Vanessa has always had a hard time pronouncing the letter R. Lately, though, she’s become keenly aware that she can’t roll her Rs. Out of the blue, she’ll repeat words like perro and carro and rápido and ask me if she’s saying them right. Unfortunately, she’s not. But I’m not freaking out just yet because I’ve read this is normal since Spanish speaking children typically don’t learn to roll their R’s until they’re between 5 and 7 years old. This means Vanessa still has a little over a year!

In all seriousness though, she’s not happy that she can’t do it and so I’ve been wanting to help her practice how to roll her R’s the last few days. Yesterday, I decided to do some research and now I have a few exercises to use with her that I want to share with you.

For starters, here’s the advice one of our very own experta, Ellen Stubbe Kester, Ph.D, CCS-LLP, a bilingual speech language professional, told one of our readers about three years ago regarding her daughter’s trouble rolling her R’s:

The trilled R is a D sound with the tip of the tongue moving. Try these drills:

The syllable level:

DRA DRE DRI DRO DRU

TRA TRE TRI TRO TRU

The word level:

PARDO, TARDE, CUERDA, GORDO

I also found these rhymes and tongue twisters recommended for learning how to roll Rs. Check them out:

RHYMES

• El cielo está enladrillado
  El cielo está enladrillado,
  quién lo desenladrillará.
  El desenladrillador que lo desenladrille,
  buen desenladrillador será.

• El otro día me caí
  del ferrocarril
  al lado de un barril.
  El barril tenia ruedas
  ¡Qué raro barril!
  Y con las ruedas
  caí en el barro marrón!
  Fui a mi casa, me bañé rápido
  y dije todo otra vez

• Erre con erre, guitarra,
  erre con erre, barril.
  ¡Mira que rápido ruedan
  las ruedas redondas
  del ferrocarril!

TRABALENGUAS (or Tongue Twisters)

• Borracho un ratón robó
  un ramo de rosas rojas.
  El rabo se le enredó
  y rodó de rosa en rosa.

 
• El ratón se come un bombón.
  Se viene un gato marrón a comer el ratón.
  Pero el bombón reventó, ¡BOM!

 
So I’m going to go ahead and practice these with Vanessa. We’ll see how it goes. Promise to keep you posted.

Got any rhymes or tongue twisters of your own? Please share!

“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 heydee

Today is the first day of a month-long celebration of anything and everything Hispanic, or Latino, as we like to call ourselves. Over 20 years ago, then President Ronald Reagan enacted into law Hispanic Heritage Month, a 30-day period which starts on September 15th and ends on October 15th to recognize the contributions of Hispanics in this country.

Today, September 15th, has always been a fiesta day in my calendar since my second home-El Salvador- celebrates the anniversary of its independence, El Día de la Independencia, as well as Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.  Tomorrow, Mexico goes all out to commemorate their Fiesta Patrias, and Chile has its own independence fete on September 18th.  Now that’s a lotta partying going on in the Latino world!  Why shouldn’t the 44 million of Latinos in the U.S. not join in with our own celebration?

I like the idea of taking advantage of this celebration to teach our children about our heritage. The media outlets, schools, libraries and such go all out to this month to create festivities, award shows, special programming, etc about Latinos and our traditions and contributions to our country.  This is the perfect moment to immerse your child and for him to see himself-his language, his food, his traditions, his way of life reflected.   A good dose of positive self-identity in our ethnically diverse society is an excellent way to boost his self-esteem and pride in his roots. This, in turn, can reinforce his respect for learning and maintaining his heritage language.

Here are some activities centered around Hispanic Heritage that your family, and your bilingual efforts, can benefit from:

• Take advantage of the many cultural parties and Fiestas de Independencia going on in museums, malls, universities and local civic centers.

• Check your local libraries and bookstores schedule this month for special bilingual storytimes focused on Hispanic Heritage.  I know even my local Barnes and Noble  is hosting a Spanish storytime this month.

• Read together a book from Colorin Colorado´s Hispanic Heritage Booklist.  Make it a cultural event at home.

• Watch together the amazing four-hour series PBS has put together about the history of Latin music in the U.S.–Latin Music, USA.  It airs on October 12 and 19 on your local PBS station.  I personally can´t wait to watch it because it explores all the levels in which the many genres of music we recognize as “American” have actually been influenced by Latino musicians and rhythms.  Older kids will definitely identify with this documentary and will serve to instill more pride in the contributions made by Hispanics.  You can also watch Latin Music, USA and other great stories about Latinos at the Nuestras Historias PBS website.

• Celebrate the culture of food by cooking recipes from different countries of Latin America.  This site has 14 Latino recipes that might inspire you like Pabellón Criollo (Venezuela),  Mangú (Dominican Republic), and Gallo Pinto (Costa Rica).

With so much to do, I’m excited it’s a whole  month.

Here at SpanglishBaby, we’re kicking off the celebrations tomorrow with an interview with José Luis Orozco.  Orozco is a much admired musician, author of children´s books and bilingual educator whom, in our book, is a true Latino to admire for his incessant work to preserve our culture and traditions through folk music and songs for our children.

