How can we maintain bilingual balance? It has already started. She hasn’t even entered Kindergarten yet and she is already speaking more English than Spanish. All of a sudden my house is full of English. I find myself thinking more in English, and now that both my wife and my da
Is French Immersion a good choice for our family? The other day we went to register our daughter for Kindergarten. This is a big deal, she’s growing up so fast! We also attended an Information session about French Immersion with the Vancouver School Board where parents expressed
Learning English is important The Fresh Voices Youth Advisory Team, which formed in 2011, is a diverse group of young people who are working to improve the policies and practices that affect immigrant and refugee youth in British Columbia and in Canada. This inspiring group of young p
Countdown to Kindergarten I can’t believe it but this week we are registering for Kindergarten. Our little one will turn 5 this coming April, and if we were still living in Mexico she would have started going to public school at the age of 3! Thankfully here in British Columbia
Emotional literacy Knowing that we had been struggling with our strong-willed four year old’s emotional outbursts, my sister gave me a parenting book for my birthday. My sister, a yoga teacher and prospective counselling psychology student, could not have given me a better gift
Las Cafeteras in Vancouver I had the fantastic opportunity to celebrate my birthday recently with Las Cafeteras and my closest family and friends. They played an all-ages show at Vivo Media Arts Centre in Vancouver My mom, her friend and even my 4 and a half year old daughter were abl
Celebrating Life and Death To honour my cousins’ grandmother (‘granny’ – my adopted grandma) who passed away this past weekend I’d like to share how my family has experienced the celebration of life and death known as Día de los Muertos both in Oaxaca and
More Than Bilingual After a few months of surrounding myself with information about bilingual kids, it’s time to talk about multilingualism. There have been many news stories recently about the benefits of bilingualism (for both adults and children), but what about those of us w
Learning Spanish with Music When I was 14, I picked up Christina Aguilera’s Spanish-language CD “Mi Reflejo” (My Reflection) and I became interested in learning Spanish. Equipped with a Spanish-English dictionary I started learning some vocabulary and I was able to sing al
The World of Barbapapa I came across Barbapapa at World Kids Books in International Village just before I wrote my first post about Books for Bilingual Children. I went in looking to buy a book for my daughter in French, and Barbapapa by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor caught my intere
