I am impressed with the range of animals included, given that many animal-centered apps are limited to the most popular ones. I even learned a couple new words from watching my son play (like la nutria and la morsa) and refreshed my memory on some I always forget (el alce!).

The Animals in Spanish app includes four activities, all equally enticing. There is coloring and “scratching off” the animal for the youngest users, matching figures and forming the names of the animals for older toddlers/preschoolers.

With adorable graphics and music, simple and accurate Spanish narration, and straightforward directions, this app has all the ingredients necessary for the bilingual family stamp of approval.

Find Animals in Spanish iTunes

Available for iPhone and iPad

Recommended for toddlers and preschoolers

Price $2.99

It’s when I see toys like Fisher-Price’s Cruise and Groove Ballapalooza that I wished we were having another baby, or that my girl could regress a bit! Since I know neither one of those is happening, I can at least enjoy knowing that one of you will be able to enjoy this super fun developmental toy with your baby.

Fisher-Price really grasped that babies and toddlers love to groove and bounce to the rhythm as soon as pumping beats are played near them. Acknowledging this, they created some cool and fast-paced new rhythms that are sure to captivate your little one and get him moving to the groove.

The chiquitos will also soon realize they are rewarded with the tunes every time they drop one of the eight balls down the slide. The size is perfect for babies that are already sitting and will motivate them to pull up to stand and drop the ball from the top. Crawlers will have a blast cruising through the swinging door to get into even more “ballapalooza” action.

Even though my girl is not within the age range of the Cruise and Groove Ballapalooza, she loved testing it out and spent quite some time playing with it for this video.

Enjoy and then scroll down for your chance to win your very own Cruise and Groove Ballapalooza, courtesy of our amigos at Fisher-Price!

The Giveaway!

One lucky winner will take one Fisher-Price Cruise and Groove Ballapalooza! Just leave us a comment telling us about your kid’s favorite Fisher-Price toy and why they love it so much. Then, eneter the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here at the very busy familia, we are getting ready for baby número dos in February and of course a new car seat was on the list.  Recently the American Academy of Pediatrics put out a new policy which advises parents to keep their toddlers rear-facing in car seats until the age of two.

Did you know that? I sure didn’t! And I can guarantee many other parents out there are unaware of it as well.

When Graco and SpanglishBaby asked me to review the new SnugRide Click Connect car seat – the ONLY newborn to  2-year infant car seat on the market that provides rear-facing protection for babies from birth to 2- years-old (from 4 – 40 lbs) I happily agreed to knowing that other parents-to-be may be looking for guidance  in the car seat deparment.  I like to think of myself as a practical mamá and only purchase what is needed. The fact that the SnugRide actually saves you having to buy additional car seat accessories was a very good starting and selling point with me.

It used to be that we celebrated our children turning two by happily turning their car seat to face the front  – which of course was standard before the policy was issued. Clearly my baby hasn’t tried and tested the seat yet, but obviously as parents we purchase accessories before our babies are born and we like to be given the hard cold facts on safety and what is best for our childrens’ well-being.

The SnugRide Click Connect gives me peace of mind and I know the little one will be safe and snug in this car seat. Here are the features it offers:

• 8-position adjustable base grows with your child, providing the most legroom and a comfortable ride for up to two years.
• Simply Safe Adjust Harness System is safe and simple with one hand-harness and headrest adjustment.
• Click Connect technology provides a one step secure attachment to all Graco Click Connect strollers to create a travel system.

Good stuff, right?!  I certainly think so. And having never owned a Graco product before, my husband and I were both impressed by the high quality and sturdiness of the car seat.  And obviously it complies with the updated car seat regulations.

I strongly encourage you to visit their site to get the instructional and safety videos directly from the experts. As for us, we can’t wait to bring home our little girl in it this February!

You can buy the SnugRide at your local Babies R Us.

Become a fan on Facebook and/or follow on Graco on Twitter

The Giveaway!

Enter for your chance to win one Graco Snug Ride car seat! Just leave us a comment telling us what your favorite Graco Snug Ride feature is and make sure you do so by entering with the rafflecopter widget below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

{Photographs courtesy of María José Ovalle}

Disclosure: No monetary compensation was received for this review. SpanglishBaby received one product as a review item. All opinions are our own.

