My husband and I both served as missionaries in foreign countries- Spain and Argentina and we love the Spanish language. We have always wanted to maintain our Spanish skills after all the work it took to learn a second language and to teach our children Spanish from a young age. We started out doing great with our first child. We only spoke Spanish at home until our son was about 6 months old. Then we moved in with family while my husband was looking for his first job and things got a bit complicated. Once on our own we tried again except going a week at a time speaking only Spanish and then a week of English. It was exciting to see how much our son was picking up and many of his first words were Spanish- luz, aqua, etc. Then the terrible twos set in and then we had a second child and it got too hard and unfortunately, I gave up.
Lately our boys have taken an interest in learning more Spanish words, asking us how to say things in Spanish and how to count. Today, I discovered a great blog off of another friend's blog called Wanna Jugar with Migo? http://wannajugarwithmigo.blogspot.com/ and it's inpsired me to try again! I plan on doing this activity on Monday: http://wannajugarwithmigo.blogspot.com/2009/03/juego-del-jueves-voy-de-viaje.html So thanks, Tati, for your inspiration!
(They also have great giveaways!)
Thanks for the link to my blog! I like all the ideas on your blog, too! My parents were mission presidents in Honduras and my husband served in Guatemala. It is so hard to speak Spanish to the kids and we have stopped from time to time, but it has been rewarding. Good luck with it! It's a lot of fun!
ReplyDeleteIt made me feel better reading this... I, too, spoke tons of Spanish to child #1, got so thrilled when he naturally began speaking so many first words in Spanish, and then -- yep, the terrible twos. I couldn't discipline in Spanish like I wanted to, and baby #2 came, and... I still tried, but not as much. Then I sort of stopped trying for a while. BUT! NO MORE! I will try again.
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