Perlita Comes to America

I had the pleasure to read Perlita Comes to America recently and I have to say, although I loved it, it also tugged at my heart strings and left me feeling really sad. I know and understand that children immigrate to the United States every single day; it's a harsh reality. I never read a story that depicts an immigrant experience so well through a child's voice. Because the stories of children who make life-changing journeys are so important, I am thrilled that this new series of bilingual picture books will tell a gentle, honest story of children's feelings through this dramatic lifestyle change.

Perlita is a school-aged girl who has to leave her home in Argentina with her mother so they can join her father in the United States. Author Silvia Perez Arvelo takes the reader along when Perlita has to say goodbye to family and friends in her native country. Although she is thrilled to see her father again and is excited to board the big, shiny airplane, she understands that the transition to her new home in America will not be easy.

Faced with a loneliness and a language barrier in her new city, Perlita and her mother make a new friend who volunteers to teach them English and bake new favorite American treats. They quickly understand what they must do to feel at home in the big city.

A perfect book for children who can identify with Perlita, I personally cannot wait to share this book with my boys. I believe it will help them become aware that hundreds of thousands of children come to this country for a better life. I hope they will also be able to understand the sacrifice many families have to endure and that not all of these types of journeys are easy. I hope that if Silvia Perez Arvejo continues to write about other children's experiences she will find a way to make different stories as kid-friendly as Perlita's. Our kids are smart, need to know the reality of complicated situations such as immigration, but we need gentle voices like Silvia Perez Arvejo's to help parents like us deliver these important stories.

Disclosure: I was given a free download of Perlita Comes America in Spanish and in English so I could review the book. The website does have a free English and Spanish audio version that I know moms would love for a read-along. Please click here to purchase your book.

Betty Galvan, is writing "for smart and stylish moms" over

at MyFriendBettySays.com.

Best Buy Education Opportunity to Win $25K for Classroom Technology

© Tyler Olson

Many of MommyMaestra readers are educators in bilingual or dual immersion settings, parents with children in a low-income school, or parent of students in dual immersion schools. If you are one of these, then I really want you to know about this opportunity from Best Buy Education (BBE).

Best Buy Education is currently offering a generous sweepstakes open to all educators and administrators. It runs from now through July 4, 2015 with a grand prize of $25,000 in Best Buy credit, as well as additional prizes of Gift Cards and Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablets with keyboards. If your (child's) school could benefit from adding or upgrading technology/devices in the classrooms, then this is a great opportunity to win the technology tools and services your students or child's school need to succeed. Think about all the fabulous educational apps that are now on the market that make concept learning easier!

Unfortunately, this sweepstakes is not open to homeschoolers or preschools. 

Click here to enter for a chance to win and view complete details.

Best Buy Education is a direct-channel division of Best Buy®. They make it easier than ever to give students the tech tools they need to succeed. Their dedicated Account Managers will consult with you, offer knowledgeable, unbiased advice and guide you to the product and service solutions that best meet your needs and budget. Whether you are rolling out new devices in the classroom, launching a Bring Your own Device initiative, or upgrading the technology throughout your school, they can provide the products, support and protection you need.

Best of luck to your school!!!

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions, however, are my own. 

Free Activity to Build Number Recognition Fluency in Spanish

This post contains affiliate links.

May's freebie from our sponsor, Lectura para niños is a simple set of worksheets to strengthen your child's number recognition fluency in Spanish.

Leah says:

Here is a freebie that I use for number recognition fluency.

The pages are divided into groups of numbers that the students need to practice on. Each day, I will pull the students into small groups for five minutes. Each group will practice the number fluency section that they are working on. The students progress through these pages quickly with just five minutes each day!

Number recognition is one skill set that is taught preschool and students should be completely fluent in both letter and number recognition when they enter kindergarten so that they do not fall behind.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS FILE

• Dale, Dale, Dale / Hit It, Hit It, Hit It: Una fiesta de números / A Fiesta of Numbers by René Saldaña, Jr.
• ¡Fiesta! by Ginger Foglesong Guy
• Just a Minute! A Trickster Tale and Counting Book by Yuyi Morales
• Cool Cats Counting by Sherry Shahan

For more awesome Spanish materials, especially those that teach children to read in Spanish, check out Lectura para niños on Facebook, Teachers Pay Teachers, Blog, and Pinterest.

5 Tips to Help Kids Deal with Disappointment

As kids grow older, they start shifting from experiencing life's little disappointment to living through bigger ones each day. Even parents start to feel heartbreak over their children's hiccups or missed opportunities.

Kids start to learn for the very first time that academic tests are super important. They realize that they have to tryout to play their favorite sport and even the most comfortable performers develop stage fright. Some children lash out angrily after hearing or living through a hard disappointment. Some cry. Some withdraw and don't ever want to speak of the situation. Yet others act as if nothing ever happened. No matter how children react, it's best if  parents consistently handle the situation in the same manner.

1) Show empathy. Watching a child swing a bat and miss making contact with the ball over and over is not easy for any parent. Receiving the news that Alex has to work harder in math to keep up with his peers is tough, too.  Nevertheless, parents should always ask for the child's version and perspective of the situation and try to figure out what to do next...together.

