May. 8, 2009
Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 1 May 8, 2009
Dear Homeschool Families,
Welcome to Dora & Diego Homeschool Spanish! Or we would say bienvenidos!
In this issue we will be sharing with you some of the miracles of MACHE 2009, tips for immersion Spanish learning, Mission Trip 2009 with fundraising ideas, update on our Preschool/Kindergarten curriculum and our accredited curriculum, recipe for Creamy Spinach Enchiladas (This is a good one for Minnesotans as it is made with mile enchilada sauce) and finally our grammar tip about Adjectives. If you don’t want to have any clutter you can see our archived newsletters on our blog at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/dndhomeschoolspanish/. We welcome any comments, questions or suggestions.
MÂCHÉ 2009 was awesome!
Kurt and I were so blessed meeting each and every one of you at our booth last month. We feel like we’ve met more of our family we didn’t even know existed. Kind of like finding long lost brothers and sisters. Welcome to our family. Please stop by to see us if you are in the
Through our conversations with everyone we found you would like to see curriculum for Preschool and Kindergarten plus an accredited program for your older kids. We hear you and are working diligently to complete these tasks. There were so many of you who were asking about an accredited program that in the middle of the day Saturday, when we had a brief, maybe five minutes, lull at our booth, Kurt said, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if the Lord sent someone to us today that would know how to get accreditation for our program?” Well guess what?! “Ask and it shall be given unto you.” The very last couple of the day, at 5:30 pm, had the answers. Is that the Lord or what? He is never late. He is always on time. We are on our way to going through the steps of accreditation.
Immersion Learning is One of the
For a learner the immersion phase in the language learning process will really catapult their learning ahead, particularly if they communicate exclusively in the target language, and don’t use their mother tongue.
As an example, if one is learning Spanish one might go to a Spanish speaking country where Spanish is the native tongue. One might then take classes where all the instruction is given in the native tongue, in this case Spanish.
One is then immersed in the language, and surrounded by the culture of the target language-speaking community.
At home you can partially immerse your children in Spanish by having them watch a movie they already know in Spanish instead of English. For example, “Finding Nemo” on DVD you can hear the movie in other languages including Spanish. This way they are focused on just the language. It’s amazing how their brains, no matter how young they are, will immediately translate from Spanish to English so their understanding will be there. At the same time they are learning Spanish in a focused environment while having fun.
Español de Iglesia Para Niños will prepare your children and your family for mission work across the border and in any of the 26 countries around the world where the Lord’s gospel needs to be spread.
Mission Trip 2009 to
Many of you who visited our booth at MÂCHÉ 2009 picked up packets of information to join us in October. I hope you’ve had the opportunity to read the materials and are seeking the Lord’s guidance on whether this is the trip you are to go on or not. We brought 25 packets of information and you all picked up 21. We would love to have all 21 families come with us. Tapestries of Life staff are praying for you and making preparations to accommodate each and every one. They said if we bring you all they will make room for all of you. If you didn’t pick up a packet and are interested in joining us, please visit our webpage for more info here: http://www.dorahomeschoolspanish.com/missions_opportunities.htm but ignore the donation spot at the top. That’s where we are having our donors go who are helping to sponsor us for this year’s trip.
For those of you, who are considering going with us this year, please keep in mind that your money for lodging must be in by August 31, 2009. If you have questions about this, please write to us at
A couple ideas for fundraising I would like to share with you have to do with your own personal talents.
The Lord has given you and your children different talents like gardening abilities, hair cutting, teaching CPR, singing, cooking, etc. Think of the things you love to do and turn them into fundraisers. For instance, Kurt, my husband, sings solos at church and has been a bass singer for the Crystal City Quartet. He had this great idea of putting together a night of music with many talented individuals he knew in the Christian music world and put on a two hour concert. All of the singers knew this was a fundraiser and weren’t going to get paid. The Lord spoke to their hearts and we had 12 participants, thirteen including Kurt. This idea was a great success. We had over $500 donated that night to help send us to
If your children have gardening skills, go around your city and have them mow lawns for donations. Take a few Saturdays and do what my brother the landscaper calls blow-and-go. Let the people know your kids will only be mowing and trimming for raising money to go on a mission trip. It’s amazing how people are moved by the Lord to be generous especially with kids. They could easily raise enough money for one person in two days.
Take your talents and use them for the Lord’s glory. He will bless you abundantly for following His desires for you to take care of the widows and orphans. On this trip we will be helping the orphans.
