Connecting to Our Hispanic Heritage through Online Classes

The following is a guest post by educator and mother, Lidia Aguirre.

I’m always looking for more ways to help my daughter connect to our Hispanic heritage. Growing up with a Mexican father, I was naturally exposed to my Mexican roots. However, as a third generation American, my daughter does not always get that same level of exposure. She is guided by me, a single mother who was born and raised in the US and speaks better English than Spanish. I have worked hard over the last 20 years to develop full fluency in Spanish, and I’m even a Spanish teacher now, but I have to confess that English still comes more naturally to me.  

Sometimes it feels like an uphill battle when it comes to bilingual parenting and maintaining a strong connection to our heritage. I’ve accepted that I can’t do it alone, and I’ve finally realized that I don’t have to. Even if we are staying home more in 2020, there are still ways to find support and to foster that connection to our Hispanic heritage that I so deeply crave. 

Facebook has been a great way for me to discover online events in Spanish for kids. We have attended a lot of fun kids classes in Spanish over the last several weeks, and there is one in particular I want to share with you. We’ve been taking a virtual ceramics workshop through a museum association in Argentina! The organization is called "La Asociación Amigos del MAP." There are various workshops and lectures for both adults and children listed in the “Talleres y Charlas” section of their website. They also have a Facebook page you can follow. 

Here’s a picture of us with some of our latest creations:

We have loved this experience so far. The instructor has been fabulous! My main purpose for signing my daughter up was to boost her Spanish and to help her connect with kids who live in a Spanish-speaking country. As a bonus, I’ve learned a lot as well. The instructor often discusses Pre-Columbian art as we’re working with the clay, so I’ve gotten a few art history lessons just by listening to her interact with the students. Everyone in the workshop has been so welcoming, and it’s been wonderful to practice our Spanish in such an authentic way. I hope we get to visit Argentina in person someday soon!

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Lidia Aguirre is an educator, mother, and writer for hire. She has worked in K-12 Texas public schools and now teaches Spanish at the community college level. She founded the website Spanish From a Distance to support world language teachers and learners. You can follow her Facebook page to stay up to date on blog posts and teaching resources. 

Passing on My Bolivian Heritage through Dance

Julie is the third person from the right in the blue dress.

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, the following is a guest post by mom of 2 boys, Julie Santelices, who shares how she is passing on her Bolivian heritage and culture to her children.

It’s 7 pm on a rainy weeknight. The members of my Bolivian folk dance group are gathered for practice after a long day of working, mothering, or both. The occasional crack of thunder outside reminds us of the storm rolling past. But inside is a safe and familiar refuge. Hand-painted Indigenous artwork adorns the walls while the comforting smells of cafécito and baked humintas waft from the nearby kitchen. All the furniture has been pushed aside to make room for us to practice our choreography.  Our performance songs play on repeat. We synchronize our spins, jumps, and steps for a couple hours until we are either satisfied, exhausted, or both.  

When I get home, my two kids are already asleep. I used to feel a twinge of guilt that I had missed their bedtime stories and goodnight kisses. Now I remind myself that folk dancing isn’t just for me, it’s for them too. I begin my night time ritual and step into a shower. Under the warm water, it’s quiet and I reflect on my slowly evolving dance practice. How learning the steps of my ancestors feels both humbling and empowering at the same time. How dance education has become my way to honor the generations before me and the ones yet to come. Folk dancing makes me feel like an important link in the infinite chain of my heritage.

My first dance lessons weren’t in a dance studio. Rather, my early childhood memories of learning los pasos were in my mother’s suburban kitchen. The same room where I watched her prepare meals and share chismes with her friends. There was a small TV in the corner of the kitchen, but when it wasn’t on, my mother was the most entertaining thing to watch. She would go about her business while booming ballads and pulsing cumbias crooned from the Spanish language radio. I learned the words to familiar songs and sang and danced along with her. I wanted to move with my mother’s grace and confidence. She owned the room, with a sway of hips or a stomp of her feet. A dish towel would circle rapidly over her head as she demonstrated the quick cueca steps for my wide eyes.  

My mother never gave herself the gift of joining a folk dance group. I think she would have appreciated the discipline it requires, and enjoyed the sisterhood that comes with belonging to a performance group. I still thank her for teaching me to love dancing, and more importantly: to love my raices.  I reassure her that I’m passing on all this knowledge to her two grandchildren; that we are all learning together how to heal through dancing. Healing the enduring damage of colonialism. And that dance is like a salve on all that weighs heavy in our hearts.  

