Most of you already know that we are a bi-cultural family and I myself am bilingual. As such, my husband and I decided that we would make an effort to raise our children bilingually so they could learn both English and Spanish. So far, our daughter is doing a great job of acquiring both languages and most important of all, actually showing an interest in Spanish, which is the minority language.
It helps that my parents are a big part of her life, since they both speak Spanish more often than I do. Because I speak English to my husband, spoke English in the workplace, and speak English for 95% of each day, it gets a little difficult sometimes for me to “switch” my brain and speak Spanish to my daughter. I have to remind myself. So, any little help I can get is useful in not just exposing her to Spanish, but also reminding me to do so. Which is why I love bilingual books, TV programs, and other toys.
When I was contacted by Smart Play about their new bilingual toy line, Ingenio, I was highly interested in reviewing their products. As the email I received said, “there are very few affordable toys/games available for parents who want their children to be bilingual.” In my experience when shopping for baby girl, this has been true. Their products fill this need since 8 out of the 10 products they have so far cost less than $12.99. All ten products are designed for children 3-8 years old, which is perfect for my baby girl.
We received the Animal Learning Puzzle and the Spellable Puzzle Card Game. I was looking forward to playing the Spellable game with baby girl because it allows you to spell 3 letter words in English and Spanish. I thought this would be a great way to step up her learning and go beyond just the alphabet and on to forming words and promoting word recognition. Like any preschooler, she was super excited at the beginning, but after about 10 words or so, her focus began to fade. Since I don’t want to be a drill sergeant and “force” learning on her, but rather have it be a natural part of her playing and surroundings, I followed her cue and put away the game for another time.
But, just in that short period of time, I saw a few things that I liked about this product:
- Each letter is color coded; consonants are green & vowels are purple. I like this because you can add variety to the game by sorting the letters. Now she’s not just working on phonics, but also classifying items.
- Every letter card has a picture on the back that doubles for a word in English AND Spanish. So, you have pictures of juice/jugo for J and lamp/lampara for L, etc. Even the hard letters like Q work; Q has a quesadilla on the back.
- The spelling cards are also color coded; blue for English and red for Spanish. This helped my daughter know which language to use when trying to spell the word.
The animal puzzle was also fun to play with and has the name of each animal printed in both English and Spanish. It also displays the words for the surroundings in both languages. For example, tree/árbol and mountain/montaña. It’s a very cute puzzle and my daughter enjoyed teaching her dad the names of the animals in Spanish when they later put it together without me.
Giveaway
You too have a chance at trying out some Ingenio products! One of you can win a set of the Alphabet cards along with the Spellable Puzzle Card Game. The winner will receive both products.
How to Enter
- If you’d like to enter this contest, simply leave a comment below and let me know if you already promote a bilingual home or why you would like to expose your child to another language.
- For an extra entry, you can tweet about this contest with a link back to this post and include @modernmami in your tweet. You must leave a separate comment with a link to your tweet for your entry to count.
All entries must be in by Sunday, November 22nd at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be chosen using Random.org and will be notified via email. (Please be sure to provide a valid email address with your entry.)
Yes, we already promote learning multiple languages in our home. Neither my husband or I speak a second language but we want our son to know MORE. We currently work with English/Spanish flash cards and Spanish books. Would love other toys to help him learn.
Thanks
Also tweeted about the giveaway!
Trying to raise a multi-lingual child is someone thing we are working very hard to do.
We presently go to a bilingual sing along at the library as well as read books such as these from http://www.memima.com.
Besides Spanish I am also hoping we can figure out how to teach our daughter Mandarin and maybe even french.
It anyone has any other resources to help us — Please let me know.
Completely relate to your “switching” dilemma, Melanie. My wife and I understand and can speak Spanish and have plenty of family members who do; however, we speak to each other, coworkers, etc. in English all day.
We want our son to be bilingual and not lose the culture and language that his parents grew up with, but it takes a conscious effort on our part to “double-speak” and repeat in English and Spanish (ie: Do you want milk? ¿Quieres leche?).
