BOCA BETH: Bringing Spanish to Life!

It’s mind-boggling!

I never got my invitation to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding…what’s up with THAT?!?!?!?!

I was busy anyways…entertaining and exhibiting at the Bebe Paluzza Baby & Toddler Expo  in Schaumburg, Illinois this Saturday and Sunday so I REALLY could not have gone.  Thanks anyways Clinton Family!  Another event!

See you at the Bebe Paluzza show tomorrow, and if not this one, keep up on where they will be next!  Coming to a city near YOU!

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea feliz educando!

Boca Beth

Apple Taste Fun: Cut apples into wedges and have

• Food Ideas for Cinco de Mayo

   

  Based on the age of children you are having lunch with today, here are some fun food ideas:

   

  • Salsa and chips

  • Big Fritos with sour cream, chili & cheese and/or guacamole for dipping.

   

• Make your own taco station complete with meats (chicken or beef), tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, taco sauce and shells.

              

Flan, dulce de leche ice cream, Tres Leches cake (available in many flavors these days) or galletas/cookies from a local Spanish bakery!  Yummy!

Craft ideas for Cinco de Mayo:

• Have the children make their own Mexican ponchos out of large brown paper grocery bags.  Have them decorate them with paint, sequins, feathers, beads, foam shapes, streamers, and more!

               

Maracas can easily be made with two paper plates stapled together (adult supervision required), popsicle stick as the handle, and rice, pasta or beans as the noise filler.  Have children decorate the outside of the plates prior to assembly!

 

 

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea feliz educando!

Boca Beth

Still having fun with fruits in Spanish and English this week with Boca Beth?!?!?!

Hope so!

Here are a couple of snack ideas to enjoy while singing our Fruit Fun / Fruta divertida song together with young children!

Snack Time Fun with Fruits

Apple Taste Fun: Cut apples into wedges and have available in large bowls for dipping several flavors of Jell-O mix in its powdered form. Invite the children to dip an apple wedge into one of the Jell-O powders, covering all sides of the apple. When you let the apple sit for many seconds, it turns a bright, vibrant color. The children are then encouraged to eat the apple. It’s a messy activity but great fun!  Suggested Jell-O’s to use are orange, raspberry, lime and blueberry.  Yummy!

Make Me A Watermelon Please:

Buy two kinds of sherbet: a green and a pink (or red). Buy a bag of chocolate chips. Cover the inside of a medium sized bowl with aluminum foil. Place the green sherbet inside the bowl and form it to the bowl

around the perimeter. Mix the chocolate chips with the pink (red) sherbet and then scoop it inside the green. Freeze it. When ready to eat, turn it upside down on a plate, peel the foil off and slice. It looks just like a watermelon! The chocolate chips look just like the seeds of the watermelon! It is so cool!!!

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea feliz educando!

Boca Beth

P.S. (Entered our contest yet?  Hurry!   You have a chance of winning the CD our Boca Beth Fruit Fun song is on PLUS four fruit shaped Silly Bandz!!!  Go to this link and comment, comment, comment!!!)

Most of the time it’s me sharing our Boca Beth bilingual fun resources for introducing Spanish and English to young children here at my blog!  As you know I share other company’s cool resources that bridge the two languages together for fun, easy and affordable bilingual learning!

Today - it’s YOUR turn!

Today - you win our More Boca Beth / Más Boca Beth music CD and a pair of our lead-free, toy-tested mini maracas!

Simply share your idea on this blog post - by commenting below - how you have or would suggest teaching/introducing opposites to young children ages 2-8!  How would you bring the two most widely spoken languages in the United States - Spanish and English - together while teaching these opposite words? 

It’s that easy to win!  We will accept your ideas through Sunday at 5 pm EST, February 28, 2010!  We will choose two ideas to share, and both of the writers of those ideas will win a CD and a pair of maracas!  (Plus your ideas will be posted on our blog next week!)

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea feliz educando!

Boca Beth

Ready to save lots of money and give the smartest Holiday Gift you will ever give?

                                                                                                 With our Black Friday special code of BF you can save 30% off any of our Boca Beth bilingual CDs and DVD for children PLUS receive a FREE BOCA puppet with every CD and every DVD purchased!

Start shopping at this link for any of our four award-winning Spanish and English music CDs - that’s right.  Each CD is presented in a true bilingual format with the two languages side by side in every song for a great point of reference and easier learning!  It’s called the parallel method of learning or the addition method.  You will save $10.50 with every CD you purchase - the 30% with code BF off the CD plus the FREE puppet!  Go now and buy for every little girl and boy you love!

And if the child is a more visual learner, then save 30% with code BF on any of our DVDs at this link and save $11.10 on each DVD with the 30% discount and FREE puppet!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my amigos and amigas!  I am thankful for all of you and your love and support over the seven years we have been sharing Boca Beth fun!

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea feliz educando!

Boca Beth

Last week we gave you a free MP3 download of our Kiss is a Beso / Beso es un Kiss song off our My First Songs in Spanish / Mis primeras canciones en Inglés CD.  This CD has been featured as a resource on the US Department of Education’s linked site OELA (Office of English Language Aquisition), has won numerous parenting and teaching awards, and the songs off this CD have been featured on The Education Channel!