Has your church ever gone on a mission trip together? Tapestries of Life are always looking for groups of people to come down and help them. Instead of going with us why not go as a church? We would be happy to give you the tools to put it all together. Even the video I showed at the workshop can be sent to you for you to present to your congregation. Just send me an e-mail and I can get it to you plus what you would need to know to put a team together.
Update on Curriculum
We are in the process of researching accreditation. We were given such good information at MÂCHÉ 2009 which takes a while to go through. Our goal is to have accreditation by the end of the 2009/2010 school year.
The Preschool/Kindergarten curriculum is half finished. We have the pronunciation cds to create and a few more worksheets. Our expected availability date is June 1, 2009. We will keep you posted on our progress.
Creamy Spinach Enchiladas
For those Americans who desire a milder Mexican recipe, try these yummy smooth Creamy Spinach Enchiladas from Azteca®. These would also be good for a vegetarian diet but not vegan.
Ingredients for Creamy Spinach Enchiladas:
1 pkg Azteca® Flour Tortillas (Burrito size)
1/2 cup sliced green onions
1 Tbsp butter or margarine
10 oz pkg frozen, chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese or Queso Fresco (Mexican white cheese)
10 oz can mild enchilada sauce
Remove tortillas from refrigerator. Heat oven to 375 degrees F. In medium saucepan, sauté onions in butter until crisp-tender; add spinach. Cook until moisture is evaporated, stirring occasionally; remove from heat. Stir in cottage cheese, sour cream and 1 cup shredded cheese.
Warm tortillas as directed on package. Spoon approximately 1/4 cup filling down center of each tortilla; roll up. Place seam side down in greased 13" x 9" baking dish. Pour enchilada sauce evenly over tortillas; sprinkle with remaining shredded cheese. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until bubbly & heated through. To serve, top with sour cream and green onions, if desired.
As long as your spinach is thawed ahead of time this is actually a very quick dish to make with hardly any clean up.
*Grammar Tip – Adjectives/Adjetivos
“The adjective in Spanish is a variable part of speech and must agree in gender and number with the noun it qualifies: libro pequeño, casa pequeña (small book, small house); libros pequeños, casas pequeñas (multiple small books, multiple small houses).” The word for book, a noun, in Spanish is masculine so the adjective must have a masculine ending which is usually an o. Likewise the word for house, a noun, in Spanish is feminine so the adjective must be a feminine adjective. The ending would be an a. In this example to make them plural you just add an s to both the nouns and the adjectives.
A simple way to know if a noun is masculine or feminine is by looking at the ending of the word. Of course in any language there are exceptions to the rules. If they kept it all the same way, you would get bored. We will give those exceptions to you at a later time.
“Some adjectives, however, have the same ending for both masculine and feminine genders: hombre fiel, mujer fiel; hombres fieles, mujeres fieles (faithful man, faithful woman).”
For the parents and older kids, we share this information but for the younger children we are teaching them sentences in the right order with the right endings. These kinds of explanations can be confusing. Confused minds get bored easily and therefore Spanish isn’t any fun anymore. The learning then becomes a chore and doesn’t progress. We strive to bring a stress free learning experience for everyone so they can have the optimum learning experience possible.
Well that’s all we have for you this time. Whew! That was a lot in one shot wasn’t it?
In the future, if you don’t mind Moms and Dads, I would like to take each of these items and send them to you individually in a weekly newsletter. Your time is valuable and I don’t want to bog down your life with long newsletters. My idea is to present to you once a month a teaching tip, once a month a great recipe, once a month information about our products, once a month info about mission trips in a weekly format. That way you can pick and choose what you would like to read and what you don’t. I know it means you will have more e-mails from us but they can be easily deleted.
If you decide you don’t want to receive weekly newsletter, please reply back to us and we will remove your name from our list. But you will always be able to stay up to date by visiting our blog either through our website http://www.DoraHomeSchoolSpanish.com or go straight to the blog itself listed above.
Thank you for your time today and may the Lord bless your family abundantly,
Michelle Rothwell, Founder
Dora & Diego Homeschool Spanish
The most comprehensive Biblically-base Spanish text.
*The information in quotes comes from “Vox Compact Spanish and English Dictionary” Second Edition by McGraw Hill
Comments
May. 9, 2009
Untitled Comment
Posted by Jessica
Hola Michelle,
I happened across your blog, and I look forward to visiting often. We're not a homeschool family, but we are monolingual parents raising our children to be bilingual. And I'm always looking for and trying out ideas to keep the Spanish going. I blog about it at www.spanish-lesson-plans-for-children.blogspot.com
‘Hasta luego!
