In this post: The truth behind how children naturally learn languages. Discover the five most effective strategies that will get your kids speaking Spanish, even if you can’t!

Do you want your kids to learn Spanish?

With the 2nd largest Spanish speaking population in the world (Forbes), the United States has seen a rapid rise in bilingualism.

It’s safe to say bilingualism is becoming the norm, not the exception, in an increasingly globalized world.

Parents are no longer asking “Should I teach my child a second language?” but rather ‘How do I do it?”

graphic of child with question marks - how to teach your kids spanish at home

A recent boom in the online Spanish education industry has allowed parents to access far more Spanish resources from the comfort of their own home.

So why are so many parents still struggling to help their kids make progress speaking Spanish?

In this post we will share the truth behind how children naturally learn languages.

Discover the five most effective strategies that will get your kids speaking Spanish, even if you can’t!

How are Spanish and Other Second Languages Learned?

It’s important that we first understand how children acquire languages, as well as what doesn’t work, before investing in Spanish resources.

The Child’s Absorbent Mind

You have likely heard the term ‘children are like sponges’ when referring to the child’s brain.
Dr. María Montessori identified several ‘sensitive periods’ in a child’s development. Her research suggests that children have an absorbent mind, most primed at birth to six years old for language acquisition.

The brain is capable of learning languages in a more subconscious way during these early years. But remember, languages can be learnt at any age.

The Most Common Mistake Made Teaching Languages

child bored on ipad laptop - how to teach kids spanish the fun way

No doubt, you can recall your own language lessons in school consisting of tedious vocabulary drilling and boring grammar. Lessons that forced you to memorize verb conjugations until you were blue in the face.

Such rote learning strategies have shown to induce stress and often cause low motivation, resulting in very limited progress in language fluency.

Linguist and educational researcher, Dr. Stephen Krashen supports that

“Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, and does not require tedious drill.” (Krashen)

Vocabulary and grammar are fundamental components of learning a language. The method for teaching them, however, should be very different.

What is comprehensible input?

So how do kids most effectively learn foreign languages?

The secret lies in the research pioneered by Dr Stephen Krashen from the University of California at Berkeley. He argues that successful language learning is rooted in comprehensible input.

Comprehensible input is where children are able to understand what is being communicated, without necessarily understanding every component of the language.

This is achieved in low stress and creative learning environments that involve the child and are interesting to the child.

Let’s look at a concrete example of a child learning through the strategy of comprehensible input.

Imagine you are learning about colors in Spanish with your kids. An activity that would support comprehensible input would be walking around the garden and pointing out the different colors you see.

You could then return inside to form a rainbow out of PlayDoh. Or sing ‘De Colores’, and read a book about colors.

Andrés se pone unos pantalones cortos azules, una camiseta azul y zapatos deportivos - spanish stories for children

The kids feel safe and engaged in learning the language subconsciously.

The parent is not forcing or testing them on vocabulary memorization. The material is of interest to the child, and learning is happening naturally, through creative play and in context.

Comprehensible Input is truly the hidden key to language acquisition! Click here to learn more about comprehensible input and its essential role in teaching your child a second language!

5 Effective Strategies to Teach your Child Spanish at Home

With this in mind, let’s look at five key strategies that will support your child’s Spanish language acquisition

1. Establish a Daily Routine for Language Learning

A common challenge for parents is inconsistency.

Language learning is a process and your kids need regular exposure to the target language to progress.

The best way to stay consistent is to plan ahead. Be crystal clear on when you will integrate Spanish into your daily life.

For non-native speakers, a popular method is called Time and Place, or Domains of Use. In a nutshell, this is where you choose specific situations in your routine to use Spanish.

mom reading story book to child - learn spanish through stories

2. Read Spanish Stories Together

We wholeheartedly believe in the power of stories. Reading aloud has numerous literacy benefits like building vocabulary, as well as cognitive development such as increased attention span and increasing the development of empathy.

Jim Trelease noted “what we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn.” (The Read Aloud Handbook).

