How We Are Teaching Jackie to Be Bilingual
How We Are Teaching Jackie to Be Bilingual | Post Details
Jackie's PJs: Hanna Andersson // My PJs: Lates By Kate
How We Are Teaching Jackie to Be Bilingual | Teaching Jackie Spanish
Last week, I talked about how we learned to help Jackie learn how to talk. We loved the Talk The Talk Plus Course and Jackie's speech has exploded since we started it.
One of the things I briefly mentioned in that we are teaching Jackie to be bilingual. the Husband is fluent in Spanish and I wanted Jackie to have exposure to more than one language growing up. There are studies that show that children who grow up just exposed to more than one language will have an easier time learning more languages later in life. So today I wanted to share what we have been doing to teach Jackie Spanish and how it's been going!
How We Are Teaching Jackie to Be Bilingual | Raising a Bilingual Child
First, I learned a few things about raising a bilingual child. Catalina Burton, writer of Raising Bilingual Children, talked a few months ago about how bilingual children tend to start talking later. When we were working with Jackie on starting to talk, knowing this was huge for me. It makes sense. If the child is processing two languages, they are going to take longer to start speaking because there is more to process. Also, children who are learning spanish, tend to also talk later because the phonems in Spanish tend to be longer.
How We Are Teaching Jackie to Be Bilingual | What We Have Been Doing
So, what have we been doing to teach Jackie Spanish? First, and most importantly, speaking Spanish to her. Like I said, The Husband is fluent in Spanish. He even uses it at work. So he talks to Jackie in Spanish about 50% of the time. It's hard to remember to do it all the time but we are working on it. I took 5 years of Spanish in school, so I do understand a lot. I wish I spoke it better but I am working on it with Jackie!
The next thing we do is read to Jackie in Spanish. There are so many great kids books out there in Spanish and we are always looking to expand our collection. Some of Jackie's favorite books are actually in Spanish!
The last thing we do is have Jackie watch Spanish language shows and movies in Spanish. El Reino Infantil is a YouTube Channel with over 10 million subscribers and has so many shows to pick from. Jackie has been watching their Granja de Zenon series since she was tiny and has always loved it. We will also switch movies over to Spanish when possible and when it makes sense. Some movies and tv shows translate better than others!
How We Are Teaching Jackie to Be Bilingual | Shop
I have rounded up some of our favorite books, movies and other items below that we have used while teaching Jackie to be bilingual.