Exploring Spain with My Children

This post is part of Multicultural Kid Blogs' Hispanic Heritage Month series. 

You may have noticed that I had a lot of guest posts here on MommyMaestra over the last few weeks. That's because, for the first time in 11 years, my husband and I took our kids to Europe. He had a conference in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium that he had to attend, and I JUMPED at the opportunity to go a week early so that we could visit my family in Spain. 

Do you have family that lives far away? The visit to Spain was probably the most important thing to me this entire year. It's been 11 years since I last visited. My daughter was only a year and a half and I was pregnant with my son. Before last month, my father had never met my son, his only grandson. My daughter had been too little the last time we were there to remember anything about it. So they only "knew" their abuelo from a few photos and Facebook messages. 

So we saved and planned then saved some more to make the trip a reality. And although we will be paying off this trip for a little while, this one week of time spent with my family is one my children will never forget. They had the opportunity to experience the beauty of Spain - it's culture, food, architecture, landscape, and language. 

My father was eager to share the beauty of his country with his grandchildren. Together we walked the cobblestone streets of his town, peering into shops and admiring the beautiful details that families add to the front of their homes. My son was over the moon to discover the candy/ice cream shop on the plaza that opens each afternoon when school lets out. Both kids were less than thrilled with their tostada Catalán for breakfast...they preferred the CHURROS!!  And both my kids marveled at the number of beds and bedrooms in my Tías house, which used to be my grandparents' home where I spent time in the summer as a child. "You could sleep 30 people in this house!" my daughter exclaimed. And we often did when I was little. 

A s luck would have it, one of my cousins was getting married. I was delighted when I heard about it because I knew that meant that I'd be able to see most of my extended family and introduce them to my children. However, the wedding took place in Zaragoza, which is quite a ways from my dad's home in southern Spain. So in the space of a week, we rode on board the bullet train three times to my son's extreme delight.

Zaragoza itself is a beautiful city. My cousin got married in the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Pilar, a truly remarkable cathedral, whose beauty I cannot possibly do justice in this post. It is reported to be the first church in history dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Inside, gold glitters everywhere. Your footsteps echo on the marble floors, and my children stared at the murals on the vaulted ceilings. Nine chapels line the walls, each a miniature testimony to the wealth of the Catholic church at that time. But my favorite piece is the single, stained-glass window...

And the outside is just as breathtaking as the inside with its multiple cupolas and towers.

The wedding itself was a very formal affair and my kids giggled at the elaborate hats worn by the women who attended. At one point during the reception, my daughter said, "I feel like I'm on Downton Abbey." (My cousins were highly amused - who knew they were Downton Abbey fans in Spain, too?) Shortly thereafter, my kids were whisked away to the children's table, where they were watched over by a nanny, who kept the kids busy playing all sorts of games while the adults went inside to eat. I'm pretty sure my kids had a good time because, by the end, my son looked like this...

The trip is one my children will always remember and it came with valuable life lessons. They discovered that when it comes to family, time and distance mean absolutely nothing. They were showered in hugs and kisses from people they didn't know. When someone loves you so much, so sincerely, it's hard not to love them back. And the joy my family showed upon our arrival made a huge impression on my kids. 

The experience has cemented the bond between my children and their Spanish heritage. What's more, it has provided the motivation my kids need to continue learning Spanish. 

We are so excited for our FIFTH annual Hispanic Heritage Month series and giveaway! Through the month (September 15 - October 15), you'll find great resources to share Hispanic Heritage with kids.

September 14 Hanna Cheda on Multicultural Kid Blogs: How to Pass on Hispanic Heritage as an Expat

September 15 Spanish Mama: Los Pollitos Dicen Printable Puppets

September 19 Spanish Playground: Authentic Hispanic Heritage Month Games Everyone Can Play

September 20 Tiny Tapping Toes: Exploring Instruments for Hispanic Heritage Month

September 21 Kid World Citizen on Multicultural Kid Blogs: 10 Fascinating Facts about Peru!

September 22 Spanish Mama: Printable Spanish-Speaking Countries and Capitals Game Cards

September 23 All Done Monkey: The Aztec - Top Books for Kids

September 26 Crafty Moms Share: A Look at Mexican Art

September 27 Discovering the World Through My Son's Eyes: Children's Books about Puerto Rico

September 30 Mama Tortuga: Sounds and Dances of Hispanic America

October 3 Hispanic Mama on Multicultural Kid Blogs: 6 Magical Places to Visit with Kids in Ecuador

October 7 Spanglish House: Celebrating Heritage with Traditional Remedies &
Embracing Diversity: 3 Happiness Lessons Our Kids Can Learn from Dominican Culture

October 11 Kid World Citizen

October 12 MommyMaestra

October 13 inspired by familia

October 14 El Mundo de Pepita on Multicultural Kid Blogs

Don't miss all of the great posts from previous years as well: 2012, 2014, 2015

An InLinkz Link-up

Bilingual Adventures in Panama Thanks to a Spanish-Immersion Education

The following is a guest post by the adventurous Ashley Steel of Family on the Loose.