Now my own two sons watch me with wide eyes when they see my dance group performances. When they hear the familiar sounds of indigenous instruments, their shoulders bounce, their feet tap, and they understand that tradition flows through their DNA. My children are learning folk dances right along with me. I’m hoping to teach my children what our ancestors already knew: that the dance lives within us. It is an immense honor to do justice to each dance step. I never forget that each dance carries meaning, purpose, and retells our ancestors’ stories in a way that history books cannot. 

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Julie Santelices is a Bolivian mamí and lover of languages. She is raising her two multilingual littles in Central Florida.

Bilingual Easter Printables & TpT Sale

I'm losing track of the days now that our normal routine has been thrown out the window. Even though we already homeschooled, the days were easy to recognize based on when I was required to go to town to take my son to his taekwondo classes, Civil Air Patrol meetings, and homeschool Co-op classes.

So the point is that Easter has snuck up on me. I can't believe it's less than a week away. And one of my children has a birthday this week. This quarantine, while extremely necessary, is really hard on kids who were hoping to celebrate birthdays with big parties and lots of friends, but now have to spend it like any other day at home. To find ways to celebrate both, I'm looking everywhere online to find ideas for activities we can do here as a family.

And if you find yourself wondering what to do with the kids this coming Easter weekend, don't forget that I do have fun printables for your little ones to color. Or make cascarones!

PLUS EVERYTHING in my TpT store is on sale Monday and Tuesday, April 6th & 7th.

Enjoy!

Bilingual Easter-Themed Activity Sheets for Preschool

Boost your child’s literacy and math skills with this fun, Easter-themed packet! This multicultural packet contains images of both the Easter bunny and cascarones.

Easter Book of Words

Introduce your young students to the vocabulary associated with Easter. This little booklet lets them color in the picture, then read and write the words.

Easter Book of Colors

Help your preschooler or language learner to learn their colors with this Easter-themed coloring book!

Bilingual Easter Counting Mats

I hope you enjoy these free counting mats for children learning to count from one to five. So much fun, they can easily be used with ANY small objects...decorations, buttons, beans, Easter-themed stickers, etc. Or your little ones can just draw their own shapes or pictures to fill in each row.

Cascarones Bilingual Minibook

This mini-book is a brief history of the popular Hispanic craft of making cascarones. This book includes coloring pages of items related to the history of this craft, as well as brief descriptions in English and Spanish that are easy for young children to understand. At the end of the book are simple directions in English and Spanish for making cascarones. Contains three language versions.

Decorate Your Own Cascarón Bilingual Activities

Roll the dice and decorate your cascarón using the options provided. This file now contains 3 dice activities with directions.

A One-Page History of Cascarones

This is a one-page history of cascarones. From where they originated to how to make them, this informational text is written for students in 4th - 8th grade. Includes a 7-question comprehension quiz plus answer key.

Canticos Board Books

Last May, I told you about the short music videos airing on Nick Jr. that featured the wonderful little characters from the book series by Canticos. I was so delighted to see Latino culture in the form of nursery rhymes and lullabies being highlighted on a children's channel. And the videos themselves were freaking adorable. 

The videos are no longer available on Nick Jr., however, the Canticos website has all of these and MORE for you to watch. More wonderful melodies and words from our childhood that are paired with Susie Jaramillo's brilliant illustrations are now available online. 

These videos and books are fantastic resources for those of us with children under 4, and especially for those of you with preschoolers. The themes are educational and teach important preschool concepts such as counting to 10, opposites, days of the week, and more. The new videos include Las Mañanitas, Pin Pon, Duérmete mi niño Pollito, and Muñequita. And just like the first videos, these songs are sung first in Spanish and then again in English to make them a perfect learning opportunity for bilingual babies. :)

♥ Plus, they are just so sweet to watch. ♥

Canticos Book Set

You know how much I love to champion early education. That's because the long-term benefits are so numerous!! And I especially love resources that teach important concepts alongside one's heritage. A study by researchers at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill has shown that "Latino adolescents in the U.S. who maintain ties to their culture of origin are more likely to develop healthy behaviors than their peers who do not. Latino adolescents with a strong awareness of their family’s culture reported higher self-esteem, fewer social problems and less hopelessness, aggression and substance abuse." You can see why I think that it is so important for us to teach our babies about their heritage in a proud and positive manner! And products like these are exactly what we need to help us do so.