We´re also giving away a pack of Orozco´s bilingual CDs and storybooks exclusively to one of our newsletter subscribers.  You have all month, until October 15th, to subscribe to receive the very first edition of our combined SpanglishBaby and SpanglishBabyFinds newsletter full of discounts and bilingual goodies. Just enter your email here.

How will you take advantage of the Hispanic Heritage Month festivities?

We invite you to visit our new sister site, SpanglishBabyFinds, where we review the coolest products made with Latino and/or bilingual kids in mind. Today you can win the brand new Dance With Me Dora.  ¡A bailar!

Photo by phil wood photo

During the past weeks we’ve been dedicating some time to the topic of reading to bilingual kids.  Last week we launched our new monthly series ReadMe where we’ll showcase a bilingual/Spanish children’s book and author.  We also posted an article sent to us by Deanna Lyles (www.BilingualReaders.com) titled “Raising Bilingual Readers:  The Art of Reading to Children in a Bilingual Home.” We highly recommend reading to your children as a language motivator and we’ll continue to explore this topic with you.

Today’s Ask an Expert question was sent by Silvia from Mamá Latina Tips.  She digs deeper in to the topic of reading by exploring when is the right time to teach a child to read in a second language.

To answer this question we’ve invited one of the excellent experts in our panel, Barbara Pearson, Ph. D., respected researcher and author of the informative and extremely useful book Raising a Bilingual Child.

This is the book that got Roxana and me started and we highly recommend to you, as we stated in this post: Top 10 Books For Parents Raising Bilingual Children.

When Should My Child Learn to Read in Spanish?

“My son is five years old.  He is reading in English and making a lot of effort to read in Spanish (which I think is easier, I tell him this every day! I think he is getting it though).  He is also writing in English and he will start kindergarten in the Fall. So my question for the expert is: At what age or school grade should I start working at home with him to improve his writing and reading skills in Spanish?”

Dear Silvia,

You have discovered on your own what our study of 1000 children in Miami revealed. It is easier to learn to read in Spanish than English.In our study, children who learned to read in Spanish and English at the same time read quicker and better than those taught in English only. I have heard people insisting that you should not start a child reading in two languages at the same time, but we found that it worked very well.

You are right that it is very important for your son to go beyond speaking in Spanish. Just because people can speak, doesn’t mean they can write in it.His knowledge of the language will be so much deeper, if he can read it and write it, too.

I would just caution you to make sure your Spanish sessions are enjoyable for the boy and that he doesn’t see them as a chore.You want him to have only positive feelings about your language. Make sure he feels he’s getting special attention from you—and he doesn’t feel he’s missing out on something else to do Spanish.

We invite you to click on the Ask an Expert tab in the navigation menu to meet the panel, to learn more about their area of expertise and to send us your question.

Have any tips to share on how and when to teach your child to read in a second language? We´d love to read them!

Spanish Program – Courtesy of Concordia Language Villages

I hadn’t really given language summer camps much thought because I believed Vanessa was too young. I mean, she is still too young for actual going-away type camps, but apparently not for just day summer camps. And I have to tell you, the more I’ve researched this topic, the more fascinated I’ve become.

In case you don’t know, in general, most language summer camps are run the same way a regular summer camp would be – a bunch of different activities both in and outdoors so your kids don’t get bored during the long, lazy summer months – except that everything is done in a language other than English. In other words, not only will the kids be entertained, but they will also be immersed in the target language you’re trying to teach them.

I was actually surprised with the amount of options out there and although they are not cheap, some of the programs offer financial assistance in the form of scholarships – particularly the ones where your kids get to sleep over. But maybe I should start by explaining the differences.

A day summer camp is exactly what the name implies. Your child attends camp daily for however many weeks you’re interested in (or you can afford.) Obviously, the longer your child attends, the better the end result. As far as I understand, the daily curriculum is taught in the target language, which depending on the program you choose, can range from Spanish to Arabic. Normally, age requirements are a bit more lax in this type of setting. At the one I’ve been looking into for Vanessa – the Denver Montclair International School – for example, they accept kids as young as three. By the way, their Spanish program is so popular, it’s pretty much sold out for the entire summer!

“Day camps work really well for really young kids,” says Carl-Martin Nelson, the director of communications at Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota. “We find that half the time it’s the parents who are not ready for regular summer camps and the other half it’s the children”

Concordia Language Villages offers both options – day and regular summer camps – and it’s the kind of place that I would love for Vanessa to be able to attend when she gets older. They have been around for almost 50 years, their curriculum is truly impressive and they firmly believe in immersion as the best method to learn a language.

“We communicate with the children almost exclusively in the target language,” Nelson explains. “There is very little translation going on.”

Children must be 7 years old to be able to attend one of their summer camps in any of the 15 different languages they offer. Each camp can last anywhere from one to four weeks. This means your child is actually away from home for that period of time, just like the thousands of other summer camps that abound in this country, except that they spend their time immersed in the target language.

