Weekly Round-up! There are many delicious recipes around the blogosphere by amazing Latina bloggers that are sure to make this summer delicious. To kick things off we want to share with you five refreshing drinks (non-alcoholic), or aguas frescas, that are traditional in many Latin American homes. Check out the recipes and  stories behind these flavorful drinks. Just click in the links below!

1 Mango Cucumber Juice by Melissa of Hungry Food Love

2 Guayaba Limeade by Vianney of Sweet Life Bake

3 Limonada de Panela by Cristina of Una Colombiana en California

4 Mexican Watermelon Cooler by Silvia of Mama Latina Tips

5 Agua de Tamarindo by Nicole of Presley’s Pantry

I love helping my kids think outside of the box particular one of my kids who has a really hard time doing that.  Encourage creative play by giving them flowers and other natural elements to serve as their paintbrush.

“Me gusta pintar. Me gusta pintar, mami,”  my little man says this with a big smile on his face.  I respond, “Yes, I know you love to paint.”  My 2 year old is so very happy when he gets to make a mess with paint. Remember to buy paint that is washable if you have little excited painters.

I remember when one of my boys’ teachers came to me with a concern, “Your son keeps painting the trees blue, orange… and I can’t put his picture up on the bulletin board because he’s not following directions.”  She showed me his picture. I looked at it, and this artistic mama couldn’t have been prouder.  It was absolutely lovely.  ¡Lindísimo!

I looked at her and I said, “I am sorry, it’s really hard for me to be upset at him for not following directions when the picture in your  hand is absolutely amazing for a little 5-year-old. I will talk to him about learning to follow directions, but there is nothing wrong with his picture.  A tree doesn’t have to be brown and green it can be blue, orange, yellow… and his sun can be purple.”  Unfortunately for my son, he had two teachers back to back when he was younger discourage his creativity — his artistic side. He is now nine and his trees are verde and café. It makes me sad.

I still haven’t given up though and I continue to give my boys opportunities to be creative with their hands. Sometimes they would rather run around pretending they are policemen and super cowboys shooting at each other, but I must say any kind of imaginative play makes me happy.

So before trashing your wilted flowers, give them another use!

Painting with Flowers

What you will need:

• paint in different colors
• flowers (I used my flowers that were wilting)
• paper

1. Place paint on a surface that is big enough to cover the flowers in paint.

2. Start painting away. Let them make flower prints or paint houses, cars, abstract art… whatever their little minds take them.

Note: When painting with kids it’s good to have something under the painting project to protect the surface; also wipes for quick clean up.

I’m so excited to share this video project I was hired to host for eHow on their Mom channel. We shot a total of 10 videos all under the main theme of Get Involved. As a mom raising a bilingual and bicultural child, I’m well aware of how important it is for us to be completely involved in how and what our children are learning. Everything from the music and apps we choose for them, to making sure the DVD is being played with the Spanish track on, to making huge sacrifices to immerse them through travel and education, being involved, present and having a commitment is key.

And now that my girl is on her first official summer break (she’s a kinder graduate!), videos like these below are helping spark the creative flame to fill in those long summer days with fun, memorable and educational activities.

There are 10 videos in total as part of the series:

1. Fun Lessons With Common Household Items – With these simple crafts projects, you can teach your children about everything from music to nature to light and color.

2. Making Music From Natural Objects – Show your kids how to make musical instruments using common objects found in nature like grass, twigs, rocks and fruits and veggies.

3. Raising Kids Who Care: Volunteer Opportunities for Kids – This simple advice will help you select the best volunteer opportunities for your children.

4. Sneaky Ways to Boost Problem Solving Skills for Kids – These three activities help teach your children essential problem-solving skills.

5. Taking Math Outside: Sidewalk Chalk Math – Do your kids dread doing their math homework? Make it fun by doing math problems with sidewalk chalk outdoors.

6. Childhood Startup: Teaching Your Child About Money – These simple activities teach your children how to save money, make financial goals and become financially responsible.

7. Fun Science Experiments You Can Do with Your Child – Using common household ingredients, you can create safe science experiments that teach your children about density, chemical reactions and more.

8. Fun Science Activity for Kids: Making Elephant Toothpaste – This delightful experiment teaches kids about chemical reactions.

9. Fun Science Activity for Kids: Making a Lava Lamp – Using common household ingredients, your kids can create a homemade lava lamp.

10. Fun Science Activity for Kids: The Parachute Egg Challenge – This fun experiment teaches kids about gravity and air resistance.

Summer fun is here! Even if it’s still cool in your part of the world your little ones can still enjoy this ice boat water play activity without having to place their little hand inside. If it’s hot, then go all out and take out the kiddie pool and let the kids play with their mini ice boats.

