Hola y Hello

Whenever I hear about methods to raise bilingual kids, there are usually two popular options. The first is the One Parent, One Language  method. As its name suggests, this method requires each parent to speak exclusively in his/her native language to the child. This is a common method among parents with different native languages. Another method is Minority Language at Home . For this method the parents commit to using the minority language within the home and the majority language when outside the home. Before my husband and I had kids, I always read about how important it was to choose a method and stick to it. That seemed logically and straight-forward ... until I had kids. Then I realized how difficult it was to be consistent in our method. When our first son was born we were living in Guatemala. I mostly spoke English to him, and my husband spoke Spanish (in other words, the One Parent, One Language method). This worked pretty well until we moved to the United States. S...

Growing up, our family played a lot of games. I remember many holidays spent around the dining room table with a board game or card game sprawled out in the middle. When I first met my husband, I introduced him to the world of games like Skip-bo, Uno, and Spoons. It was a bit of a learning curve for him, I think, but he has come to appreciate them. It helps that he is great at embracing the friendly competition and spoiling my brothers' strategies as we play. Since I grew up playing games it was natural for me to be drawn towards teaching our children to play games too. For a while we had a good routine going where Micah, Mardo, and I would play a game together every night after Isaiah went to bed. It was a nice way to wind down from the day and spend time connecting with one another. Plus it is the perfect way to slip some extra Spanish conversation and vocabulary into the day too. For example, we play things like Memory (Memoria) or Zingo to reinforce vocabulary. We ...

1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 ,  8 I love reading, and I hope to instill this same love for books into my kids too. Some of my favorite moments as a mom are when my little ones bring me a book and climb into my lap to hear me read it to them. Our book collection is growing steadly over the years, and I try to be very intentional about having books in both English and Spanish. That said, I also rely on checking out books from the library to supplement the ones we have at home. I thought I would share a round-up of some fun board books we've enjoyed reading in the past. 1: This book has such cute illustrations, and Micah loves to point to the pictures and hear me say the words in English and Spanish. I love to give him lots of kisses as we read! 2: This little book has flaps to find out how different animals move. 3: This one is a favorite around our house, and I've read it so many times I now have it memorized! 4: This was one of Micah...

In our family, we say "Hola" and "Hello." In fact, you can often hear my 15 month old son switching back and forth between them repeatedly as he tries to greet people we pass around town. Unlike his four year old brother, who is mastering the art of code switching in conversations. My husband grew up speaking Spanish. I grew up speaking English. And now our kids will grow up speaking both, or at least that's the hope. When we got married, a Mexican-Guatemalan guy and a Minnesotan girl, we knew it implied a lot of things, one of which being that we would raise bilingual kids. This proves much easier to type out than it is in reality. Which brings me to this blog. I am passionate about raising our boys (and any future little ones) to be bilingual, and like most things one is passionate about, I could talk about topics like bilingualism, multiculturalism, TCKs, cross-cultural relationships, etc. to no end. I love reading about these things, discussing them, s...