image credit: audiophile, via flickr

As many of you know, all of the bilingual books we publish include the following text in a prominent location: Helpful hint for parents: If you are not a native speaker of the language you are trying to teach your child, you can find audio files with pronunciation aids, as well as many other helpful tips at www.bilingualreaders.com. One of our most important goals at Bilingual Readers is to give parents as many tools as possible to make the most out of our books, and the audio files have been a huge hit (click here to read more about our audio file project).

Today we’re thrilled to announce that the English and Spanish language audio files are now available for Marina and the Little Green Boy/Marina y el niño verde, the first title in a hilarious new picture book series about a little girl who makes friends with a little green alien who has been living in her attic.

You can now access the audio files for all our books by clicking on Catalogue, the title you are interested in and “download audio files.” It’s that simple!

image credit: listen, via flickr

The privileged few who have had a sneak preview of our products (available in our on-line store later this week and in bookshops all over Spain as of October 20th) may have noticed that all of the bilingual books we publish include the following text in a prominent location: Helpful hint for parents: If you are not a native speaker of the language you are trying to teach your child, you can find audio files with pronunciation aids, as well as many other helpful tips at www.bilingualreaders.com.

When Bilingual Readers was still just a glimmer of an idea, we began interviewing families from many different backgrounds to find out what they liked and disliked about many of the children’s books on the market. We also asked for suggestions on how to make our bilingual books as helpful as possible for parents and children alike. We got some amazing feedback, and we’ve worked hard to integrate many of your suggestions into our bilingual books. One of the most common requests we received was to provide audio pronunciation guides to help non-native speakers reinforce language skills with their children.

While our main focus is on getting parents to read to and with their children in both languages, we know that each family has different needs and will use these audio files in very different ways. Maybe you’re a Spanish family in Spain who wants to expose your children to English from an early age, but you want to make sure you’re pronouncing the words correctly. If you are a native speaker of the language you are trying to teach your child, you may want to use the audio files to expose them to different voices and accents. You may be a teacher who is looking for supplemental material to reinforce your students’ language skills. Whatever your situation, we hope you’ll be able to find what you need to get the most out of our books.

Of course you may be wondering why exactly we decided to include free on-line audio files for all of our titles instead of just including a cd with each product. We did briefly consider this option, but it was quickly discarded for several reasons. Firstly, it would increase production costs, which would inevitably lead to a price increase, and we have truly done our best to keep our prices down so that as many families as possible can enjoy our products. Another reason we decided to provide this material for free on our website is because we believe it will be a helpful resource to many families who, for whatever reason, may not be able to afford the luxury of purchasing our books. Finally, we believe that sometimes you have to give a little to get a little. We have learned so much from so many, and the free audio files and other complementary materials we include on our website are just one way of saying thank you to all of our readers who are doing their best to give the gift of bilingualism to their children.

If you haven’t listened in yet, just go the Media Library section of our website and click on Audio Archive to find a selection of pronunciation aids for our first two products Easy Alphabet!/¡Abecedario fácil! and Two Little Libros: Sea Animals/Animales del mar and Jungle Animals/Animales de la selva. You can also download the audio files for each book in our on-line catalogue. Have fun listening!

Last week we talked about the power of using bilingual play to help your child’s language development along. We all know that bilingual games can do wonders for helping children learn a new language or reinforce a minority language they’re already hearing at home, so I was very excited when Jessie from Gogolingo.com asked me to try out this new website, which uses a concept called “playful immersion” as a way of teaching language through on-line games. Gogolingo.com defines itself as providing “research-based, age-appropriate activities with individualized progress reports that customize to your child’s personal learning curve.” After playing around with my own little lingo (a lingo is a little bear-like creature which your child is supposed to help learn a new language), I got to know the site a bit better and thought I’d share some of my observations with our readers.

What first caught my attention was the huge level of parental involvement. In the Grown Ups section of the site, gogolingo makes it clear that they “want to partner with YOU - your child’s first and most important teacher - to help your child develop a life-long love of languages.” Now that’s a statement we at Bilingual Readers can agree with wholeheartedly! Each time a child plays on the site, the parents receive an email notification of what the child learned that day with helpful hints on how to reinforce those concepts. There are forums for parents to discuss their concerns, language learning tips of the day, individualized progress charts, external resource links and even reminder emails when your child hasn’t visited the site in a while.