After more than a decade of flashcards, carpools, sugar skulls, and mad searches for Spanish literature, our family needed a celebration. We, a pair of monolingual parents, had raised two Spanish-speaking girls through our local public schools, and we were ready for their Spanish skills to open doors to new worlds. We were hopeful but a little nervous.

The beginning: We won the lottery, literally!  

When our oldest daughter was young, my husband took her to an information night for Puesta del Sol, a local Spanish-immersion elementary school and gateway to a middle- and high-school Spanish program. I had long said that the one thing I really wanted to give my kids was a second language and so we may have been a little over-eager. At three years old, she was the youngest kid in the room and nowhere near ready for Kindergarten but my husband was hooked. He heard a well-spoken senior in high school explain, in Spanish and in English, how much she valued the program and describe a trip in which she had taken her parents to Mexico, acting as a translator. We had stumbled into the perfect educational plan.

The problem? Admission is by lottery. A year and a half later, when our daughter was finally ready for Kindergarten, we filled out the application and waited. And waited. When the letter finally came, we were number 54 on the waiting list and deflated. It was hopeless. We forced ourselves to move on, tried a private school, and checked out a few language learning tapes at the local library.

Then, sometime in November of 1st Grade, we got a phone call - realize this is now over three years since that first information night - and the voice on the phone said, “Your daughter just got a place at Puesta del Sol off the waiting list. You have 24 hours to decide or we give your spot away.” It was actually crazy. We pulled her out of her regular class to visit Puesta del Sol, fully expecting her to panic at the idea of 1st grade in a language she didn’t understand. After a 20-minute visit, she looked up at me and said, in a slow and deeply serious voice, ”I want to go here.” Even at six years old, she could feel the opportunity. If she stayed in her English-language school, she would never be able to see the world as these kids did.

The finale: Panama!

She is now a senior in high school! And through sibling preference, her younger sister, now a freshman in high school, is also bilingual. It’s been a fun and exciting road. We didn’t have the skills to tutor our kids on their journey, but we facilitated a string of fantastic student interns, a wonderful exchange student, and lots of multicultural extracurricular activity. Last year, our youngest was gearing up for the DELE, a Spanish-proficiency exam administered by the Spanish Government, when we decided it was time to celebrate our success with a trip to Panama. We booked tickets, scoured the internet for travel ideas and advice, and headed out. My husband and I were ready, armed not with a phrasebook, but with two blond, bilingual traveling teens. We were searching not so much for a place, but for bilingual moments and cross-cultural connections as the true reward for all that Spanish studying back at home.

On our first full day in Panama City, we headed toward the Panama Canal. We hailed a cab and asked our girls for help in negotiating the fare (always advisable to pre-negotiate in Panama City). Once inside, our cheerful cab driver, knowing that the girls spoke Spanish, launched into a guided tour. Our at-first-somewhat-reticent 16-year-old teenager began simultaneously translating – “This neighborhood is where Noriega had a strong following and so foreigners are often not welcomed,” “Here were the offices of men who helped build the canal,” and “Here are the stairs where he climbed in the fighting movie.” What? After a fair amount of back and forth, our cab pulled over at a set of stairs where he claimed that they had filmed the famous scene in which Rocky Balboa trains by jogging to the top of a long flight of outdoor stairs. Temporarily forgetting about our real destination (and the fact that the movie couldn’t possibly have been filmed there), we hopped out, climbed a few steps ourselves, and took lots of photos. All the while, our driver provided a steady stream of historical information in Spanish. The girls were mentally exhausted afterward but proud and happy of their skills and new insight, only some small fraction of which we parents ever found out.

Our next step was Guna Yala, land of the Guna People, also known as the San Blas Islands. I had hired a car and driver through a complicated interaction with the owner of our island resort and was somewhat frustrated that the car arrived an hour late and already half-filled with other guests, none of whom spoke any English. Again, we had to rely on the girls to help us manage the situation. They were able to confirm that he was the right driver, convince him to tie our bags a little more securely to the roof, and prevent me from having a coronary. It was a long and somewhat grueling drive over a mountain range to the coast where we connected with a small boat and headed to a very small island. At each stop, I was grateful to have Spanish-speakers with us, easing the way not only through the explicit exchange of words but through the implicit respect that choosing to learn Spanish so well implies. On arrival, we were greeted by an exuberant family. Our host’s first language was Guna, but Ane, the manager, also spoke enough Spanish to get by.

