Having fun together in ml

Happy to hear your daughter enjoyed Mujercitas and your son the counting book. My children also loved both!

Carrie, I have no doubt you'll come up with a productive plan for your youngest! And I look forward to reading your rewarding updates about her! 

Carrie, all this sounds terrific and will surely prove to be very productive! Full speed ahead! 

It’s been several months, so I thought I’d post an update on where each of my kids is at linguistically right now.

9 year old
My nine year old is still reading a ton, in both ml or ML. She also writes well in both languages. Last week she decided to start making up and writing down a story for fun, and when I saw her first page it is in ml. Always a win for us ml parents! I had her write a couple papers over the school year in ml that we sent to ml relatives once she’d finished. She speaks in both languages at home, and when she’s speaking to a ml-only speaker, she does very well.

7 year old
My 7 year old’s reading in the ml has taken off. He is now a thoroughly independent reader, and is enjoying books I would have never suggested because of their high level. Several months ago, I got The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as an audio book on cd from our library. He listened to it and was completely captured, and when the book ended he picked up another book from the Chronicles of Narnia series (Prince Caspian) and read the whole thing. He is now reading the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We have the entire series in ml, so I’m just quietly enjoying it every time I see him engrossed in a book.

He has finished both of his ml reading workbooks that he had to do for this school year. He still makes a number of spelling mistakes (mixing up c and s and z for example, or leaving out the silent h), but he can write pretty well in ml.

4 year old
My four year old has learned all the letters in the ml alphabet. A while ago I was working on syllables with him (ie ma, pa, sa) but it was going very slowly and he was mostly just guessing so I slowed down and decided to wait a few months before we try again. We created our own alphabet book by making a page for each letter with lots of pictures or stickers of things that started with the letter. He was very excited to do that.

2 year old
My 2 year old is speaking mostly in phrases, but every now and then she throws in a full sentence. The other day she looked out the window at a couple kids playing basketball in the street and said, “Mami niños jugar basketball afuera” (Mommy kids play basketball outside.) The verb is not conjugated, but I was pretty impressed she could string all those words together. She speaks both ML and ml, although I would say that she is probably still stronger in ml. All of my older kids speak to her in ml. Honestly all she needs at this point is consistent input, which I have been trying to provide through talking and books.

Goals
9 year old - I am trying to provide new audio input from various places online, and take advantage of all the free materials that are available during the Corona Virus. For example, I signed up for the free 30 day trial at scribd.com and she listened to many hours of audio books that month. I just signed up for the 30 day trial at BrainPop.com and am letting her watch a bunch of those short videos about tons of great non-fiction topics. I’d also like to order some new books for the summer.

7 year old - My goals for my 7 year old are pretty much the same as for my nine year old. I want to find him engaging online material in ml and encourage him to use his ml as much as possible. He also started writing his own book, and it was in ML, so I’m trying to think of a creative way to encourage an ml book too =) He also really likes playing board games with me, so once summer starts I hope to do that more often with him.

4 year old - I want to spend this summer spending some time every day with my four year old just doing a language specific activity, such as doing a sticker book together, or playing a game. He will start kindergarten in September, so I want to take these last few months to make his ml as strong as possible because once he officially starts school (even though I homeschool) several of the subjects we do in ML.

2 year old - Put into place my four part plan that I listed a couple of posts above. (Talk talk talk, books, language activities, my other kids) I did really well with this plan with her for about a month, and then started being a little less intentional. I definitely want to bring that intentionality back over the summer.

Fantastic, Carrie! You and your kids are continuing to do so well! For all four, it sounds like it's "just" a matter of maintaining your productive efforts to continue experiencing such satisfying progress. And the fact that your older children are able and willing to support their younger siblings is a tremendous plus for your journey together. They all deserve big hugs!   

Here's what I can remember off the top of my head, Carrie:

A,O,U vs. E,I works for J/G/GU/GÜ and C/QU/Z.

K sound: ca, que, qui, co, cu.
Z sound: za, ce, ci, zo, zu.
J sound (jota): ja, je/ge, ji/gi, jo, ju (je/ge and ji/gi you need to know what words are spelled with each).
G sound (gato): ga, gue, gui, go, gu
GU sound (agua): gua, güe, güi, guo (no guu).
So: guepardo, cigüeña, pingüino, guitarra, guapo.

Other rules I remember:
- Always M before B and P (not N): campo, cambio.
- Words ending in -bir are spelled with a B except for: hervir, servir and vivir (and words with these verbs, like convivir).

B/V and H/not H you have to learn each word.

There were many rules, like accent rules, differences between the spelling of words that sounds the same but mean different things: "sino" and "si no", or "vaya/valla", "haber/a ver" (a common mistake among native speakers) "aya/haya/halla/allá", "por qué/por que/porque/porqué".

Carrie ,

I just had an idea.  You might be able to adapt the following to any language:

We are on the 4th day of this "long a" word study and we had a lot of fun with the games and even the little one joined in (within her abilities ).