We have received a few books as gifts that are bilingual, which he actually loves. There’s a few TV programs as well, but I would rather him not watch TV and have the one-on-one time with his mami or papi. Needless to say, the Ingenio products would be put to great use in our house!
Thanks!
Our little one is only 2 months old but my husbanb and I decided a while back, before we even found out we were pregnant that we wanted our children to know at least two languages if not more. Right now our goal is for him to learn spanish and sign language. Since neither my husband and I speak/sign either it will be a challange but I look forward to learning along with him.
I retweeted your post and it did this funky thing but here is the link anyway.
http://twitter.com/modernmami/status/5800632037
Hi!
We both live and promote..both bilingual and multilingual home and education, as well as a website at: http://www.morsmal.org
Can we write an article about it in our site and link back to you? I am sure our site visitors would love this contest!
morsmal
@morsmal, Sure, you can let them know about the contest with a link back to this post.
I would love these educational toys for my 3 year old son. Although my Husband and I only speak English, I do promote a bilingual home. At the moment we are working on Spanish and Sign Language so anything that could help us would be welcomed!
My God-daughter is half Mexican, and her mother, who is African American, does speak a little Spanish. She also visits her paternal grandmother every now and then, so I just assume that she’s at least a little encouraged to speak Spanish. It’d be nice for her culturally and educationally to learn Spanish.
Not a bi-lingual home but would like to expose to Spanish, living in California and all.
My daughter will be taking Spanish next year so these would be FAB to help her learn!!
Have a 2 year old and trying to get him more interested in new things all the time. want to homeschool so i can get him exposed to different lang and music more in these early years of learning.
we would like to mverno@roadrunner.com
my grandsons are leaning a little spanish in day care ,we want them to learn more we live in arizona and alot of spanish is being taught in grade school
this looks great
When she was four she said, “No Spanish Mommy.” Now at almost twenty she say, “Why didn’t you teach me Spanish!” Sooooo now her son will need to learn EARLY! These products look like they would really help making learning fun.
Proud to re-tweet Modernmami.com on Twitter.
Hello all. Daily, I try to promote a bilingual environment for my 2 children. When my son was born 2 years ago, I found it difficult to find bilingual products, books, etc. so I started an online business to sell such things. Please visit me at http://www.babybesos.com.
Hi Melanie,
I was thinking of sending information about it in the newsletter we have (it comes once every 2 weeks). Next time we send the newsletter, would be November, 28th. Would you have any contest by then?
Morsmal
@morsmal, I might. I can’t be sure right now if it’ll be a bilingual-themed contest. But, I’ll be sure to keep you in mind if I do post one.
Our son was adopted from Russia almost a year ago (and he is now 2 1/2) so we have felt it important to continue to speak some Russian (the little we know) occasionally. We have a book that has Russian words in it which is one of his favorites and he does seem to still understand some words in Russian though he can’t speak much in Russian.
My preschoolers get a weekly Spanish class at their preschool. My three year old loves to come home and ask how to say things in Spanish. He knows all his colors and numbers. It’s such fun teaching him. Sometimes I do have to pull out my dictionary to remember how to say things correctly
It’s a good idea to expose children to more than one language at a young age because they absorb language like a sponge. My son has a few toys that speak 3 languages and I use sign language and a little Spanish, but these products would be a great way to work on a language other than English.
I don’t currently expose my son to a 2nd language, but would really like to start. This would be the perfect way to introduce another language to him.
We love our spanish cd and books. This would be great to add to our collection
My husband speaks Spanish and English, but we would love to promote language learning for our children as well!
Hi there. I’m excited to hear about these toys. I saw in some of the comments a mention about bilingual books and wanted to share my new store: http://www.bububooks.com. I don’t mean for it to come across as a shameless plug. I know many parents trying to raise their children bilingually struggle to find these materials and so am just trying to help. Best of luck and I’m glad to hear about these toys!
Laura
We don’t have a bilingual home but My father and step father and one of her babysitters all speak fluent spanish so it is my hope that she would learn spanish since it is such a great thing!!!