Enjoy this YouTube video of children acting out the song with our BOCA puppet - who, by the way, is now a 7-foot-tall costume character available for interactive community concerts, family corporate events and motivational keynotes in the field of Early Childhood!

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea Feliz Educando!

Boca Beth

Today the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans honored many of us in Tampa with a Community Conversation featuring Juan Sepulveda - a gentleman working with President Obama, Arne Duncan and the entire team of the US Department of Education. 

We were invited to attend and brainstorm, network and exchange ideas on how best to improve the education of Hispanic Americans and the overall education system here in our great country.

Thanks to Leslie Acosta-Martin and Anya Smith for accompanying Señor Sepulveda for today’s Tampa conversation.  Lots of great exchanging of ideas and common interest in the children of the United States of America filled the room.

As promised - here is a free MP3 download of one of our songs that addresses helping the Latino child in our preschools and early elementary schools.  By hearing her native language in this song, the Latina child is more apt to maintain her native tongue, feeling proud along the way, while also learning English right alongside her native language.

Click here for the Boca Beth bilingual song!I Know the Days of the Week / Yo sé los días de la semana

Boca Beth, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, and teachers, parents, students around this nation need to come together in the interest of our young children and the future of our country to improve the system that is currently failing a majority of our children.

Here is the contest part of this post:  On the way home, I stopped to get something at the mall, and as I headed back to my car, there was a grandma, a very young mom and her 3 or 4 year old son.  They were in a car with no air conditioning next to me - also getting ready to leave the mall.  He looked so sad, mom looked so hot and grandma had already said out loud how she just needed her pillow and a nap.

I rolled down my window and asked the mom if she had a DVD player at home.  She nodded her head yes with a most quizzical look.  And I explained how I owned the company that she had been reading the magnetic signs on my car about, and I gave them our I Like Animals / Me gustan los animales DVD and told her I hope that he loved the Spanish and English fun!

What have YOU done out of the kindness of your heart lately for a complete stranger?  Share your stories below and the best three will win the same DVD that I gave that family today!  Winners chosen by me!

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea feliz educando!

Boca Beth

Yesterday as I was driving around town with my 7-year-old daughter (who has begun to complain of a ‘racing heart’ and ‘weird heartbeats’) I heard a lot of celebrating of Dr. King’s life going on.  Now that we listen mainly to The JoyFM I get a lot of positive vibes pumped into my body with contemporary Christian music morning, noon and night (and I love, love, love it!!! Though Megan learns the words much faster than mommy much to her delight and my crammed full brain’s dismay!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

The radio host of that period of the day was remarking on how Dr. King would never have wanted us to take the perspective on his life that it was perfect, that what he accomplished should be frozen in time and remembered that way.  This man was pointing out that Dr. King would have wished for us to examine his life, his journey, his preachings in the church in Alabama, and all of the things he did and did not do to make a difference.  And then we should be dynamic in our own lives to continue to move forward his dream in our own way, our own style.

It was such a lovely and refreshing take on the whole days’ meaning and Dr. Martin Luther King’s life.

What is your dream?  How can you dynamically live your life to make it happen?  I really would love to hear from you as I share my dream below and what I am doing to bring my dream to life.

I dream of continuing to be the great mom that I am to my three children, the greatest blessing that God can give parents.  And as I continue to be patient and loving and kind with them, I dream to grow my Boca Beth business to the level where we become a household name with families who have children ages birth - eight when the topic of bilingual fun products for their kids comes up.  That dream of a strong company and brand will lead to a TV show where a world of diverse families will benefit from my bilingual music and my love of teaching about languages & cultures; which in turn will lead to strong sales in the Boca Beth product line. 

*****I am dynamically bringing this dream to life first of all through daily reading of God’s word, daily talks with God and asking Jesus to stay by my side and keep me in control of myself, my company and my direction as a fantastic parent ( I do not want to be just an okay parent….I want to ROCK at it!!!! )  Then I am keeping up with the trends of online business, reaching out to others for advice a lot this year and keeping in touch with positive people who will lift me up as I lift them.

Now friends, please, tell me your dream and how you are dynamically bringing it to life!

Happy Educating!  ¡Sea feliz educando!

Boca Beth

This is so amazing…………….  I am blogging while sitting at a table in the beautiful Lobby of the Rio Mar Wyndham Resort in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.  There is hip-swaying, Latin music blaring from the Lobby Bar, my Latino/Latina friends are doing the salsa, the ramba, the merengue y mas/more, but I felt compelled to share before we end our family vacation here in Puerto Rico.

Yo tengo muchas amigas de aqui y ahora puedo entender porque quieren salir para otra vida mejor - otra vida llena de oportunidad.  I have many friends from here and now I understand why they want to leave for a better life - a life full of opportunity. 

Don’t get me wrong - it is an island of beauty, of many natural wonders and mysteries.  But, what it also has, is poverty, crime, crazy driving and a feel all of its own.  I could not live here and be the positive person that I am.  It’s been a terrific family vacation at a lovely resort that does not replicate the life these people live.

I thank God, I thank my husband, my family and my life for what I have.

Buenas noches Puerto Rico - Good Night Puerto Rico -

Boca Beth