Our home for the holidays was a thatch-roofed, sand-floored hut just steps from the ice-blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. Each day, we were called to breakfast by a conch shell, and here our girls would learn of the day’s agenda from Ane. Together, they made decisions about the menu and the daily excursions, summarizing the plan for us only at the end. Over the course of three sandy, sunny, salty days, these logistics sessions turned into longer and longer discussions about life on the island, climate change, life in Seattle, and travel dreams. When we left there were hugs and exchanges of Facebook pages. Three young women from very different cultures, all who learned Spanish as a second language, able to chat and build friendships. It was pretty magical!

Both girls continued to use their Spanish all along the way. From enabling us to save money with Uber (most drivers spoke only Spanish) to negotiating rooms at a hostel in Volcan or chatting with young artists at the market. But one last experience really stands out. Throughout most of the journey, our 13-year-old was quieter, and so much of the both translational burden and interaction joy landed on our older daughter. We tried to nudge the younger one to speak but she simply had less real-world experience interacting with adults in all these different forums and is naturally more focused on animals than chit-chat.

Well, one afternoon, we were wandering around trying to find a footpath down to a waterfall when we stumbled on a few cowboys eating lunch. She just couldn’t help herself. She walked up to the horses and then, only somewhat shyly, asked the cowboys if she could pat their horses. They spoke for a few minutes in Spanish and she looked up at me with hopeful eyes and said, “They said I can get on the horse.” Well, okay, I thought and, before I could ask any questions, she was up on a Panamanian horse beaming with pride. She continued her conversation with the cowboys and then said to me, “They said I can take him for a walk.” What?! You can’t just hop on a stranger’s horse and wander off with it but she was sure that was what they had offered and, from their enthusiastic nods, it seemed she was right. So they untied the horse for her and off she went, down the road. I just stood there open-jawed. After a while, she patted the horse, turned him around, spoke to him (presumably in Spanish, as well), and brought him back. She hopped off, tied him up again, and thanked the cowboys. She was so happy it lit up the day. Speaking Spanish had given her the power to meet the people she wanted to meet, to interact with them respectfully, and to share her love of horses. It was exactly the kind of experience we had hoped for all those years ago.

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E. Ashley Steel and her husband, Bill Richards, co-authored two books on traveling with kids that are aimed at fostering multiculturalism, “Family on the Loose: The Art of Traveling with Kids” and “100 Tips for Traveling with Kids in Europe,” both available on Amazon.  She blogs at Family on the Loose and you can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

My Top 8 Family Travel Essentials

The following is a guest post by the lovely Annabelle Humanes of the piri-piri lexicon.

Just like Monica and her family, we love travelling. We love discovering new places. And we love taking our children everywhere we possibly can (like The Louvre a few weeks ago).

Wherever we go, however we travel, there are few things we always take with us. We travel light. We are not ones for packing toilet paper on a trans-Atlantic flight or children's favourite toys (beyond the one item).

A few weeks ago, I shared a few of the things we have never taken away with us and got quite a few passionate pleas for those items on social media. I wanted to share, here, some of my favourite family travel essentials. From medicine to car seats, here are the eight things we take, without fail, on our travels with our two young children.

Travel guide 

I love planning my trips with Pinterest and online travel blogs. I also find using a good old paper travel guide very rewarding. I love reading about the history of the places before or sometimes after our visits. And when wifi is a miss, they come in very handy.

Sat nav (GPS) app 

Whether it is a few kilometres away or hundreds of miles away, we love Waze. It works well in most countries we have visited so far. It is free. It is community-based so information about traffic jams and roadwords tends to be very accurate. You can set your destination when leaving your accommodation (using wifi) and you are good to go for the day. The only downside is that it tends to use a lot of your battery life. Don't forget the car charger.

 

A good old map 

Even though, we use electronic devices to navigate, sometimes a good old detailed map of the area you are staying in can give you ideas for exploring and discovering new things. I love spotting a town with a funny name or a road highlighted in green (natural beauty) and just heading in that direction on a whim.

Bubble Bum booster seat 

Our favourite booster seat ever. It is inflatable, light, folds flat and is approved by the EU safety standards and many other safety agencies around the world. It is suitable from age 4 and avoids having to lug around a huge booster seat. We have been using it for a while now and never had a problem with it.