As for the games, they are simple, fun and tailored to each child’s age and language level.* We were also pleased to find some great literary focused games, geared toward helping children learn the abc’s and read storybooks in Spanish. At this point in time the only language combination available is for for English speakers who want to learn Spanish, but Jessie assured me that they will be adding new language combinations (Spanish speakers who want to learn English are the next on the list!) as soon as they’ve perfected the product. In that sense, you can help out by contacting gogolingo.com directly with any suggestions you may have.

Of course, when it comes to language development, on-line language games are no substitute for direct parental interaction, but they can be a great complementary tool. In order to maximize the effectiveness of these on-line games, make sure you sit in as much as possible on your child’s play sessions at gogolingo.com or any of the other bilingual on-line game sites we recommend in our Just for Kids! section. Have fun!

*The possibilities of tailoring the program to your child’s specific needs increase with the premium model. You can see a comparison of the free vs. premium package here: http://www.gogolingo.com/membership/)

How on earth we could have missed these free literacy sites in our last post is beyond me, but when Carol Rasco (you can follow her on Twitter @RascofromRIF) from Reading Is Fundamental sent us a few links the other day we were blown away by all of the great free resources in Spanish and English on her site. The first thing that both surprised and delighted me was the fact that the President and CEO of RIF actually took the time to send us a note to let us know about the work they’re doing to promote early literacy in English and Spanish. After reading more about RIF’s rich history, it’s so great to see such a personal involvement from key staff members who care enough to get the word out about their resources.

The Leading to Reading site (Semillitas de aprendizaje in Spanish) offers age appropriate on-line games, stories and other activities for children aged 0-5 years old. The bilingual Let’s Read as a Family/Leamos en familia site also has bilingual picture pair activities, coloring books and even some multicultural recipes for families to enjoy. There’s even some fun stuff for grown-ups too, including video instructions on how to make your own touch and feel book. The concept is fairly basic, but it’s a great idea and works perfectly with bilingual text. Here’s the gist:

Instructions:

1. Collect your materials.
2. Cut out different items for your book using the textured materials you’ve collected.
3. Glue the items to the three-hole punched paper.
4. Label each page. For example, if you’ve created a page with a pink corduroy square, write “Pink Square” on the page.
5. Make a title page.
6. Thread the yarn or ribbon through the holes in the pages to create a book.
7. Read the book to your child.

Of course, these sites and many others have been added to the growing list of recommended on-line activities, which can be found on the Bilingual Readers resources page, in the Just for Kids! section. Have fun!

We were so excited to find two great websites full of free activities for helping parents develop children’s reading levels. Both sites are available in English and Spanish (one is available in French and German too!), and both are 100% free.

image credit: Alphabet Soup (via flickr)

The first webpage, Compact for Reading, is an initiative of the US Department of Education. Under the slogan “Connecting schools and homes to help children read,” the site goes on to offer four different level at home reading kits for kindergarten, first, second and third grade levels. According to the site, the School-Home Links Reading Kits are a collection of research-based activities designed to help families reinforce the reading and language arts skills that their children are learning at school.”

Sounds like a great idea to me, and I love the fact that the program also involves a pact between parents and schools working together to get kids reading in English and Spanish. Parent-child shared reading is one of the key factors in achieving early literacy, so any initiative which supports this goal is in high demand. Of course, the kits are geared toward US elementary school curriculum, but the activities are applicable for kids learning to read in English and Spanish all over the world.

The second free website, ReadToday.net (via Reading Tub), is run by the non-profit Literacy Center Education Network and contains emergent literacy activities in English, Spanish, French and German. This site is full of printable worksheets for practicing letters, numbers, colors, shapes and basic words. ReadToday.net addresses the specific needs of bilingual families by asking the important question, “What if every parent had the tools to teach their own children to read in a comfortable and supportive home environment? Not only would this give children a head start in life, it would enable every child to master basic skills in a first language before being dropped into a second language learning environment.”

What if every bilingual child did have the advantage of shared parent-child reading in both their languages at home before starting school? At Bilingual Readers our goal is to provide parents with the necessary materials to make this happen. Starting in October, we’ll be offering bilingual Spanish/English books, games and other activities for parents and their children aged 0-6 to enjoy together. In the meantime, stay tuned for more relevant articles and keep on reading!