Blog | Kids can learn Spanish

Socialize them. Kids need to know that Spanish is important. It’s good for them to feel connected to it in as many ways as possible. This is done by showing them that it is an effective tool for them to communicate with others. If you don’t have friends who speak Spanish nearby, then playgroups are an excellent way to do this.

Make your goal public. Tell people you want to teach your child Spanish early. Don’t be afraid! oftentimes parents keep things like this to themselves for two reasons: 1) they don’t want to stick out as trying to be “super parents” 2) Parents are afraid others will think that the child is being harmed by not focusing on their native language as much as possible. It’s true that you can run into these scenarios. However, the VAST majority people are helpful and in the end letting others know is a key to finding other parents who share your goals. You’ll quickly find that the concerns stated only existed in one place, your head.

Do a little every day. Just because the best time to learn is when the child is young doesn’t mean they have to learn it all in one afternoon. Regular bits of exposure are much better than a one-time, sit down “Spanish” class that is only held once a week.

Use games. Lay flash cards out around the house that label items such as the clock, Television, or Sink. Then play a game to pick up all of the cards. Playing games like this involves using all of their senses, and kids love it.

Use Help. Look for Spanish books, CDs, Videos. All these will help your child feel connected to the language. If you’re not sure how to pronounce certain words CDs and DVDs can be a great asset since they will pronounce the word correctly for you. Check out the Reading Amigo set for an easy to use system, it will teach your child to read and speak Spanish: <a href=”http://www.readingamigo.com/sales/index.html”>Reading Amigo</a>

Don’t sacrifice your life. Kids are like sponges and they will pick up almost anything. Oftentimes, they won’t let you know that they’re actually understanding what you’re saying. Be cool! Relax! The point is to help your child, not rip all your hair out. Remember do a little everyday. Once you’ve got a small foundation of words in place it becomes really simple to reinforce.

Keep track. If your child is saying new words or understanding new words, keep a log. Since the beginning to teach your child Spanish can be a bit challenging, keeping a diary will oftentimes help parents get over the initial hump. Knowing where you came from will keep you on task and motivated.

Have fun. If you and your child are not having fun, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! make sure to take into account your child’s interest when coming up with ways to keep you child connected to Spanish. If he likes a certain book in English, why not find it in Spanish? Children’s songs can be very effective in multiple languages. Videos can also grab and hold their attention.

As a big time techie and an even bigger early learning advocate, I often find myself in a bit of a “situation” (not the Jersey Shore kind and why do my entries keep referring back to that garbage show?). I love for my boy to play with the Ipad. He loves to watch the Reading Amigo videos on there and play with the Words App. He also loves the Magic School Bus (Oceans) app. However, there are times when he’d like to go poking around in areas he doesn’t have any business in. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but certain times (like in the car) you want to be able to keep them in a particular application and make sure they don’t exit out of it.

As you may have heard mentioned a time or two, “There’s an app for that”. The app will effectively allow you to turn off the home button. So once you’re in the desired app you can configure a button combination like “volume up AND down at the same time” which will turn off functions such as the home button, that way the kids can navigate around in the desired app but not exit out of it. There’s also functionality that allows you to turn off the touch features of the screen so that if the child is watching a video they won’t pause it, fast-forward, re-wind, mess with the volume, etc.

The developer of the app developed it specifically for use by his daughter Hanna. Apparently, he had the same problem that most of us parents have with the Ipad. The fact that it’s so easy to navigate is both a good thing a bad thing and this app can help limit some of the bad. I am in no way associated to the developer, I am simply a parent that is also an Iphone/Ipad nut who found something that has been very valuable to me and I want to pass that on.

Unfortunately this particular app requires “Jailbreaking” your device. I don’t intend to encourage anyone to void their warranty by jailbreaking their Ipad. However, more information is good, right? This app is only available through the Cydia App store. In other words, Apple doesn’t technically allow this type of application into the App store because they don’t want programmers being able to control core functions of the device such as whether your HOME button works. I get it, it makes sense, but in this case it’s really annoying to me and a lot of other parents that the child exits the app every 15 seconds, whether intentionally or not. So in this case, the bending of the rules (it is NOT illegal) is for the greater good.The app is free and so is the jailbreak software. If you’re worried about having to bring the Ipad in for service at some point in the future and being told that your warranty is no-good, keep in mind that you can always restore you software back to factory software by simply plugging into ITunes and selecting “restore”, that way you can bring it in to the store. I can say that I’ve had multiple Jailbroken Ipad’s and Iphone’s for years with absolutely 0 problems.I don’t intend to give you a full write-up on how to jailbreak your Ipad since I feel that would be going a bit too far. Besides, how you jailbreak varies based on your device and the software that you’re running. As far as I know, the Ipad 2 is not jailbreakable and neither is the Iphone 5. If you have an older device (the ones that are jailbreakable) then it’s probably out of warranty anyway, so the warranty concern would likely not be an issue. To re-iterate, I do not condone or support such activity and you are at your own risk in doing this.