If you are like me and you try to squeeze an educational twist to activities you can also have your little ones draw a boat and write about it.

The boats will twirl and move around on their own so if they don’t want to get their hands wet they don’t have to. But my kids are very hands-on and they couldn’t keep their hands out of the water.  Either way works.

You will need:

• Ice tray
• water
• food coloring
• tooth picks
• paper cut into triangle shapes
• tape
• plastic tub

1. Fill your ice trays with water and have your little ones (my 2 yr old helped me with this) drop food coloring in each slot.  Stick in freezer.

2. After an hour, if the water has solidified some then you can insert your sticks.  If the water hasn’t hardened it’s hard to keep the sticks up they just flop over.

3. Once they are completely solidified grab your triangle shaped paper and tape on to the tooth picks.

4. Fill your tub with water and place your cubes inside.

Your kids will love watching the water turn colors as the ice melts.

Disclosure: I have received a Toyota Prius V to drive for one year. No monetary compensation has been received. All opinions are my own. Read more here: bitly.com/gplegal

Last Sunday I got a very, very rare treat: a day all to myself in my own city. I seriously can’t remember the last time it happened that both my daughter and my husband were gone and it wasn’t because they were giving me alone time to work on our book or some other pending deadline. This time, my good friend Yolanda, and founder of Sassy Mama in L.A., invited Camila to spend the day with her daughter at the brand new Soak City in Orange County. Since the two girls are inseparable now, I was happy to have her go spend time with her. My husband had a motorcycle ride planned out with friends as well and that left me with absolutely no plans, no ballet classes to rush to in the mornings, and no hardcore deadlines to meet on a beautiful Sunday.

Oh, the joy!

And the best part is that the Toyota Prius had been delivered to us just 5 days before and since I had been traveling I hadn’t had a chance to really drive it at leisure and discover all its fabulousness. So I decided my big plan for the day would be that my Prius would take me to a place that I adore, that sets me “free,” that’s only 16 miles away, but I don’t visit enough: the Pacific Ocean.

As soon as Camila left, I packed up the ample trunk of the Prius V with a small beach chair and my beach bag and I headed out towards the PCH to meet my good, and way-too-neglected-by-me friend Andrea at her surfing spot where the PCH and Sunset Blvd. meet.

Parking was a hassle, but it all melted away once I sat on the beach to catch up with mi amiga. When she left to catch some waves, I just sat there on the sand clicking away pictures of her on the board because I know she loves to see them. I also did something I rarely ever get to do anymore: read a book!

I then headed out to catch up with another good friend, Maura of The Other Side of the Tortilla. She and her husband recently moved to L.A. and since my life has been crazy lately, I haven’t had real time to spend with her. I invited her to the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica for some lunch on the beach. It’s one of my favorite spots on the beach because it’s so easy and beautiful.

The day ended quicker than I imagined, but the truth is that as much as I enjoyed this “Me” time and really needed it, I rushed home to go to the store to get some blueberries to make my girl a batch of banana-blueberry mini muffins to snack on when she got home.

Moms should not feel guilty of hitting the road by ourselves every once in a while and making what we want of our no-obligations day.

Share: What do you do when you get some “Me” time? What do you fantasize about doing with some “Me” time?

One thing I remember from going to the beach or park as a kid was that my Latino parents were always hiding from the sun.  As a kid I didn’t care, and sure enough within 20 minutes I looked like a red frijol but the grown ups did, so they hid. Mi mami was notorious for forgetting her sun hat so we would always find her holding a piece of newspaper over her head to keep her creamy, milky skin out of the sun.  She would have loved this craft, even though I have a feeling she still would have forgotten to bring even this newspaper hat.

What you will need:

• newspaper
• tempera paint
• masking tape

Place the long full sheet of newspaper of your childs head. Make sure it’s in the center, so when you start trimming it’s even all sides.

2. Wrap masking tape over the newspaper while it’s on your child’s head.

3. Trim around to get the right size.

4. Remove hat from head and paint but make sure your child doesn’t soak the newspaper with paint otherwise it will make a hole through it.

5. Add ribbon or a feather and glue it on.

You can make one for boys but just cut the sides down a bit more to make it look less frilly.

When my familia decided to take a last-minute trip to the beach, I had to act fast and create a learning unit about the Oceano for my daughter Sofía.  I didn’t have as much time as normal for the planning, so instead of making my own actividades as I usually do, I turned to the internet to pull from resources already available.  Even if you have already past your Oceano Unit, these resources have mucho más to offer than just maritime themes.  Since we only speak in Español in my casa, all our actividades are monolingual, but you can easily use a text box to add words in Inglés to the documents to make them bilingual.

