Learning Spanish on the Farm
October was a very busy month for us, and our days are still jam packed. With the season finally cooling off for us in the Sonoran Desert, it is a rush to get outdoor projects done. One of our family goals is building a homestead. Over the last year, we have added chickens, ducks, turkeys and now cattle.
PLAY
To go along with all our barnyard fun, I created this fun interactive farm themed Spanish lapbook. Spanish language learning has never been so much fun and productive. The Spanish lapbook is filled with singing and playing in Spanish. It has also paired well with family favorite video WhistleFritz’s Los Animales. (If you have Amazon Prime, currently music that pairs with WhistleFritz is free!)
My children love to play and what kid doesn’t? It makes this activity the most requested activity next to math. This completely delights my heart.
DISCOVER
It has been a very slow process as a monolingual to raise children to be bilingual but I have discovered that the time I have devoted has not been wasted. They are able to watch full immersion Spanish programs like Whistlefritz and SALSA and incorporate more and more Spanish into their playtime.
The discovery of their growth has inspired me to push forward. I can’t tell you that there have been many days I questioned this goal of mine. Can a monolingual raise bilinguals? Can I do it on limited resources? Were the reasons for my goals strong enough to keep me going even when I saw very little progress?
Glenn Doman always reminds parents to focus on input and not to worry about the output. The output would come in time, and sure enough after years of pursuing this goal, I am starting to discover this holds true even for older children.
LEARN
I have learned that children are quite cable of synthesizing the information available in a well organized full immersion video series. It has taken time, but consistency has been a key element to our success.
It may have been that all we got done was a Spanish video for those busy days, but pushing play is one of those tasks I can completely handle even on the busiest and most stressful of days. It is also one of those activities that holds little protest from my children. (Restricting television to high quality programing has been key to maintaining this joyful reception).
One of the key elements of deciding if something will work for our homeschool routine is how easy it is to get done. It is why I love high quality educational apps and videos. These task get done with ease, joy and vigor.
Also anything play based will work just fine for us too. Finding quality play based activities that incorporate deeper learning are bit harder to come by, and it is why I have started creating my own play based Spanish activities with the help of Spanish speaking colleagues.
Are you on the same journey of learning another language with your children? Share below. We all need encouragement in what can be a difficult but worthwhile task.
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