This summer has included a multitude of events with my busy toddler including the way she has made sense of the exposure to several languages. I have watched her transform what once sounded like babble to actual words and to no one’s surprise she includes Spanish, English, and French in her speech (though mostly Spanish). What amazes me the most is how she is incorporating English into her linguistic repertoire. I have witnessed (as many SB readers probably have) how much peers influence a child’s choice of language-use. Just today Sabrina said to a friend on our way out of the pool “let’s go!” I, of course, restated the same sentence in Spanish, “vámonos!” When she translated the utterance I felt reassured that she is going to become bilingual, at the very least.

Now that her vocabulary is expanding and she is trying to tie words together, I am faced with the challenge of teaching her how to string a sentence together. For example, the other day she said (while pointing to her lips with her finger), “aqui agua sho-cay [shortcake] papa.” She was asking her papa to please give her the strawberry shortcake water bottle that was lying next to him!

Part of my objective in writing this post is to ask you, the readers, for some tips about helping toddlers string words together to form complete sentences. I bought a book with 1,000 words in Spanish embedded in various contexts as a prompt to promote the use of complete sentences. I also plan on doing the Sticky Paper Collage for Spanish Conversation to encourage the use of complete sentences. I know there is an innate component to language learning, but I also believe in teaching the process like you would any other life activity (e.g., potty training). The main point for me as a mother and educator is to make the process fun, hence my solicitation of strategies from you the readers who may have more experience than me in raising a toddler.

In which ways have you encouraged your child(ren) to string words together to form a complete sentence? 

{Image via dickdotcom}

Newly pregnant with our first child, there were so many hopes and dreams I aspired to give my daughter: a secure sense of self, confidence in her womanhood and the ability to define her cultural identity in whichever way she chooses. Being of mixed races and cultures, I wondered who would win in the battle of personal identity definition…Alina or society at large. With that in mind, before Alina was born, I decided she would be bilingual in order to have ownership over her dual identity regardless of what the world thought she was.

And then, I became a real-life parent and learned that hopes and dreams were destined to remain aspirations if concrete goals and action plans were not established. For her first few months of life, Alina was exposed to very minimal Spanish. The chores of daily routines, the polarizing emotions of becoming a new mom, packing the husband’s lunch before he left for the day’s work, all took precedent over depositing a new language into my child’s ear. While I felt guilt over my lack of effort, I knew that it wasn’t for lack of love. Just lack of energy (and sleep)! Raising a bilingual child, in my case, requires support and resources that I needed to seek out deliberately. This was not going to be an easy task.

Determined to create any resemblance of bilingualism in my baby, I eventually stepped up the game. I read Spanish books to Alina. She loved (and still does) all her Little Pim videos. And while I am the only Spanish speaker in consistent contact with her, I made an effort to reinforce commonplace objects with their Spanish moniker. Throughout her first year of life, my Spanglish baby was able to identify most objects in both Spanish and English and respond to age appropriate commands. I was so proud!

Alina turned 2 years old in January, and like a true Cubana, she can talk up a storm! (I can’t be the only Cubana that loves to talk?!) I casually joke that being Latina is why Alina can speak in full sentences, give appropriate responses when spoken to and, in general, hold a conversation at such a young age, but the truth is, I am a very proud Mama. She has an amazing vocabulary and is incredibly smart.

Shortly after her second birthday, Alina and I were on the phone with my grandmother who was speaking to her in Spanish. I wanted for Mami to hear and connect with her great grandchild. To be as proud as I was. But when Mami presented a simple question to Alina (“¿qué estas haciendo?”), of which Alina always responds the same way (“naaaaathing”), there was only silence. Alina looked at me, confused. In that moment I realized that Alina did not understand the Spanish question she so readily responds to when asked in English. I had failed to evolve and expand her knowledge of Spanish alongside the development of her dominant language. Maybe it was because Alina’s language ability advanced so quickly that I found myself ill prepared? I took for granted that exposure to singular words would somehow translate to structural, moving sentences with verbs and adjectives. For as proud I once was for raising a Spanglish baby, I instantly felt like a failure to my sprouting Spanglish toddler.

But that is what is most amazing about language: there is no expiration date. You always have time to learn. You just get back up and keep climbing. And although my efforts in raising a Spanglish baby were great, they were mild compared to the commitment required to raise a Spanglish toddler and beyond. But, I am determined to make my bilingual aspirations a reality for Alina. Even if one sentence, one verb, one day at a time.

Today’s aspiration turned reality? “Yo como un manzana.”