Nursery rhymes are one of the easiest things you can do with a small child, and quite possibly the most useful — rhyme trains a child's ear to hear the separate sounds inside a word, which is the same skill they'll need when they start to read. What to look for at each age from birth to five, and eight books we keep coming back to.
When a story comes from people who grew up in the language, it brings things along with it — an ear for rhythm, idioms that never had to be explained, a sense of somewhere specific. Here's how to find that for your child, in print and in audio, and how to spot it when you do.
You don't need to speak Spanish to start your child in it. These ten bilingual board books are short enough, repetitive enough, and clear enough that you can read them out loud tonight — plus how to pick the right one for your child's age, and what to do when you hit a word you can't pronounce.
A ten-minute bedtime routine built around short Spanish and bilingual stories, with free read-along and audio sources worth bookmarking, and how to adjust the routine as your child moves from board books to chapter-style read-alouds.
Even if you aren’t fluent in more than one language, you can raise bilingual children. On your journey, here are some common mistakes to be aware of. If you spot any of these in your household, don’t panic. They’re easy to correct, and knowing about them will help you make your child’s learning experience better in the future!
Here in the U.S. we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month every year from September 15th to October 15th, and for our Mexican/Ecuadorian/American family it’s a chance to be super intentional about how we are celebrating latinidad with our kids. But you don’t have to be Hispanic or Latinx/e to appreciate the incredible contributions of Latin@s!
Start with curated Spanish and bilingual picture books, board books, and leveled readers matched to your child's age, and build a five-minute read-aloud habit around them. That single move does more for early bilingual literacy than any app or worksheet.
When researchers look at which families keep Spanish and which slowly lose it, the dividing line isn't fluency, money, or schools. It's something much quieter — and the parents pushing hardest are often the ones it slips away from.