¡Buena suerte!

Other Posts You May Enjoy

• Los Pollitos Bilingual App
  
  
• Canticos Bilingual Preschool App
  
  
• Holiday Gifting: Canticos
  
  
• Canticos Videos
  
  
• Preschool at Home: A Guide for Caregivers

Canticos Videos

EDITED: The Canticos videos are no longer on Nick Jr. as far as I can tell, but you can still see all of them on the official Canticos website. 

Canticos Videos

I always love it when I find out about bilingual products being featured in mainstream media. Especially if it is for children because I think about all those Latino kids out there who see their culture being reflected back at them and take pride in their heritage.

So I wanted to tell those of you who watch (or whose children watch) Nick Jr.,  to be on the lookout for Canticos videos! 

Bilingual Videos for Preschoolers

Oh. My. Goodness. It is ADORABLE!!! Eeek. I just love these short little music videos that feature animated sing-along nursery rhymes. Los pollitos, Un elefante, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and others. And they are in BOTH English and Spanish.

My favorite is Sol, Solecito. I can't hardly stand it. The cast of characters are so sweet. If you are a fan of Canticos' books, then you will love these videos that teach your kids to count, the days of the week, opposites, and more.

If you have babies or toddlers at home, go watch now!

You'll be happy you did.

You're welcome!

Other Posts You May Enjoy

• Los Pollitos Bilingual App
  
  
• Holiday Gifting: Canticos
  
  
• Canticos Bilingual Preschool App
  
  
• Skeletitos: Make Every Moment Count
  
  
• Preschool at Home: A Guide for Caregivers

Book Review: Arroz con pollo and Apple Pie - Raising Bicultural Children

There is SO much talk centered around raising bilingual kids. In fact, that is the main focus of many of my readers. But for me, something equally - if not more important - is raising bicultural children. It has certainly been a goal of mine (and a challenge!) ever since we started a family to provide my children with a childhood that somehow merges both my Hispanic culture and my husband's white American one. Just as I grew up immersed in my heritage while experiencing uniquely American traditions, so I wanted the same for my kids.

But raising bicultural children isn't as easy as it seems. Especially if you are like I am: far removed from family and surrounded by non-Latinos who speak only English and are clueless about Spanish and Mexican traditions. So when Maritere Rodriguez Bellas reached out to me and asked me to take a look at her books, I agreed.

Today, I'm going to focus on her excellent book, Arroz con Pollo and Apple Pie (aff link). It is a guide for for parents who want to raise bicultural children in our modern society. Maritere wrote the book to be the resource that she wished she'd had available to her when she was a new immigrant mother years ago. Technicially, she wasn't an actual immigrant, since she was originally from Puerto Rico, but as a new mother in California, she often wished she had family nearby to help guide her.

Determined to help others with tips and resources, Maritere began writing a parenting column for Latino immigrant parents in La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the country. It ran for 11 years. A few years later, Maritere published this book.

It is a remarkable compilation of interviews and testimonies from immigrant parents or their children from all over Latin America, including Nicaragua, Cuba, Guatemala, D.R., Mexico, and more. There's even advice from well-known figures such as Jorge Ramos, Tony Plana, and Milly Quezada.

Each chapter focuses on a different issue with suggestions, tips, and stories about how immigrant parents dealt with the issues. Maritere also encourages parents to start a parenting journal where they can write down questions they might have and, eventually, the solutions. She also provides tips, resources, and thought-provoking questions.

Although this book focuses on Latino immigrants, really, ANY immigrant parent will benefit from reading it. And I would even say that parents like me, who are not immigrants, but who are trying to pass on their heritage to their children will find this book to be a treasure trove of information.

Did you know that there are actual stages of immigrant adjustment? Chapter one describes all four in depth. And the next chapter discusses how to help your KIDS adjust.

I especially love that the author also addresses how to balance and blend two cultures in your home and your childrearing practices.

Are you struggling with how to discipline your children? The American way can certainly differ from other countries. Learn how SIX other parents have handled this in chapter six.

Overall, this book is has been thoroughly researched. The number of stories shared by such a variety of parents and children show the effort and careful thought that the author put into her work. It is well written and Maritere is obviously passionate about the subject and determined to help other parents out there find support and resources.

If you are a Latino parent or an immigrant parent, this book is a must-get. Or if you know of a parent, then this would make a great gift!