Yes we promote bilingual at home. We also incorporate sing language any learn is great
My daughter has Spanish class in preschool but we would love to work on it at home, too!
I’m in the process of teaching my kids spanish specially since there background is latin and I’m also teaching myself in the process
We have taught a few words here and there to our daughter in a few languages. We haven’t really immersed her in a second language. I think it’s high time we tried harder. I feel it’s an important life skill and valuable to appreciate other cultures. Here in the U.S., we are one of the few cultures where we primarily speak only one language. It’s sorta a shame considering the beauty of other languages.
We are a bilingual home. My husband is from Honduras so he speaks Spanish with our son.
elissapugh@gmail.com
Tweeted: http://twitter.com/zigzagmama/status/5920822653
elissapugh@gmail.com
I’d love these for my son 🙂
I would definitely support children learning another language and using it whenever possible. I am so envious of people who are bilingual. I know my 4-year-old sister is in Spanish class several times a week. And my other sister has been living in Hungary and teaching English while she is now fluent in Hungarian!
Yes, my husband and I try to incorporate spanish. We want our children to know both spanish and english.
I live in Southern California in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area. This area has a large hispanic population and it would only be beneficial for my niece to learn to speak spanish.
I would like to expose my son to another language early on so he can learn to communicate with people of different cultures. I don’t want him to be so one track minded that he can’t even ask where the bathroom is!
I tweeted the giveaway!
http://twitter.com/ashhan123/status/5943861590
what a great giveaway.
i would love for my children to be bilingual… however we moved to a small town that is not very diverse. my husband and i know a little spanish so we’ll just have to do what we can and try to expose our children to other languages as they grow up.
My son was adopted from Guatemala and although English is our dominant language, we try to keep Spanish alive around him through songs, stories and games – this would be a great help!
We don’t have a bilingual household, but our grand daughter is learning some Spanish at kindergarten. I’ve heard he telling her 2 year old brother Spanish words for thigs around the house.
Thsi would be a big help for us to help both of them learn some new words in English and Spanish.
I would love for my son to learn spanish. My husband can speak spanish but he speaks only in english at home so I can understand. This would help alot and maybe I can pick up on some words too.
Congratulations! You won the set of Alphabet cards and Spellable Puzzle Card Game.
well, at this point the adults in the house only know english. however, our son is learning some sign language and spanish at the school he is in. I feel being multilingual is very important and will help you go farther in life
We’re trying to provide exposure to Spanish to our children. My husband is Hispanic, however Spanish wasn’t spoken in his home as a child, so we’re learning along with the kids.
My husband is Venezuelan. And he speaks only Spanish to the children. I am american and speak only English. This is how we were told to do it. Our kids are immersed in both languages, and I too, have had this issue you mentioned. Would love to win these products.
Our household is bilingual. Anything that can help us keep it that way is great!
I’m on my iPhone and having a hard time pasting my Twitter link. But I tweeted about ur giveaway from my boutique FAWN’s twit account. @fawnonline. We (<3 ) u!
I’d like them to learn another language because it’s so much easier to learn when they’re younger
@DanV, Thanks for stopping by and entering the contest. I’m so glad that you have an interest in raising bilingual kids. Unfortunately, your entry cannot be counted as the contest rules state that all entries must have been submitted by Sunday, November 22nd at 11:59 pm EST. Please be sure to check in the future for more contests!
These would be great for my 2 year old nephew, I think it would be smart to get him started learning some Spanish at a young age!
@Melissa, Thanks for stopping by and entering the contest. I’m so glad that you have an interest in teaching Spanish to your nephew. Unfortunately, your entry cannot be counted as the contest rules state that all entries must have been submitted by Sunday, November 22nd at 11:59 pm EST. Please be sure to check in the future for more contests!
We are bilingual here 🙂
@Gianna, Thanks for stopping by and entering the contest. I’m so glad that you already promote a bilingual household. Unfortunately, your entry cannot be counted as the contest rules state that all entries must have been submitted by Sunday, November 22nd at 11:59 pm EST. Please be sure to check in the future for more contests!