I have found another fantastic site for parents and young kids learning Spanish and English. Reading is Fundamental (the largest US children’s literacy organization) has developed a segment of their website for children 0 to 5 called Leading to Reading in English and Semillitas de aprendizaje in Spanish. This section of the RIF website is designed for children to use on their own…but parents will want to join in too. As the mouse rolls over any text menu item a narrator speaks the text. So children do not have to be able to read to explore the many options.

The Babies section includes lullabies, nursery rhymes, stories, games and finger play. The Spanish pages have the story/rhyme or lullaby in Spanish with an English translation. The Preschool section includes menu items Read/Leer, Sing/Cantar, Play/Jugar, Doodle/Dibujar, Explore/Explorar and Meet Riffy and Rita/Conoce a Riffy y Rita, the site hosts. Select play and then La araña pequeñita to find a video of a young woman singing the Itsy Bitsy Spider song with the text in both Spanish and English.

An adult portion of the site provides book reviews and parenting advice. Want tips on how to maximize the benefits of reading to your children? This article will help. You can even watch a video of Eric Carle reading “Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See”. Take advantage of this great resource.

What better way to get your kids excited about learning Spanish than to do it with them. There are so many resources. These days, all you have to do is go to the store to see the Spanish language on most product packaging. Light bulbs are bombillos (what a great word). Reemplaza bombillos de 100 vatios, bombillo espiral. Or Brita filters. Garantizado para mejorar el sabor del agua. Guaranteed to make your water taste better. The English and frequently French is all together for a great language lesson waiting in line at the hardware store. Let’s just hope our corporate friends are hiring the right translators so the vocabulary and grammar we are learning are correct.

I made a great discovery the other night. Libraries have been buying our DVD in great numbers and I am always interested in making contact with more libraries to let them know about our products. I went onto the Yuma (AZ) public library site and discovered their link to TumbleBooks. Ciber-libros para ciber-niños includes 12 books with limited animation that can be viewed online in Spanish, French and English. There are two options for “reading”. There is an audio version with each sentence highlighted as it is being read, or a manual version with no audio.

On the Temecula (CA) site I found this link to the ALA Association for Library Service to Children page with Lugares en español para niños. There is a legend indicating the appropriate age range for each site. Colorín Colorado is one of the sites they feature for preschool kids. Miscositas.com has stories in Spanish from Mexico, Argentina and Columbia. Links provide definitions of key vocabulary.

Enjoy these sites with your children. It’s a great way for all of us to learn Spanish. If you know of additional library sites or other online destinations with resources for families with young children learning Spanish, please let me know.

Hasta luego.