The first thing I did in planning my unit is to create a list of words that I wanted to center everything around so that I would provide consistency and a spiral repetition throughout the unit.  (Laymen’s terms, I wanted Sofía to see the same vocabulary repeated in all her actividades and not introduce the word mermaid on day 1 only to never see it again later.) Once a vocabulary list is established, it makes creating the actividades much easier and provides direction.  Here is my list of vocabulary words for our Oceano Unit.  I’ve included their meanings in Inglés as well.

Actividades

1.  Fotos of Animales. We used the first actividad as an introduction to the entire unit.  Over breakfast one morning, we talked about our upcoming trip to the beach.  I asked Sofía what kinds of animales she thought she would see at the beach (or that lived in the oceano).  As she gave me the names of the animales, I conducted a Google image search of them and pulled up real fotos so that she could see various pictures of the real animal.  Ahead of time, I had created a slideshow of these images to use as a summary tool at the end of breakfast.  Note that although maybe Sofía brainstormed an animal that wasn’t on my list, I still showed her a foto of that animal.  Then I was able to make a decision if it was an animal that I wanted to include in our list of vocabulary or not.

2.  Sorting and Categorizing Objects. For the second actividad, I gave Sofía a plastic basket and we combed through all her toys and belongings for objects that had to do with the oceano. When we pulled out her basket of stuffed animales for example, we made two piles, one for those animales that could be found in the oceano and one for those that could not.

3.  Animal Alphabet Coloring Pages.  The third actividad helps strengthen phonemic awareness and prewriting /prereading skills.  Ahead of time, I had printed out Animal Alphabet coloring pages for each of our vocabulary words.  Sofía and I talked about the animal and the beginning letter.  Then she colored the animal and traced the letter.  Here is the link of the index for letters and their actividades in Español available from Primera-Escuela.   Since not all the animales on our vocabulary list were available from Primera-Escuela, I ended up creating a few of my own animal letters by using sites like:  Hellokids.com and Fun-with-Pictures.com. All are included in the document linked above.

4.  Crab Craft.  We printed out this template from First-School, the Inglés site of Primera-Escuela.  We printed it in color then cut and pasted it together.

5.  Carrera de Observación and Collage. The fifth actividad is somewhat of a Carrera de Observación (Scavenger Hunt).  I used the Seashore Collage actividad from First-School and tweaked it a bit.  Instead of using their oceano shells template, I made and printed my own in color (to cover all the target vocabulary words) and hid them around the living room.  Sofía searched for all the animales del oceano.  She liked it so much that she asked me to do it several times! Later we glued all the animales to the “seashore” which I made by gluing sandpaper and blue construction paper to a half piece of poster board.

6. Online Book: Finbo.   The International Children’s Digital Library is amazing!  You really need to check it out for yourselves!  We found a book about a young whale and had lots of fun reading it over and over again on the computer.

7.  Book:  Debajo del Mar.  Enchanted Learning has a plethora of resources in foreign languages as well as in Inglés.  I particularly like their picture vocabulary sheets and little books.  We printed out the book, Debajo del Mar (Full version is available to members).  Sofía colored it and then I highlighted the beginning letter of each animal word and gave her sticky foam letters to match to each letter.

8.  Fish Bowl Craft: There is an entire lesson plan written up for this actividad.  We basically just printed out the black and white outline of the Fish Bowl Craft and used a color-by-number approach.  The lesson plan offers many optional actividades.

9.  Clay Fish:  We printed out a fish picture from Allcoloring.com and used acrcilla (clay) to color it.

10.  Video:  Lola Aventuras: Un Animal Muy Grande.  As I’m sure you already know, YouTube offers great resources in many languages.   This Plaza Sésamo short video, available on the Plaza Sésamo YouTube channel, is about whales and was a huge hit with my daughter.

I’m sure that once you put your thinking caps on to Oceano Over-Drive, you will be able to come up with a potpourri of small filler “doings” to enhance your study of the Oceano also.  Here are few to get you started!

• Have a fish-themed lunch!  Eat fish sticks, cheddar goldfish, and fish gummies.
• Use fish-themed plates.
• Read various oceano-themed stores that you might have around the house or find in the library.
• Do an oceano-themed puzzle together.
• Put on a mini-play with the some of the marine animales that you found around the house.
• Declare a certain day of the week for everyone to wear a piece of clothing with an oceano theme!

And most importantly, plan some special familia time together—of course at the beach if you can!

Have any actividades to add?  We would love for you to share them!

Special thanks to Elizabeth for providing this activity. Visit her site, La Mother Tongue, for more activities for parents raising bilingual children.