Nurturing a love for stories from an early age is key to establishing a lifelong love for reading.

young boy reading books - comprehensible input spanish

Prepare the Reading Environment

Here are some simple ways you can create a love for literacy at home:

Build a bilingual bookshelf at home! Start small with a basket dedicated to Spanish books and rotate the books. Visit your local library to see what they offer, or read this post for recommendations for Spanish books for beginners.
Create a reading nook, or a special place, where you read aloud with your kids, making reading feel like a bonding, treasured activity.

young child reading book with mom - affective filter in language learning

Strategies for Reading Spanish at Home

Many families know how powerful reading is for their child’s development, and in order to ensure they read everyday they make reading part of their daily routines - that way it’s never overlooked!

Some families read during quiet time in the late morning, after bathtime, or before naptime or bedtime. If your routine is to read three books during one of these daily sessions, why not make one of the books regularly be a Spanish book? Or if you have several reading sessions in your day, make one of them a Spanish reading session?

For younger children, try reading earlier in the day when they are more rested. Vanessa Nielsen, founder of Bilingual Bookworm, recommends the ‘3 before 3’ parenting hack, that’s three books before 3pm with toddlers.

Make reading Spanish books a part of your routine and you’ll be amazed at what a tool books can be to teach your kids Spanish!

Animated Spanish Stories

But what happens if you don’t speak Spanish yourself? (Or if you just don’t have enough time in your day to read in English AND in Spanish to your kids?) At that point you may want to embrace technology.

For example, with FabuLingua’s app your kids will have interactive Spanish stories read to them by a native Spanish speaking narrator. They will engage with Spanish stories independently (and understand them!), even if you’re not a Spanish speaker.

Hang on, but surely a good old fashioned paper book is better than a digital story on a device? Well, nothing beats the warm and fuzzy feeling a kid gets when they sit on their parent’s lap to read a story…

‘Children are made readers in the laps of their parents’ (Emilie Buchwald)

Associating positive feelings with reading is indeed a powerful tool to foster a love of reading! But research has shown that there are some benefits to children experiencing stories with animations.

children who learns spanish at a young age remember much better

In a recent study, psychologist Erik Thiessen demonstrates that children can remember up to 20% more information when reading with digital animations.

Do you notice your kids can sit for hours through a cartoon, or CoComelon (the most viewed YouTube channel in the United States!), but struggle to make it through a five minute picture book?

The research proves that a child’s absorbent mind is in direct correlation with their level of engagement. Children need to be involved in the learning process and animations capture their attention more effectively.

Bottom line: Build a bilingual bookshelf to read books to your kids at home, and if you don’t speak Spanish yourself, or want them to have more exposure to Spanish stories than you have time for, choose interactive books that engage your kids in animated stories.

3. Provide Native Speaker Exposure

Children are born with an extraordinary capacity to mimic the nuances of languages they are regularly exposed to. This capacity gives kids an evolutionary advantage that allows them to quickly assimilate into the culture they were born into.

Regularly exposing your kids to native speech allows their brain to effortlessly absorb native pronunciation, intonation, cadence and accent with fidelity that will be hard to replicate later on in life.

As mentioned earlier, there are many podcasts and storytime options where your child can hear native speakers read stories so their brains wire to native speech patterns.

In FabuLingua, kids have fun mimicking and recording themselves copying the native Spanish-speaking narrators of their favorite stories. The results? They effortlessly develop native-like speech patterns! Check out this video to see how it works!

Building Real Life Context

Beyond allowing the child to hear the pronunciation, exposure to native speakers is also vital for providing context.

Conversing with native speakers and experiencing the culture used to involve traveling to the country of the target language. While immersion remains one of the best ways to learn a language, the investment and logistics of organizing this experience is out of reach for most families.

Fortunately there are plenty of resources available online today that provide native speaker exposure, without your family needing to jump on a plane!

Local bilingual playgroups and language exchanges are popping up across the U.S, as are free Dual Language Programs in schools.

In addition, you can enroll your kids in an online Spanish class for an immersive experience with a Spanish tutor. There are several excellent online options including trufluencykids.com, micasastucasa.com, wanderlustspanish.com and bilinguitos.com to name a few.

