I am part of the Windows Champions Program. As a Windows Champion on behalf of SpanglishBaby, I am loaned a laptop, and, on occasion, Microsoft products such as software to assist me in developing content for my blog posts. All opinions are my own.

Do you send out Christmas cards? This season is so busy that if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, you’re running out of time to get them to the post office and sent so that they arrive before the holiday. If you’re sending a card from the U.S. to anywhere in Latin America, you’re probably already too late. (Honestly, I don’t even attempt it anymore. I sent handmade cards to family in El Salvador around 2008 and they still haven’t arrived! Who knows what happened to them.)

One solution to consider is sending your holiday greeting online. The Hallmark “Go Cards” app is a free download from the Windows 8 app store, and they even have a few cards in Spanish.

Once you download the app, simply open it and choose “Winter Holidays.” Select a card, personalize it, and send! All the cards are $3.49, about the average cost of a printed card, but these are customizable so that you can write your message in whichever language your recipient might prefer and include a photo of the niños, too!

¡Feliz Navidad!

Click to download and print!

I am part of the Windows Champions Program. As a Windows Champion, I am loaned a laptop, and, on occasion, Microsoft products such as software to assist me in developing content for my blog posts. All opinions are my own.

This year, as a Windows Champion Ambassador on behalf of SpanglishBaby, I will be exploring all this new platform has to offer you, with a focus on information, tips, and apps for bilingual families.

Today we’re going to have a little fun and show you how to create printables for your kids. Your printables can be in Spanish or bilingual and there are endless ways to be creative with this. A few ideas for things you could make:

• lunchbox notes
• bookplates or bookmarks
• labels
• flashcards
• word games
• fortunes in Spanish for homemade fortune cookies
• party banners
• invitations

To get started, simply open Word 2013 on your Windows 8 computer, choose “Blank document,” and click the three little dots in the upper right of your screen if the tool bar isn’t visible.

From this point you’re only limited by your imagination. Play around with fonts, shapes and colors.

A few tips:

To create a shape go to Insert > Shapes, and then use your mouse to drag and draw the shape on the screen. You can right click to format the shape and add effects like borders and textures.

Here are some bookmarks we created for you and your niños in Microsoft Word. Click here to download and print the bookmarks! (We recommend printing on card stock so they’re sturdy.)

Have fun and happy creating!

Stay tuned for my next post! If you have any specific topic regarding Windows 8 that you’d like more information about, please feel free to suggest it in comments below!

I am part of the Windows Champions Program. As a Windows Champion, I am loaned a laptop, and, on occasion, Microsoft products such as software to assist me in developing content for my blog posts. All opinions are my own.

This year, as a Windows Champion Ambassador on behalf of SpanglishBaby, I will be exploring all this new platform has to offer you, with a focus on information, tips, and apps for bilingual families.

Today I want to tell you about the YouthSpark Summer Camps at Microsoft retail stores. There are five different classes to choose from and they’re all completely free as part of Microsoft’s YouthSpark commitment “to provide 300 million youth around the world with better access to technology and educational opportunities in order to set them up for future success.”

Some of the things your child could learn at a YouthSpark Camp include:

· Digital Movie Madness: Go from script to screen – and all the movie-making steps in between.

· Storyteller Studio: Write short stories, create games, and design slideshows and custom creations.

· Digital Art Smarts: Inspire artistic vision and creation through graphic design and photography.

· Game Masters: Mastermind a gaming world as the programmer, designer and producer.

· Game App: Plan, Create, design and publish game apps like a pro.

Imagine if our children reach adulthood as tech smart bilinguals! There’s no stopping them! If you’re ready to register for classes or check out the schedule of your local Microsoft Store, click HERE.

Stay tuned for my next post! If you have any specific topic regarding Windows 8 that you’d like more information about, please feel free to suggest it in comments below!

This year, as a Windows Champion Ambassador on behalf of SpanglishBaby, I will be exploring all this new platform has to offer you, with a focus on information, tips, and apps for bilingual families.

For this first post, let me just give you a general idea of what Windows 8 is and highlight a couple language apps my family has enjoyed so far.

Windows 8 is the new version of the Microsoft Windows operating system, and as a lifetime Windows user, I can tell you it is very different from any other previous version. For one thing, the familiar desktop, while available, is not your start screen, and speaking of “start”, that button is nowhere to be found. Windows 8 is optimized for touchscreen devices, (such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 Windows 8 convertible Ultrabook I’m using.)

Here’s a quick video to show you what Windows 8 is like, because really, it’s more fun to see it in action than to simply describe it.

The first day I was a little frustrated trying to get the hang of things, although my 11 year old seemed to jump right in and figure things out intuitively. I am less than one month into using Windows 8 and so far, while I prefer my old Desktop with Windows 7 on a day-to-day basis for working, the Windows 8 computer is much more fun and as you can see, very visually appealing. The kids are drawn to the touchscreen como una polilla a una llama! (Like a moth to a flame.)

The standout feature of Windows 8, besides its optimization for touchscreens, are the apps available in the Microsoft Apps Store. You can browse apps by category, price, etc. There are plenty of free apps, (all of which install with a single click), and those that are paid often come with a free trial and are only a couple dollars. My only “complaint” is that the Spanish-language learning apps tend to use Spain Spanish so if your children are learning Latin American Spanish, a word here and there may be different than the one you’ve taught them. Here are five apps we recommend.

Five Windows 8 Apps For Bilingual Learning

• Babbel – 3000 vocabulary words with images, pronunciation and example sentences in Spanish. This is completely free with registration. This is recommended for ages 12+ but I think children as young as 10 could play on their own, and even younger with assistance.

