Spanish Immersion Journey to Punta Cana: What My Household Realized

As a completely bilingual Latina elevating multicultural children, I’ve at all times envisioned myself passing down the Spanish language to them. Since their infancy, I’ve made an effort to purchase bilingual books, play Latin music, and educate Spanish sight phrases to my kids. Regardless of this, my two children, ages 4 and eight, are nonetheless primarily English-dominant.

I’ve had guilt over this for the reason that ‘one-person, one-language’ methodology simply didn’t work for us. Instructing kids to be bilingual could be tough, and I’ve to remind myself that I grew up in a Spanish-dominant family whereas our household now primarily communicates in English. 

I’ve had to consider extra inventive methods to get them enthusiastic about studying the language. Earlier this 12 months we determined to take a Spanish immersion journey to Punta Cana within the Dominican Republic. We stayed on the Lopesan Costa Bávaro, a 5-star, all-inclusive resort to make journey and household actions so much simpler.

We actually loved the house, which included a splash park, kiddie swimming pools, an indoor play place, an arcade, and the seaside–after all. The resort additionally included 5 eating places, together with one which served conventional Dominican delicacies. 

To me, language is about extra than simply the phrases themselves; I wish to educate them to worth the world and its many cultures. So the aim of the journey was to primarily communicate to my children in Spanish and supply them an enriching journey expertise. I blocked out two to a few hour home windows to talk to them solely in Spanish every day and located that they grew to become curious in regards to the language and saved asking me the right way to translate phrases, even after we weren’t in apply mode. 

Considered one of their favourite spots within the resort was the ice cream store. The children realized what to name the candy deal with in Spanish (helado) and requested the right way to say the totally different ice cream flavors in Spanish too. Crucial a part of the immersion journey was to have enjoyable and to set practical expectations about their language growth journey. 

My children weren’t going to depart the journey being absolutely bilingual, however the aim was to spark their curiosity and create a constructive studying expertise. For me, it was additionally a reminder to let go of the bilingual parenting strain I continually placed on myself. A lot of passing down a language requires planning and consistency, which could be arduous to maintain up with at occasions—and that’s OK. 

As soon as we obtained residence, my son requested us to obtain the app Duolingo on our units so he might proceed working towards his Spanish. And I nonetheless make it a degree to sometimes shift to Spanish and educate them new phrases: little by little, poco a poco.