So how much can your child actually learn in one or two weeks? The truth is probably not much – although you’d be surprised. For most of you; however, who are already raising bilingual children, it can be a great source of reinforcement – especially when kids get to the age that they start refusing to speak in the target language, as we discussed in this recent post.

“We not only teach kids the language, we improve their attitude about learning the language,” says Nelson. “Our primary goal, our job, is to make it the coolest thing in the world to speak the target language.”

Nelson also brought up the fact that this type of program is perfect for families using the OPOL method because it helps to reinforce the language that the child may only get from one of the parents in a completely fun and different way. The same goes for those children who already attend dual language schools. In other words, it’s a great way for them to brush up on their language skills in a non-school setting before the new school year because the emphasis is not only on the physical aspect, but also on the academic one.

“Our experience has been that these kids go back to the classroom excited and enthused about the language they’re learning,” Nelson says.

Sounds like a win-win situation, right?

Before I sign-off, I wanted to share with you that even though we – all of you and I – have gone back and forth (in this post) about whether or not it’d be a good idea for me to send Vanessa to a dual language program in a language other than Spanish, I’m seriously thinking about sending her to the French summer program offered by the Denver school I mentioned above. I just kind of want to see if she’ll pick up some of it if she’s immersed in it during a whole week. I feel like it’d be easier for me to continue once she has somewhat of a stronger base which I’ve failed miserably at providing. I guess I’ll keep you all posted…

Since I can’t include all the different language summer camps available out there, I suggest you check out this website and hopefully you can find something around your area that might work for you and your kids.

And, if you know of any language summer camps that you’d like to recommend or you’ve actually sent your kids to one in the past, we’d love to hear from you!  Leave a comment below and/or start a new topic in the forums.

Photo by otama

From conception, both Ana and I knew we wanted SpanglishBaby to become a place where you could come and ask your questions about this fascinating challenge of raising bilingual children. We hoped to be able to do that in an array of ways: posts with valuable and educational information; links to other resourceful sites about bi/multilingualism; our own daily experiences bringing up two bilingual toddlers; and of course, because we don’t have all the answers, advice directly from the mouth of the experts themselves!

That’s why we welcome all your questions–particularly specific ones about the actual process, issues you might be facing right now and wished you could get a direct answer. So, pretty please send your questions our way. We will send them to one of the experts that have so graciously accepted to be a part of SpanglishBaby. Once a week, we will post one question followed by our expert’s answer so that everyone can share the knowledge.

So without further ado, let me introduce our first expert. Her name is Simona Montanari and she is Assistant Professor of Child and Family Studies at California State University in Los Angeles. She is the department’s expert in early multilingual development and has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern California. Simona is Italian and she’s also a mommy to trilingual daughters aged 3 and 4 1/2. In addition, she conducts workshop titled: “How to Raise a Bilingual Child” in the LA area. Bienvenida, Simona. We’re very happy you are a part of the SpanglishBaby family.

And, now for our first question:

I feel like I’m excluding him…

Our first question comes from Mayra Rocha, mom to a 2-year-old boy, who she’s trying to raise bilingual using the OPOL method (one parent-one language) in Miami Beach, Florida. “I speak Spanish, my husband only speaks English and I’m doing my best to speak only in Spanish to my son.  The problem is I feel awkward doing it at home when my husband is around because I don’t want him to feel left out. He hasn’t said anything and since my son is just learning how to speak, I’m mostly worried about later on. How do I handle this?”

Dear Mayra, Think about the amazing gift that you are giving your child when speaking Spanish to him! He will be bilingual (and perhaps bi-literate) as an adult. His bilingualism will open a world of opportunities for him: he will be more likely to do well in school;  will have a better understanding of where you and his family members come from; and he will develop more sensitivity to/tolerance for other cultures. In addition, because of his ability to use two languages, he will be highly valued in the job market. So, does it matter that your husband doesn’t understand everything you’re telling your child? Is it worth it to forgo the endless possibilities of a bilingual upbringing for your child just because your husband doesn’t understand when you’re telling him to put his socks on or turn the TV off? I think your husband will be happy to sacrifice understanding everything that is said between you and your child once he sees that becoming bilingual is in your child’s best interest.

In addition, consider that it takes kids at least three years to become fluent in a language. If you consistently speak Spanish to your child every day around your husband and he’s sufficiently motivated to learn it, he can easily pick up quite a bit of it in three years. I have met many fathers (including my own husband!) who did not speak their wife’s language before their children were born, but learned a great deal of it by overhearing conversations between their wife and their children. Some, like my husband, were so motivated that even took classes in that language and became decently proficient in it. Now, fathers will never end up as bilingual as their children. But, initially, they will be learning the language faster than their children and will be able to make a lot of progress in a just a few years.

So, my advice is, explain to your husband what is at stake and what is likely to happen to both him and his child if you keep speaking Spanish around them. I am sure he will agree that bilingualism is worth the efforts  and sacrifices.

Simona Montanari, Ph.D., is located in the Los Angeles area. For more information or to schedule a phone/in person consultation contact her at smontan2@calstatela.edu.

Do you have a question for our experts? Remember no question is too big or too simple. So, to send us your question, please click here or leave a comment below. Thank you!