• Tablee – This game teaches English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The free version covers only colors. The full version costs $1.99 and covers farm animals, shapes, and fruits and vegetables in addition to colors. Recommended for ages 3-6.

• VocabulandHD – A simple vocabulary app to learn Spanish or English. Free and for ages 3+

• Toddler Flashcards 1.1 – A simple but effective flashcard game to learn vocabulary in English, Spanish, or French. Free trial is very limited. Full version is $2.49. For ages 3+

• Merlion Words – This app is totally free and really amazing. Available for Chinese, English, French, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. I like that you can trace the letters/characters on the screen. (My kids have even played it a few times in Chinese. Who knows, maybe they’ll be trilingual!) Ages 3+

Stay tuned for my next post where I’ll cover some awesome apps which aren’t intended for bilingual learning but can still be used that way.

Disclosure: I am part of the Windows Champions Program. As a Windows Champion, I am loaned a laptop, and, on occasion, Microsoft products such as software to assist me in developing content for my blog posts. All opinions are my own.

Last week was a major whirlwind as I traveled with my mom and my girl to Florida to attend two different conferences: Disney Social Media Moms Celebration in Orlando and Mom 2.0 Summit in Key Biscayne. I rarely ever take my family to conferences, but this seemed like a great opportunity for Camila to bond and reconnect with her abuelita, and it was just logistically the best way to go.

Why do I even attend these conferences, you may ask? Well, the truth is that one of my biggest blogging secrets is attending conferences. The investment made in them really comes back to SpanglishBaby and this huge familia in the way of opportunities, blogging lessons to continually grow and hone our skills and connecting with other like-minded bloggers.

These two conferences in particular took it to another level and inspired me to think of the ways I’m using—or wasting!—my time; how I’m taking care of myself as a caregiver and self-motivated entrepreneur; how we’re giving back to our community and advocating for social change; and how our children are learning from who we are and how we act.

It’s the last phrase above that really hit home for me and I realized a lot of these messages apply directly to parents raising bilingual kids and that extra layer of dutifulness that applies to our parenting styles.

Armed with my Window’s Live Suite of products on my Lenovo IdeaPad U300 (Giveaway Alert Here!!), I sat down at the opening keynote of the Mom 2.0 Summit and captured and organized on OneNote the best quotes from two exceptional speakers: Brené Brown—a research expert on shame and vulnerability– and Jess Weiner—an expert on girl’s body image.

Check out their quotes below and how I interpret them through our lens of bilingual parenting.

Brené Brown

Are you your child’s worse critic? When she walks into a room do you light up when you see her, or do you criticize?

Have you noticed if you spend more time praising your child for speaking in Spanish (or the minority language of choice) or criticizing her? This is an important reflection to make because if your child is feeling constantly nagged and criticized by you in a desperate urge to get him to respond, then what we’re doing is creating a spirit of rebellion in him. Language immersion should be fun, natural, playful and full of praise.

We can not give our children what we don’t have.

Please do not interpret this to mean that if you don’t speak Spanish you can’t teach your child. The way I interpret it is that if we don’t have a passion, urge, DESIRE for our children to learn, then they won’t feel it either. And, one of the keys for teaching a child a language is that they must have a perceived need for it. They must want it and understand the why of their want. For example, when my girl is speaking way too much English at home, I remind her that it’s a shame she’s not speaking Spanish because her adored prima won’t understand her. Gets her every time.

Who we are is a much more accurate predictor to how our kids will turn out.

Do you love and absorb cultures and languages? Maybe you’re not fluent in Spanish, but you could learn alongside your child and make it something special between the two of you?

Jess Weiner

Matching intentions with action is where real change comes.

It’s not enough to want and have the best intentions to raise a bilingual child, you must have a clear and concise plan of action and you must be consistent with it. There’s no way around this one. You must be active every single day in making sure your child gets the right exposure to the language. You do this by buying bilingual/Spanish books, joining or starting bilingual playgroups, finding immersion schools, etc. Your actions may also involve immersion travel, actively seeking out cultural events in your city, making sure your child has a Spanish speaking family member or caregiver she connects to, and so much more.

Change is slow and never looks like a reality show reveal.

Oh, this is so true for bilingual children and we haven’t talked about this enough! Many parents give up speaking to their kids in the minority language at home because their kids start responding to them in English. Don’t do that! It’s only a phase and it totally depends on the language input she’s had so far. But you must remain the consistent source of Spanish and they will eventually come around.

Women are the biggest keepers of our own happiness and disappointments.

Simple. Want your child to be bilingual? It’s totally up to you and the decisions you make. We wholeheartedly believe bilingualism is the biggest gift you can give your child.

I did it because the vision was bigger than my fear.

Don’t believe all the myths surrounding bilingualism which are fueled by ignorance, social injustice and more fear. Remain strong to your vision of raising a healthy, educated, well-rounded bilingual child and your payoff will be a lifetime gift for your child.

My passion is to be a storyteller for social change.

This one hit me personally. The SpanglishBaby familia shares all these stories with you every week because we believe in this movement of social change towards a bilingual nation where every child’s voice will be heard, respected and adored.

Thanks to the Windows Team for making these insights possible through their belief in what we do and sponsoring me to attend the Mom 2.0 Summit. Not only did this sponsorship allow me to listen to amazing and inspiring women and learn from them, but also to spend time with the two women that inspire me the most in life: mi mamá y mi hija.

And speaking of Windows, have you entered to win a Lenovo IdeaPad U300 courtesy of Windows? It ends this Sunday, so enter here now.

{All images courtesy of Michael Cummings of dreaminpictures.com}