Skip to main content

Storytime Bilingüe featuring “Los bebes aman/ Babies Love”

It is our evolutionary instinct to love babies. Their big eyes, chubby cheeks, sweet smell and cooing sounds make them irresistible to most grown ups. But what do babies love? Babies love to snooze, snuggle, and suckle. And they love to look at pictures of other babies! So in this week's story time, we read a bilingual book that features all the things babies love to do.

Scientific research shows babies' cuteness sets off a potent protective mechanism that ensures survival for otherwise completely dependent infants. When grown humans see babies, they are triggered to have a hardwired, primarily maternal, caregiving response, and researchers are now learning that cuteness actually sets off unique brain activity.

But as babies grow and develop, they need much more than food, water, and shelter. Once these basic needs are met, the next step is to develop baby brains, and research shows the best way to do this is to read to them. That's why we share a story time each week with you!

This week's story time bilingual is our most interactive video yet. With big photos and an easy-to-follow text, this Spanish and English story will give you all the feels.


Now that Maya and Mateo are growing and maturing, I'm trying out some dialogic reading strategies with them. Dialogic reading is the process of talking about the book as you read it with children, ultimately having a "dialogue: with kids around the text they are reading. It includes asking questions to help children connect with the text at a deeper level, including defining new words, analyzing the components of a story and being able to talk about the text. Check out our video above to see how to use these strategies with pre-readers. 

For more information on dialogic reading, check out the Strengthening Families Newsletter and The Early Childhood Alliance video Road Trip series #1 Dialogic Reading (which features some of your favorite emerging bilinguals!)




Labels:

Comments

  1. Jed54December 13, 2020 at 2:20 AM

    This is a great commentary about the importance of reading and future brain development. It's more than reading, it's exactly what Mae demonstrates each week with her children----the relationship and exchange.... Thank you Mae and family for making it "real"!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is 5 Little Monkeys Racist?

I’ve seen a lot of Tik Toks debunking children’s nursery rhymes lately. I have two toddlers, so now whenever I hear one of those rhymes, I think about their unsavory origins. But my son loves, loves Five Little Monkeys. He’s just learning to talk, and can almost say it by himself. I’ve thought about telling him to stop singing it since I learned in the original lyrics it’s not monkeys jumping on the bed, but he just gets so much joy from singing it as he jumps up and falls down, I thought... no harm, no foul, right? As long as he thinks the song is about monkeys, it’s ok.  Until my niece came over one day, and the three toddlers were playing on an old mattress we have on the living room floor for them to jump around on. My son asked me to sing 5 Little Monkeys. At first it was cute, because they literally were jumping on the bed, but then I took a good look at the three of them.  My kids are half-Guatemalan but very fair, like I am. Whereas my niece is half-black, and her ski...
2 comments
Read more

Why You Should Travel with Little Kids

I took my first cross-country road trip when I was six-weeks-old. My parents loaded me up in an old Ford Wagoneer and drove me home from my dad's hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, to my hometown of Ojai, CA. After that, we traveled back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast every summer of my life. A few times we flew, but most years we loaded up the car with the suitcases, the dogs, and the children and drove 3,000 miles across the country. This early exposure to travel instilled within me a joy of seeing the world, and since that first trip I have visited 34 states and 14 countries. And I hope to share that same joy with my own little ones. Traveling with children can be hard--it disrupts their nap schedules, may involve crossing timelines, and definitely pushes everyone beyond their comfort zones. But seeing different countries and different parts of our country as children gives them a greater appreciation for cultural and regional differences, and it widens their exper...
10 comments
Read more

Toddler Morning Schedule in Spanish

Do you struggle to get your toddlers ready and out of the house on time in the morning? The past few morning in the Barrios house have been absolutely terrible. Maya usually wakes up early with me, but I let Mateo sleep until the last possible moment before we need to wake him up to get to school and work on time. This worked for a while, but this week we have left the house in tears.  Since this is the kids' first year apart during the day, they miss each other so much. They want to play with each other in the mornings instead of getting ready, so I tried to think of a way to keep all of us on track.  In order to help build their independence and organizational skills, I came up with a morning schedule for us to follow, with words and images. Then I placed a Maya copy and a Mateo copy in a clear dry-erase pocket and hung it in a central place by the kitchen. Now the kids know exactly what they need to do  in order to get time to play with each other before school each mo...
Post a Comment
Read more