2) Show love. Regardless of how the parents feel about the "failed" opportunity, they never stop loving their children. Kids should always know their parents still love and support them during their successes and failures.

3) Don't reward. A call from a teacher to discuss a student's poor behavior is not only hard on the parents but sometimes extremely embarrassing to the child. Even if a child cries (and breaks your heart) and promises to start behaving, it's best if parents don't reward with anything just to try to make him feel better during that difficult moment of discussion. Allowing your children to feel disappointment is okay.

4) Give it time. Try not make a child's failure an instant "teachable moment." Sometimes kids understand a missed opportunity but react positively in disbelief and want to chat about it as soon as possible! Sometimes kids break down and cannot even listen through their heartfelt sobs! Tread carefully before plunging into a deep conversation.

5) Consider it a learned lesson. Kids should know that a failed opportunity and a disappointment will only help them achieve their future goals. Raising resilient kids in a world full of challenges is important and parents shouldn't try to solve all of their children's problems. Listening and practicing positive feedback to help them see what went wrong is key, but allowing the child to feel what they need to feel during a failure is crucial. Parents will soon see that children can become more confident after analyzing their failures and will give them hope that next time things can have a different outcome.

Betty Galvan, is writing "for smart and stylish moms" over

at MyFriendBettySays.com.

Free Download: Build Your Own Board Games in Spanish

I'm just loving this month's Spanish-learning freebie from our sponsor Spanish for You! And if you have a Spanish learner in your family, I think you will, too.  

The Build Your Own Game Board and Activities comes with activity cards and links to activities and games that boost language learning. This particular freebie focuses on the months of the year, symbols or images associated with each month, and an audio file to help the players/learners with pronunciation. There's also a worksheet at the end for practicing the vocabulary.

Click here to download this file

If this is your first time here, you can find other free samples from Spanish for You! here. There are some fantastic downloads of games and activities for you and your family to enjoy.

Thanks, Spanish for You!

Brain Chase Giveaway!

I am so excited about this summer's learning project for the kids! You might remember that I signed up both of them to participate in Brain Chase Summer Learning Challenge. They've been watching all the video trailers and working themselves into a fit because they just can't hardly wait to get started. (It totally helps that two of the main characters look just like my two kids.)

What has ME so excited is their new partnership with Rosetta Stone, which gives participants the opportunity to participate in a language module as part of their online academic work. When I registered my kids, we had the option of choosing between "learning a new language" and the "writing module." Students will be required to complete 2 lessons (a total of a little over an hour) each week in order to fulfill their language requirement and unlock the next episode. Students can choose from 30+ languages when they register, and will have a week at the beginning of the program in which to switch languages if they prefer. Naturally, we selected Spanish!

You might remember that this year's challenge theme is The Sunstone of Cortes. Check out this awesome video showing how the Sunstone was made to hold the safety deposit key to $10,000 in scholarship money. I LOVE the whole concept of an archaeological treasure - (especially one dealing with Hernan Cortes and the Aztecs!).

Are you wondering what the program is like? If so, check out the new dashboard demo for a hands-on look at Brain Chase. You can interact with last year’s dashboard for detailed explanations about how kids’ work is tracked during the program’s five weeks.

Psssst! Teacher referral reward program

Brain Chase is offering $15 to teachers for each of their students they refer to Brain Chase. Registrants who hear about Brain Chase from a teacher can simply enter that teacher's name and school name at registration. Kids fight summer brain drain to win a treasure... and teachers win too! You can download flyers to share with your students here.

Unfortunately, early bird pricing has already ended. But with their premium pricing package, you also get a Brain Chase-branded adventure backpack, a Brain Chase t-shirt and Sunstone of Cortés patch ($249 for the first registration, and then $149 for each sibling). Later in the summer, these items will be available for a la carte purchase. You’ll be able to find the details on the website soon.

The Brain Chase Library Challenge!

Throughout the month of May, Brain Chase will be hosting a 4-city Library Challenge. In each of the following cities, they will hide a voucher worth $1,000 in a local public library:
Salt Lake City (May 4)
Seattle (May 11)
Boston (May 18)
Orange County (June 1)

A unique riddle will lead adventurers to the exact location of the voucher and a complimentary Brain Chase registration.

The Giveaway

Brain Chase has MOST graciously offered to give one MommyMaestra reader a FREE subscription for this summer's challenge!

To enter, all you have to do is use the Rafflecopter below.

¡Buena suerte!

a Rafflecopter giveaway 

Disclosure: This is part of a sponsored campaign with the Motherhood and Brain Chase. However, all opinions expressed are my own.

It's Okay - I'm Doin' Good as a Homeschool Mom

DISCLAIMER: This is part of a sponsored collaboration with Minute Maid and DiMe Media. Minute Maid will provide this prize. Minute Maid is not a sponsor, administrator or connected in any other way with the contest – and all opinions are my own.

About this time of year, I tend to somehow end up overloaded. I feel stretched thin and wonder what the heck I’m doing. I struggle to get the school year finished, turn in all my freelance work, run MommyMaestra, answer emails, launch a summer reading program for Latino children, maintain my garden, keep house, feed my family, support my husband, and most important, be a good mom.

