Resources for Raising Bilingual Children: Music
I thought I’d take a break from musing about raising a bilingual child and talk about some resources that our family has used. Our daughter absolutely adores the library, I think it comes second only to the park in the list of fun things to do, especially in this rainy city. Any library and any book is exciting for her (we have even taken out a few Vietnamese books because she liked the pictures). The Vancouver Public Library has some great bilingual resources – in the next couple of posts I’ll focus on Spanish materials for kids.
Learning Vowel Sounds With a Donkey
I’ll be honest – I don’t necessarily enjoy listening to most kid’s songs. However, one particular artist that our whole family has enjoyed is Jose-Luis Orozco. A search at the Vancouver Public Library will give you 16 different items, one of our favourites so far is the song “Mi Burro Es Muy Decente” (My Donkey Is Very Decent) from the CD Canto y Cuento about a donkey that dresses nicely and goes to school to learn his vowels.
Jose-Luis Orozco’s bilingual albums are a great mix of songs, stories and even tongue twisters and his work is widely recognized as both entertaining and educational. In this clip from NPR Morning Edition you can learn a little bit about his work and his history as a singer – they even have an original clip of his falsetto as an 11 year-old boy.
His newest work Caramba Kids is especially appealing to little ones because it uses cartoon characters like in this video for the song Good Morning.
Next week join me to hear about our favourite books in Spanish for kids.