Trail Wallet 

To keep track of expenses on longer trips, I always use Trail Wallet. Again, it is free and you can enter your total budget, daily budget and any currency you are using. Call me organised if you like but I don't like to come home to a big surprise in my bank account.

Arnica 

In my first aid kit, amongst a bunch of other remedies, there is always a tube of Arnica creme and small pills. Suitable for all kinds of grazes, bruises, it is the perfect go to remedy for children falls, bumps and other minor accidents. I even carry some in my handbag: because toddler!

 A camera 

Of course, I take way too many photos of my family and our travels and not enough photos of me. I bet I am not alone. I am hoping to have solved this partly by getting our eldest her own little camera. She absolutely love it and it is fun seeing our travels through her eyes.

Baby carrier 

Our youngest is still only two years old. We use a baby carrier for him still. It is lightweight, foldable, great for airports and children can be carried on your back for a long time. I would not have been able to fly from Europe to the US alone with two kids without it. I left the stroller at home. Too cumbersome.

What about you? What would you not leave home without? 

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Former linguist. Maman to two little world citizens. Currently living in Germany (via the U.K., France, and Portugal). Annabelle blogs about life as a displaced multilingual mum at the piri-piri lexicon. You can also find her on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

What is Worldschooling?

The following is a guest post by the wonderful worldschooler, Wendy Awai-Dakroub from Pint Size Gourmets. 


We get a lot of questions from family, friends, and even strangers when they hear that we worldschool our children. Taking your kids out of school, traveling around the world with them, and educating them along the way seems like a daunting task, but if we can do it, so can you!

WHAT IS WORLDSCHOOLING?

Everyone seems to have their own definition for worldschooling - it really is what you want to make of it for you and your family. For our two kids, Lou Lou and Jaf, it means they travel the world with us and learn about the world and its cultures and traditions through food.

They have a curriculum they follow on their iPads (we call it iPad schooling) that ensures they’re on the same level as kids their age who are in a traditional school. In addition, I’ve developed a culinary worldschooling curriculum for them to follow.

OUR WORLDSCHOOLING ADVENTURE

Back in 2014, my husband and I decided to leave the rat race, rent our home, take our two young children out of private school, and travel Europe in an RV so we could spend quality time together. A week into our trip we were all settled into our comfortable RV in Amsterdam and I decided to let the culinary worldschooling begin!

But with no books or workbooks and me having absolutely NO experience in teaching, this was going to be quite a challenge.

However, what we did have were iPad mini’s that we bought for the kids to keep them busy if and when needed (long train rides, airplanes, etc.). So, I decided to spend a day looking for and researching the best “apps” on iTunes that would help me create a personalized iPad curriculum for my children (see what they are here). For the first two weeks, it was tough getting them to focus on any studying, period. But after the kids got used to the routine, they just started iPad schooling themselves after breakfast.

I would check online reports on how they were progressing (available on certain apps) which gave me a sense of relief. Some days, homework was done in a park, or in a cafe, in the lobby of a hotel, or in the RV, so just knowing we only had to carry a journal, book, and iPad was easier. The kids really enjoy doing their lessons on the iPad and would do it on their own with little or no help from me, their teacher. They learned how important the iPad was to them, and funny enough you will not see them playing games or anything else on it in the evenings since they now associate their iPad with school.

Six months into our iPad schooling, we decided to visit a Sylvan Learning Center in Dubai, UAE to do an assessment test to see if my children were keeping up with the rest of the US public school testing scores. At the time, Lou Lou had started the 1st Grade and was apparently reading at a beginning 2nd-grade level. She was also at the beginning level math for 2nd Grade (a whole year ahead!). Jaf was still in Pre-K, but we tested him to see if he was anywhere near the beginning stages of math and reading. He also was progressing at a mid-Kindergarten level, in both subjects!

Because we lived in an RV part-time, we had to shop for groceries almost every other day. We’d make a meal plan for the week and “try” to stick to it. The kids, at first, would help with the shopping and cooking because they had to. Over time, as they got more involved in the shopping process, they eventually wanted to know more about cooking. That’s when I realized that by teaching my kids to cook, I could leverage their eagerness to learn and turn it into something wonderful and educational!

So, in addition to our personalized iPad curriculum, we take it a bit further by cooking foods from around the world. Culinary Worldschooling has now become the basis for everything we do when it comes to teaching our children. Culinary literally means “cooking” or “to cook,” and worldschooling can be defined as schooling through world-travel.  Here’s a video the kids did recently to explain what Culinary Worldschooling means.