There are certainly days when I feel like I’m probably the worst mom on the planet and feel the guilt of not being fully present mentally for my kids 24 hours a day. There are days when my daughter has been talking for five minutes and asks me a question and I blink and realize I have no idea what she said. It drives her crazy. And I don’t blame her.

Sometimes I’ll be reading aloud to my kids from a totally awesome book and my mind will wander to all the things I have to get done before bed. Then I’ll suddenly realize that I have no idea what I’ve just read or what has happened in the last chapter, but apparently it makes sense because my kids are hanging on every word. I didn’t even realize it was possible to read out loud and think about something else at the same time.

There are days when I walk into the living room in the middle of the day and find my kids watching a movie because I got tied up on a conference call. Or days when we come back home from a bajillion errands and I walk into my house and think we’ve been robbed because there is such a mess everywhere and I know I didn’t make it.

There are moments when we are in public and I ask my kid some simple math problem and they have momentary memory loss and I wonder in horror why it is taking them so long to add 2 + 2. And then I think, “That’s it. I’m a total failure as a homeschooling mother. How could I really think I could teach anyone anything?” I concentrate on breathing and looking calm while the witnesses nearby (who send their grand/kids to a traditional school) give me the side-eye, when all I really want to do is look at my kid and say, “Really? You can’t remember here and NOW in front of everyone?”

But it only takes unexpected moments to make all my doubts and fears disappear in an instant. The moments are spontaneous and take me by surprise and it is like someone yanked a pair of really blurry sunglasses off my eyes. Like when it’s my son’s turn to read aloud and I am astonished - and overjoyed - at the ease with which he reads difficult passages. Or when my daughter is doing tricky math problems in her head, and I have to work them out to get the answer! Maybe we’ll be walking across a parking lot and both my kids slip their hands in mine just because.

Or when my daughter laughs and we talk and she is happy and loving and gentle and kind and I know that she is just turning into such an amazing, joyful person with a passion for doing good and making a difference. Or those quiet, early mornings, when my son comes downstairs and peeks into my room, then enters and gently kisses my forehead while he tucks the covers in around me. Or when my husband instinctively reaches out to hold my hand even though he is busy talking to someone or thinking about work.

All these moments combined fill my heart and reassure my mind and I know that I’m “doin’ good.” All the worry and self-doubts melt away, and I embrace those snippets of time and give thanks for my family.

I don’t think I’m the only mom who experiences these feelings of insecurity and guilt.
Which is why I can relate to this video...

What about you? Do you feel like you’re doing a good job? Or do you get overwhelmed like me?

This Mother’s Day, I want to celebrate you. I want to reassure you. I want to recognize all the awesome things that you (or someone you know) are doing.

Do you know a mom who’s doing a great job but may not realize it? Post a shout out or short story about her in the comment section below to let her know that she’s doing a better job as a parent than she may realize. With the comment, you’ll have a chance to win a Minute Maid prize pack, which includes a $50 Visa gift. You can use the gift card to continue “Doin’ Good” with your kids - or give it to someone you think could use it to keep Doin’ Good with her/his family.

Thanks so much to Minute Maid for creating this campaign to reassure and empower parents. To learn more, you can follow Minute Maid online, on Facebook, on Twitter.

Feliz día de la madre.

Early Registration for the 2015 #L4LL Latino Children's Summer Reading Program Opens!

I am SO excited to announce that early registration for the L4LL Latino Children's Summer Reading Program has officially opened!

Over the last two summers, we've listened carefully to your feedback and this year's program reflects your requests.

First, thanks to our underwriters, we're pleased to announce that the entire program is FREE for both families and groups.

Second, you're going to love our new, family-friendly website! Once you register, parents and even children can login to our site on June 1st to access both of our summer reading programs. Here's a brief description of the two and how they differ:

Third, you can officially save the titles of the eight books your child reads (or that you read to your child) over the course of the summer as he or she reads them with our new easy, online reading log.

As in both previous years, both programs are available in English and Spanish, and all of the materials have been updated.

Now the absolute BEST part is our online Summer Reading Camp. Designed for children in 2nd through 6th grade, it includes so many wonderful literacy boosting activities, including original work by Latina authors and illustrators! Your students can explore 10 themes: Art, Music, Sports, Folklore, Food, Summer, Nature, Heritage & Immigration, Family, and Poetry. Infused with culture, each one comes with a reading passage and games or activities that strengthen reading and writing skills, as well as additional reading recommendations to fit each theme.

I can't wait to share some snapshots of the camp with you, but will have to wait until we're closer to June 1st.


And did I mention that this year's program is open to GROUPS for FREE, too?

Educators: Once you register your group, you'll receive a Group Number that you can share with your students. When they sign up with your number, we'll be able to track them in our system and send you monthly reports on how your students are progressing over the summer.

Parents: Need help nudging your child's school to participate? Download and share our flyer with them!

So what are you waiting for? Head over to our new L4LL Summer Reading website and register your family or group!