Believe it or not amigas/friends…they are here!  It’s official when you start shopping at the ‘DoorBuster Specials’ and are greeted by Christmas music in JC Penney Stores!  I felt so very American, so very ahead-of-the-game and so weird to be out shopping early this morning (I have never given myself this much of a jump start on the Holidays since I was single)!!!

Nonetheless, here we are, with Thanksgiving only 6, six, seis days away.  Hold onto your many hats that you wear or they will blow away at lightning speed based on how quickly the Holidays came upon us and now 2007 will whisk itself out of sight before we know it.

So…………..instead of groaning about cooking and lamenting about cleaning up…………..let’s make it a time to bring in some second language fun with your little children.  You are saying, “Beth, how?  I don’t even speak but a few words of high school Spanish?”  It can be painless, easy and you might even find yourself saying the “F_ _” word (FUN!!!) after is all said and done!

Below are some creative ways to weave Spanish and English together in the kitchen as well as at the table - assisting young ones with the acquisition of a second language:

• Using an inexpensive bilingual children’s dictionary (Usborne) or free language cards off our own Boca Beth web site’s resource area, begin to introduce some fruits or vegetables names in both Spanish and English.  Not sure of your pronunciation?  Both resources provide excellent pronunciation guides!
• As mealtime begins encourage the children to use por favor (please) and gracias (thank you) and de nada (you’re welcome) at every opportune time for those three manner words.  Today’s society needs to go back to the basics with manner words, and experts agree it’s just as easy for a young child to learn two words for the same concept as it is to learn only one.  The younger the better it has been proven!
• Go around the table during mealtime asking the common ¿Cómo estás? question, encouraging each family member to reply with an appropriate response based on their feelings at the moment.  (Bien/fine, fabuloso/fabulous, magnífico/magnificent, or simply no bien/not fine) . . .  most of these responses are heard often throughout our communities, schools, workplace or tv so that previous language lessons are not needed.
• Have each family member addressed by their title within the family (mamá or madre if formal, papá or padre if formal, hermana/sister, hermano/brother, bebé/baby, abuela/grandma, abuelo/grandpa, tia/aunt, tio/uncle and so on).  Again, with more than 45 million people in our country alone having Spanish as their native language, it’s easy to come across these family member terms and their correct pronunciation.  If not, we have many of these words, their meanings and their pronunciation guides on our web site at all times in our free resource area.

As that old  saying goes, “Try it, you’ll like it!!!”  And Happy Thanksgiving to You and Yours!

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea feliz educando!

Boca Beth

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Teacher Mom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.