Practicar, practicar

Graphic: Google image search, from Greenburg-art.com

  
I still keep waiting for that memory click for Smarty Pants when it comes to speaking Spanish.  For the first 5 years of his life, Spanish is the only language he heard.  Sweet Thing heard it for 3.5 years and Drama Mama 2.5 years.  I'm not sure it will ever happen, although I think it will ultimately make (re) learning Spanish easier.

If there is one thing I regret in my parenting, it is that we did not keep them fully bilingual.  Once Smarty Pants started school and felt like speaking Spanish was a bad thing, it just became easier for us to slide into English only.

After living in Puerto Rico for nearly two years and only seeing a minimum improvement in their speaking skills, Papa and I are serious about buckling down.

Last weekends experiment was really rather successful. The kids were able to use more Spanish than I think they thought they were capable of! It gave them enough confidence to agree to continue on Sunday.  We've now decided that every weekend we are going to speak in Spanish only.

I even turned my FB page over...Spanish settings and all my posts/comments were in Spanish. 

Overall, it was a good change for the family.  Even Goofy Girl and La Loquita participated in it, limited as they were. 

We signed up all the older 3 for Duolingo and they've all been practicing.  123TeachMe has also been a good tool for us, but we needed something extra. 

I have a Spanish Word A Day email from Dictionary.com that I've gotten for years now.  So we are now adding 5 new words/verbs for the kids to write down and define.

We have taken this challenge seriously.  By the end of the year, I want all 5 kids to be speaking Spanish fluently. 

I want this to by one of my greatest parenting successes!

Hablame en español

Hoy, tenemos hablar en español solamente.  Los niños saben muchas palabras, pero nunca usarlas.

La regla nueva de Papi: Todos los fines de semana nosotros podemos hablar en español solamente.

Sí podemos!!

Hablas español?

I realized how much we really do speak Spanish in the house when we were on vacation! I had to constantly remember to use English when around my parents!

We went to dinner at the local Mexican restaurant the night before we left and I was able to hold a decent, fluent conversation with the workers there.  Not something that happens often there! The kids were able to speak some too!

It was a good visit, but we are all glad to be back home in Puerto Rico!

Memories

So I have once again neglected this blog! Lo siento muuuucho!

However, this was interesting to me, so I had to blog about it here.

Smarty Pants, 12, had just turned 5 when he entered foster care.  At that time, he only spoke Spanish, knowing only a handful of words in English.

Last night, he had some stress after we received an email from bio mom. He was once again adamant that he doesn't want to see her if she comes to PR.

He also had some random memories pop up from when he was little. Over the past 7 years, there really haven't been more than a handful of memories from him or the girls, so anytime he remembers something, it is significant for him. 

He was a bit puzzled that what he remembers, he remembers it in English.....even though it all happened in Spanish.  He can't remember the words used in Spanish, he's just translated what he knew happened, into the English that he knows now.

It is amazing how our brain works! 

Happy Birthday/Feliz Cumpleaños

I am not so much thrilled that today is my birthday...but it's here regardless of if I am happy about it.  :D

So along with my other Spanish songs, I'm adding the song our family sings for birthdays!

First we sing the traditional Happy Birthday song in English.  Next in Spanish we sing:

Feliz, feliz en tu dia.  Amiguito/a que Dios te bendiga.  Que reine la paz en tu dia, y que cumplas muchos mas.  (Happy happy on your day. Little friend may God bless you.  May peace reign on your day and many more birthdays to come)

Followed by:

Happy Birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too.

Then:

Estas poneindo viejo/a, con cara de conejo y cuerpo de avestruz (You are getting old, with the face of a rabbit and the body of an ostrich!)  

Noche De Paz

This is one of the very few Spanish Christmas songs I remember from High School Spanish class...oh so many years ago!

Noche De Paz/Silent Night

Blanca Navidad/White Christmas

I liked this one because it has the lyrics/translation in both languages! No 'Blanca Navidad' here in PR, but I don't miss the snow too much!

I'm here!

Well hoping this post goes through! I'm not sure what happened, but several of the posts I had scheduled to appear...never did.  Nor are they in the drafts folder anymore! I for some reason didn't have the email alerts set up for this account, so I just never noticed that they didn't post...and I hadn't been back on here since the beginning of Dec!

So we are here! La familia estan bien!

I've been noticing how much more Spanish the kids have been speaking! Sweet Thing of course, has been my talker for awhile now.  Tonight, at CVS, she wanted to buy some gingerbread houses.  I was looking for something for Papa Loco, so she went to the register (caja) herself and asked! And understood exactly what the lady told her.  When she came back to me to tell me, I asked her if she asked her in English or Spanish.  Granted, she did ask for "Gingerbread Houses" vs...whatever that might be in Spanish, but in PR, Spanglish is totally understood!

Smarty Pants spent the morning with his Abuelo and primo, G, at the barbería (barber) getting his hair cut.  Abuelo had errands to run afterward, so SP apparently read some of the diario (newspaper) en español.  He didn't understand all of it, but was able to get some out of the stories! 

Today I was quite proud of myself.  Today Papa Loco had posted something on FB regarding the school system here in Puerto Rico.  He wrote it in Spanish, and a friend of mine was trying to read it, but said the Bing translator was awful.  She knows a little Spanish, enough to know what it translated was not too accurate.  So, I opened it up and translated it for her! And I knew all but 1 word! Some of it I paraphrased just for ease, but overall, I was able to translate the whole thing.  Apparently my version made much more sense than Bing's.

I'm still working daily on my Spanish, but I've noticed I do use it more than I did a year ago at this time! Hopefully in another few years, I'll be fluent! The kids too! 

I'll definitely work on being a better blogger! I had so much to say in those others posts, perhaps they are floating around somewhere on the internet! I've got more to say too as the fun times in PR are among us! 

Nov-Jan are big party celebrations here in PR! No one does Christmas quite like Puerto Rico! I look forward to sharing! 

Buenas Noches!

La Mama Loca

Two languages for a special needs child?

Can it be done??

For those of you who don't follow my other blog La Mama Loca I'll recap our family situation here.

We adopted 5 children after fostering them for several years.  Our daughter Goofy Girl was exposed to alcohol while in the womb.  We have at this time chosen not to have her formally diagnosed, but she presents all the signs of a child on the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum.  She looks perfectly normal on the outside, but on the inside, there are times there are 'holes' in her learning and understanding.

We have struggled with her learning to read/write in English and I'm always wondering how much we should teach her in Spanish.  One one hand, I think she would find learning to read and write so much easier in Spanish.  However, I know we live in a primarily English world, even here in PR, and our return to the States is likely.

I know she can speak both languages...she understands so much Spanish and definitely knows how to use it to fit her needs at the time, especially when it comes to Abuela and her love to feed her!

After much debate and prayer, we decided that we will do our best to teach her to read and write in Spanish...how much she picks up and uses will be debatable and English will be the one we push harder.  However, I never want to limit her abilities because of what *I* think she is capable of!

So it may be a challenge and I may want to scream, but I think it will be worth the effort!

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