A new girl joined JustaBXgirl’s class last week. My little socialite came home and told me that she was both happy and sad about the addition to her group. She explained that she was really excited that there was a new girl in the class so she could have a new friend but that she was really sad because she couldn’t talk to the new girl. I asked her why she couldn’t talk to the new girl. I figured she must have meant that the new girl was on the other side of the room and she hadn’t had a chance to welcome her. It turns out that the new girl only speaks Spanish!
My darling daughter doesn’t speak a word of Spanish. Okay, I exaggerate. She speaks three words of Spanish. She knows Abuela, hola and basura. Oh, make that four. She knows gracias too. I must confess that I don’t speak much more. I never learned as a child. My parents spoke English at home, my maternal grandparents are both deceased and I didn’t spend much time with my paternal grandma. Oh, we’re up to five words. JustaBXgirl knows bisabuela (great grandmother). Over the years, I have picked up bits and pieces of Spanish. I know enough to usually order food and I might not be totally helpless if lost in a Spanish speaking country but I am far from fluent.
I always swore that when I had a child that my child would be multi-lingual. My child wouldn’t speak a mere language or two. Oh no, my child would speak at least three languages! Ha. You know that saying about how a person is a perfect parent until they have children? Yea, that saying is about me. Once JustaBXgirl could share her opinions she let me know that she wasn’t interested in learning a different language. She would also get frustrated with me when I would speak to her in my broken Spanish. She still does for the most part.
The first time that she expressed being interested in speaking a second language was when we went to Paris. I explained to her that if she really did want to live there one day she would need to learn the language. Finally, getting her into the idea of speaking French I still struggled with how to get her interested in Spanish. We have finally found the reason thanks to her new friend joining her class. She has been communicating by using lots of sign language. While her interest is peaked to begin using Spanish regularly I have turned to our friends at Whistlefritz. I know that when it comes to language lessons I can’t do it on my own. I also know that Whistlefritz will make learning fun for JustaBXgirl.
Whistlefritz is a high quality immersion program that teaches littles a new language through live-action, animation, and music. The great thing is that they realize us adults might need a little support as our littles are learning. You can get the entire collection or start with parts of it and build from there. We are starting with Canranval and Adentro y Afuera. Carnaval is comprised of fourteen songs that not only cover different topics but different musical genres. I think it will be the perfect way for JustaBXgirl to jump in. We will be following it up with Adentro y Afuera which is a DVD set that helps littles become familiar with everyday words that are in and around the house.
Once JustaBXgirl finds a sense of mastery with these we will move on to check out some of the French content. I think once she gets some Spanish basics down then it will be easy for her to find the similarities in French. A great thing about the Whistlefritz program is that it is available both in both physical and digital products. I really like the physical because it allows JustaBXgirl to take her Cozyphones, grab her personal DVD player and work independently. When she is working on a device that is connected to the Internet, I feel I need to helicopter a bit more.
Do I think this will get her chatting up a storm with her new friend? No, but I do think it will help her feel a bit more confident about being able to communicate by having some of the basics down. Do your littles speak other languages? Do you? Is there a dream language that you would learn if you could?