Though our way of teaching is different from most, we know that both children are learning important life skills - ones they need to learn to survive in the world.

WORLDSCHOOLING RESOURCES

If you’re thinking about worldschooling your kids, or are interested in learning more about finding what worldschooling method works for your family, here is a list of resources we highly recommend:

- Multicultural Kid Blogs: Resources for Raising Global Citizens
- World Travel Family
- Raising Miro

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Wendy Awai-Dakroub is a Hawaii-based writer, photographer, traveler, and mom to kid-foodies LouLou and Jaf. The Dakroub family culinary worldschooling adventures are chronicled at www.pintsizegourmets.com, a kid-friendly food and travel blog.

Bilingual Travel Games & Free Sample

A few weeks ago, my friend Frances asked me for some travel games in Spanish. They were headed on a road trip and she wanted to use the time to boost her son's Spanish. Just for fun, I made a few pages and then decided that MommyMaestra readers might enjoy them, too. And THEN I thought I better make some English versions for the English-language learners following this blog.

There are 10 travel-related games in all. My kids got in on the creation process. We had such a good time creating the packet! So if you are hitting the road this summer and are looking for some fun games in English OR Spanish that your children can play together or on their own, consider my Bilingual Travel Game packet. You'll find a sample download of one of the games below.

Download Sample Game Here

Here's a look at some of the other games available in the complete packet...

To purchase this packet, visit my products page or my TpT store. 

Happy traveling!

Travel Bingo Boards

Do you remember these? When I was a kid, I loved playing this Interstate Highway Bingo game whenever we would go on road trips.

So imagine my delight to find it in a Cracker Barrel! I saw them there a few years ago, but when I went back to buy it for an upcoming trip, they had sold out. I've been kicking myself for not buying it ever since. Well, I found them again and snatched them up as fast as I could!

Cracker Barrel has them in stock right now, but there's no telling for how long. They come in a two pack for $4.49. So head to your local store to get them while you can!

If you don't have one near you, them you might prefer to go online and download some copies. You can find links to free downloads and more on my Pinterest Travel Bingo board (I never knew there were so many available!).

The 2014 FamilyFun Travel Awards

I love researching family vacation spots because for us vacations are new learning opportunities. My husband and I used to travel all the time before we had kids. Now, with a smaller budget, we have to be more thoughtful about our travel plans. This year, we've got Yellowstone on our list of places to visit.

I like it even better when someone else does the research for me and shares a list of fun family-friendly vacation spots.  So I'm bookmarking this infographic from FamilyFun because you never know when we might have the opportunity to visit the Strong Museum in New York or the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

Click here to cast your vote for your own neck of the woods to take home the title of “Most Fun Region!”

Taking His Hispanic Heritage Around the World

My six year old has been very fortunate to travel to many places around the world. He takes great pride in being able to say that he has been to over 10 countries. This is something we don't take for granted though. We have made "travel" a learning experience and have made sure that it isn't a bragging right, but purely the discovery of new places, the education of history and language, and uniqueness of the people.

We wonder if his interest of the world has developed because of these great experiences. My husband and I like to play a guessing game of our son's future career. Will he become a diplomat one day? Or a pilot? Only time will tell. We do know that his passion for learning of other countries, different cultures and even geography has been the basis for the love of his own heritage.

Diego knows he is a boy of Mexican decent, born in Tokyo-Japan and living in his country, the United States. He knows his extended family lives in Chicago, that he has lived in Singapore, New York City and now loving New Jersey. He knows he is American but that his grandparents are from Mexico. His best friends don't look like him or even speak Spanish. One cousin is half Puerto-Rican. Three others are white American. His ears perk up when the announcer at the New York Red Bull stadium speaks Spanish. He listens for other languages. He is waiting for the moment to visit his buddy in London and can't wait to go back to Puerto Vallarta and Japan.

Through his knowledge of the world, our son keeps learning more and more about his Hispanic heritage. The questions are non-stop! "What do they do about that in Mexico? How many dialects does Mexico have? Do they celebrate this? That??" And on and on! We continue to answer his questions as best as we can. We bring out our books, teach him what we know, practice Spanish, prepare the meals, listen to the music and show him our love for Mexico. He's loving it all and sharing it right back.

Betty Galvan, is helping her readers "find the positive and seek the benefits" over at her blog, MyFriendBettySays.com.

She is the mother of three beautiful little boys and a teacher.

Photo credits: mikifoto by mallika malhotra