These classes provide interactive and immersive experiences, and cost a minimum $12-$14 a session. To make the most of these programs, we recommend 2-3 sessions a week, which can add up to almost $2000 a year. This is more than most families want to pay a year, so people often opt for 1x a week which brings you to a more affordable $600+ a year. If you do opt for this once a week approach, you will certainly need to supplement with additional comprehensible input since an hour a week will not be enough exposure to significantly move the needle.

Bottom line: Take advantage of any opportunities to immerse your kids in the language, hear native speakers and have conversations with them.

4. Motivate Your Kids to Speak Spanish at Home

A child’s intrinsic motivation is often affected by their performance. For this reason, it is important that we intentionally celebrate their progress.

Sometimes this can be hard to track with languages, as progress is very gradual.

Some fun ideas for nurturing your child’s motivation are:

Celebrating their spontaneous use of the target language with words of affirmation, hugs and lots of encouragement. “Water the roses, not the weeds”. Focus on when they do use or understand the target language, not on when they don’t.
Reading log charts with stickers as a visual motivation aid
Letting your kids choose a book, song or learning theme. Encourage them to take ownership of their learning. Free choice has been shown to be very important in developing a love of reading!
Create a rewards system that supports your goals. Remember that rewards don’t always have to be physical rewards. If your kids have a favorite game, time playing that game can be a reward.

For a complete guide in setting up a rewards system for your child, explore this post.

Bottom line: Be consistent in encouraging your child with rewards and praise.

5. Leverage Screen Time for Spanish Learning

Is screen time a constant battle in your home?

Instead of fighting ‘screen time’, try leveraging it to support language learning. Sometimes the simplest tweak can have the biggest impact!

In some households raising bilingual kids, parents set up Spanish language profiles on Netflix so it can only be watched in Spanish. In some households those Spanish profiles are used on the weekends / holidays or after a certain time of day. Set the rule that works for your family and be consistent.

This will not make your kids fluent, but will provide additional Spanish input and train their ears to native speech. (You can easily watch shows in Spanish on Netflix and Disney+, but not really on Amazon Prime.) PBS Kids also has some great Spanish language shows for kids.

Watching TV in Spanish is a good supplement to your other language efforts. Some TV shows can support your child’s fluency, but TV falls short in one critical area: it is not interactive.

young girl playing ipad stories games for kids fabulingua

The FauLingua app: Learn Spanish at Home through Stories

At FabuLingua we understand that children of this generation are drawn to spending time on a screen and playing games and believe that instead of fighting screentime, we can leverage it, lean into it to teach kids a second language the fun way!

We have designed an interactive digital mobile game that is proven to effectively teach kids Spanish through comprehensible stories. We know that stories are one of the most powerful teaching tools man has ever used - so we created a patented language learning methodology around stories!

Based on language learning science, our award-winning app is designed around the concept of ‘invisible learning’. Your child will be learning Spanish subconsciously, through fun stories and interactive games. They will only hear native narrators, imitate them and have fun recording themselves doing so, fine tuning their native-like accent as they break into peals of laughter hearing themselves.

ipad story page - mi abuela es mayor, mi abuelo también es mayor - homeschool spanish lessons

As the child progresses along their learning path, they meet new characters while unlocking a series of animated stories.

The integrated reward system allows your child to earn points and stickers (and keys for treasure chests in the future!) to celebrate their progress and completion of levels.

At FabuLingua, we believe you can teach your kids Spanish at home. You just need the right tools that combine comprehensible input, stories, fun and games!

We invite you to discover the power of games and interactive comprehensible stories with

30 days FREE access to FabuLingua!

A world of magical stories awaits! Discover FabuLingua today>>

This is a guest post by Corrie Wiik, the mama behind the Spanish education blog Mama Llama Linguist. Corrie is a former Spanish teacher and is now raising bilingual children in San Diego, CA and sharing her journey and insights on her blog. Connect with her on Instagram @mamallamalinguist and follow her on Pinterest.