Spanish?

A fellow homeschooler asked me today whether our boys spoke Spanish.  I struggled today to think of the reasons why my boys don’t know Spanish.  It’s not like we don’t speak it. In fact, we only speak it when we don’t want the boys to understand our top secret adult talk. 

I still remember the day we stopped spelling things to each other. You know, when you have to say something to each other and decide that they are too young to sound it out if you spell it? It began when the first Transformers movie came out and I told my sweetie that I would get him a similar air freshener that Bumblebee had in the movie.  The one that is spelled B-E-E-O-T-C-H  (it’s spelled that way in the movie). 

We giggled and then we heard Lil G sound out the word behind us.  ACK! We were mortified. 

So we decided that we needed a new code language and began using the fact that we are both fluent Spanish as an easy way out.  Pros, the boys don’t understand and won’t be able to detect what we are talking about (i.e. details to a certain surprise birthday party coming up). Cons, well there is a huge BIG one.  They can’t communicate to their Abuelita (grandma)!  Even more, we all know how beneficial it would be to be bilingual.  I terribly want them to have that advantage of course. I just can’t figure out how to do it!

The best language curriculum I’ve ever heard about is Rosetta Stone… but have you seen the price tag on that?  How can I vouch for paying $600 for a Spanish language curriculum, WHEN WE SPEAK SPANISH?!!!! I’ve been trying to remember to do little language lessons here and there but since it is not structured its not consistent.  It’s hard to have either Grandma teach them because they don’t see them often enough.

Time to come up with some ideas!

To be continued…