I get a house visit from the Electric company, he’s going to be checking out my house as to why our electric bill is so high. I’d recently received a letter in the mail stating that my house was spending more than the average household in my area, so I decided to have them come out and do an audit on my house to see if there were any areas for improvement. As I’m talking to the auditor he tells me that he’s having a baby soon, so I immediately go into the evils of Johnson & Johnson and Apple Juice. Those are my classic two subjects. I begin to tell him about the research that’s been done on quaternium-15, a chemical that releases the preservative formaldehyde and how Johnson & Johnson has just now agreed to start phasing it out of their baby products. Then I jump into the poisons found in Apple juice and my recently acquired love of “juicing” (not the kind seen on Jersey Shore). After some conversation, I can tell he’s really interested in this topic as he sits down on the sofa and starts sharing some of his own concerns. Great conversations, he’s thankful for the information I gave him and gives me some good tips on electricity. Then, my son wakes up from his nap and starts talking to Mr. Electricity (we’ll conceal his name) in English and then switches to Spanish when speaking to me. Mr. Electricity is very impressed with my son’s ability to switch so smoothly in between them and makes a comment to that effect. So he starts asking me some questions about how I’ve done this and I start sharing about our practices, Reading Amigo, and the cognitive benefits of learning a new language at an early age (while being exposed to the native language). After some conversation he tells me that this is great for me, but he doesn’t believe in “pushing” a child. He goes on to talk about how children should play and enjoy their childhood. He doesn’t believe in all this early education/Tiger mom stuff (I took a bit of offense to being put on the same level as Tiger mom but I let it slide in order to try to stay on topic). He believes we are robbing our children of their childhood and that they’ll have plenty of time to be “weighed down” by learning to read and bilingualism later in their life. I assured him that this was not the first time I’d heard his argument. And then I stated that I AGREED. He couldn’t believe it. The sense of accomplishment in his face was palpable. Then, I went on to clarify my position. I agree that you shouldn’t weigh down children with this obligation. But, in my experience I’ve never seen children in other countries such as Canada walking around looking down and sad because they spoke two languages and could read multiple languages. Then I asked him, how could he explain my son’s “apparent” happiness. To which he said, “Your son doesn’t know any better”. I replied, “Ok, and neither do millions of children around the world as 53% of the world’s population is bilingual.” Then I told him “you see, when it’s taught by the child’s parent, it really ISN’T punishment and it doesn’t “weigh them down”. I asked Mr. Electricity, “Would you believe he looks forward to watching his programs at home, playing bilingual games, and practicing our flash cards?” He replied, “Yes, I can believe that”. I then went on to explain how much my son loves it and the fact that I know my son better than a teacher so I have an inherent advantage in teaching my son. I explained how I actually feel sorry for teachers who have to deal with kids that haven’t been exposed to learning concepts early in their life. These teachers are responsible for teaching a child new concepts at the time same time the child is getting acquainted with schedules, friends, bullies, packed lunches and everything else that is involved in a child’s educational experience. “Wouldn’t it be nice if you could develop a child’s love for learning early on? So that when the child arrives for his first day of school, he’s already acclimated with learning and has a positive perception of learning? Rather than having learning be associated with discipline, quietness, time-out corners and the likes? Exactly!” After this he agreed, and went on to say that he will be talking to his wife about early learning. I told him that’s exactly my goal, for people to start talking about early learning. Not everyone can dedicate a ton of time to educating their child early, I also don’t believe everyone is going to want to teach their child Spanish (there ARE other languages out there ) But when you do find some time you can squeeze in. Early learning will definitely pay off. By the way, my house is actually below average for my neighborhood, the numbers I received in the mail were incorrect.

Many opponents to Educational Children’s Television believe that the dangers of TV come from its ability be a “passive” medium. That is to say that children and adults will watch it regardlessof its content. That because of its quick editing cuts, loud scenes, multiple colors, funny noises, zooming in/out we will watch (like zombies) regardless of the actual content. With pre-schoolers, nothing could be further from the truth. As researchers have known for a long time, children watch because they understand and turn away when they don’t understand. Elizabeth Lorch and Daniel Anderson of the University of Massachusetts performed this research over 30 years ago. They wanted to find out what made children watch. Using a show like Sesame Street they set out to find out why kids paid attention to certain scenes. They were astonished to find that children watched not just because of the loud noises and bright colors. But, they watched because they understood the contents of the show. To test their theory they took an episode of Sesame Street and shuffled around key scenes of the episode so that they were out of sequence. What they quickly found was that children tuned out. In other words, children watched because they could make sense of the content. When parents want to teach children a foreign language such as Spanish, it important that the child is watching age appropriate programs. It is important to find content that is developed specially for children of the specific age group. Many parents complain that children tune out when watching certain programs. Keeping this research in mind, it is important to keep in mind that children can be overwhelmed by the dialogue used in certain programs so that their interest is lost. Programs such as Reading Amigo were developed in a manner that places importance on the actual content of the program, said content is delivered in a clear manner that is fun and interesting at the same time. In an upcoming blog entry, we will discuss whether children actually understand and learn from what they are watching.

Sources: Markle Foundation essays on information policy

The above sentence sounds insane doesn’t it? We don’t need to teach our babies to hear. They’ve been able to hear spoken language since before we knew what they looked like (except for those 3d sonograms which I don’t agree with). Teaching children to to hear isn’t necessary because hearing is a function of the brain. Almost as long as they’ve been able to hear they’ve been able to listen. They’ve been wanting to make sense of the world around them and the language that is being spoken to them. Regardless of which of the planet’s 6,900 languages they’ve been listening to. Hearing is not a subject that we teach in school such as science or other subjects. Teaching a child to hear doesn’t involve any pressure on that child, by the same token teaching a child to read doesn’t involve any stress. We’ve heard the argument that teaching your child through Spanish DVDs, fun books, colorful flashcards and games is stressful for a baby and should not happen. In reality learning to read in a formal setting without the love of your parents, in a strict environment where no talking is to take place, where you are not allowed to mix playing with learning IS a stressful environment. Yet, that is the environment that most of us learned to read in. Programs such as Reading Amigo allow parents to move that learning into the family room where the child can be loved, cared for, and played with by the best teacher of them all, their parent.