Lana Privitera is the proud Mom of a fun-loving, bilingual "chatterboy" that likes to spice his speeches in English with long-winded Spanish words. Her goal for 2008 is to pack also some French and Italian in his very expandable 3.5 year old brain. Lana still qualifies as a SAHM but uses her "spare" time working as a watercolor artist and Spanish/art teacher.

Yesterday our little friends Madigan and O'Malley came over and, to my surprise,

greeted us with a perfectly enunciated: "Buenos dias! Como estas?" Then proceeded

to sing several short songs about body parts, days of the week and numbers, all in

very clear Spanish. Later, while we played some word bingo in that same language,

Madigan, who is only 6, surprised me again by reading the upside‐down words in

my board across the table! Not only she can read already in Spanish but knows

and/or guesses an incredible amount of words in a language her parents don't speak

at home.

By asking the girls I gathered that their teacher was a Non‐ Native speaker of

Spanish and that she only teaches 2 days a week at their school.

Of course these girls are incredibly bright and have an interest in learning whatever

they find in their path, but still illustrates my point that anyone can learn any given

language even with limited exposure to it.

You don't have to be a native speaker of "X" to start introducing your child to that

language. Maybe you are just somewhat familiar with it from your years in College

or your grandparents tried to teach it to you when you were a child. Just think of

what a great family project it would be: you can learn it together and create yet

another bond between you and your children!

There's a wealth of language teaching programs out there. You'll have to pay for

many of them, of course, but you can also get plenty of materials online...for FREE.

It's really easy to find websites that cater to the younger set as well as sites that tend

to focus more in helping skilled readers.

Here there are two of my favorite ones:

http://www.literacycenter.net/lessonview_es.htm

(Infinite possibilities!)

http://montessorihome.com/readingcards/common.shtml

(Choose subject, then language, then the guy lifting the maximum weight)