Putumayo shares our passion for creating global citizens.

The Putumayo Kids music team chooses songs with child-friendly lyrics and rhythms by both renowned and undiscovered international artists. The collections of songs are tested in schools and with families. An international music selection contributes to the education of future global citizens while holding true to Putumayo’s mission of sharing music that is “guaranteed to make you feel good”. -putymayo.com

Watch a preview below!

For a chance to win a full collection of their kids’ CDs, just leave a comment telling us what your favorite genre of music is! You can also enter by leaving a comment on our Facebook page. Look for the “Putumayo Kids” thread.

And the winner is…
Rachel Cox Cassidy! “I’ve been previewing Putumayo’s cd’s on their website, and really enjoy the Reggae Playground. Makes me wanna dance! ”

Rachel, please email adam@littlepm.com to claim your prize. Thanks for the entries, everyone! Look out for more fun contests in the VERY near future.

Does it get any better for your wee travel buddies?

We’re thrilled to announce that Little Pim was selected to win two prestigious awards this month!

Dr. Toy has chosen Little Pim’s Gift Set Plus- a gift set that includes three of our language DVDs, a set of Word & Phrase Cards, and a plush panda- to win a Dr. Toy’s Best Vacation Children’s Product Award! Dr. Toy, Stevanne Auerbach, PhD, has been for many years one of the nation’s and world’s leading experts on play, toys, and children’s products. With 30 years of direct experience, Dr. Auerbach includes educationally oriented, developmental and skill building products from the best large and small companies in her four annual award programs.

We also received another new award from the Dove Foundation Review Board for our Spanish 3-Pak (Vol. I).

As you plan your seasonal getaways, be sure to take Little Pim along- our Digital Downloads are compatible with your mobile device or smartphone. With 10 languages to choose from and our two iPhone Applications: Little Pim Talking Coloring Book and Little Pim Word Bag, the only thing left to pack is sunscreen.

Here are some travel games you can play:
1. My favorite car game as a child was I spy. This is a GREAT game for your kids to build their vocabulary, both in 
English and in a foreign language. Even if they can’t spell yet, you don’t have to play I spy with letters – you can play it with sounds, or other descriptors. Passing by a field? I spy something that goes “moo”. Whether it’s a cow or una vaca, it’s a fun game to keep your kids engaged with what’s going on around them, and build their vocab and ability to describe their surroundings.
2. Make a map of where you’re going. Or rather, let your kids make a map – it doesn’t have to be to scale. Getting them to draw landmarks they see along the way – whether it’s a strange tree or a wacky building – this is a fun game for any aspiring cartographer.
3. Counting cars, counting cows, counting anything really. This is a fun game even as an adult (you can play it with license plates while your kids play it with car colors). Again, get them to count in English or in a foreign language. You can make it a quest to find a house or car that’s red/rouge/ 主要翻译, and helping your kids count in another language.

4. And last, but certainly not least – what journey would be complete without Little Pim? Get a digital download, put it on your smartphone or tablet, and let your kids watch and learn as you weave through traffic. Alternatively, pop in the Spanish or French bop CD, and have yourselves a good old-fashioned road trip sing-along!

To celebrate our awards, we’re holding a special contest! In the comments below share one item you never leave behind when traveling with your children. One person will win any one DVD or Word & Phrase Cards deck of their choice!

The fact that Emmett goes to school with kids from Korea, India, Australia and China is one of the things I love about his school. Even though Emmett is in one of his “picky eater’ phases (OK it’s more than a phase) where anything that isn’t fish sticks, white meat chicken, pasta, yellow pepper or pizza meets with a resounding “no thank you!” I was happy we could share this international experience. His little brother Adrian was slightly more experimental, taking a crack at some chick peas with yellow rice.

The kids, who helped organize the evening, (along with a parent volunteer committee) drew colorful maps of each continent which hung on the walls, and the food was grouped by region. That way, as you went down the buffet line you could sample empanadas from Spain, fried ravioli from Italy and then move on to Samosas from India and sushi from Japan. Each dish was numbered so we could vote for our favorite one at the end.

We had a great time and it was a fun way to bring some of these countries my kids have not had much experience with to life through the foods they eat (we’ve been doing a lot of spinning our globe lately and learning about where it lands). There were also signs up all over teaching kids how to say “hello” in a variety of languages! Of course I loved that! All that was missing was Little Pim himself.

Does your child’s school or daycare have an “international night” or activity? if it did, would you attend?

This is a topic that resonates with most parents raising their children to speak a second or third language, often doing so for some combination of cultural heritage and desire for their children to have that extra advantage in the future.

All three CEOs said our educational system is not doing enough to prepare our children for the global marketplace. Their companies need people who are able to work across borders, engage in cross-cultural teamwork and communicate with people of other cultures. Ursula Burns also noted that we are closing down our borders in the U.S. (accepting fewer immigrants and asking international students to leave) right at the time we need more international brainpower to drive innovation and execute on the entrepreneurial abundance here in the U.S. “The future of big tech is going to be compromised if we keep pushing out international talent.”

The fact that fewer students from abroad can get educated here will also mean fewer bridges between our country and others. Two CEOs pointed out that they do business with people running major companies in other countries who were educated in the U.S. and therefore understand the American way of working. Personal relationships are key, and many are formed in undergrad, grad and business schools, when international students study abroad. Fewer international students today may mean fewer American CEOs at international tables in the future.

CEOs love facts and numbers and these CEOs were no different. They reminded us that there are 6 billion people in the world, only 300 million of whom are in the U.S.

• All successful big businesses are selling to and working with the international marketplace.

• Over 50% of the revenues collected by their three mega corporations (total of over $80 billion) came from OUTSIDE the U.S.

• International sales are currently the biggest growth area for most U.S. Fortune 500 corporations.

Our K-12 schools are not doing enough to prepare our kids in math, reading, science and language, so what can we do to prepare for this shift?

• Globalization is here to stay (Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, notes he revived the entire company by going global), so as leaders we need to have a “healthy paranoia” about getting left behind in the global economy. We need to pay better attention to what is happening in other countries and make sure we remain competitive.

• Companies in the U.S. need to step up and partner with the government to improve schools and provide more educational opportunities (one such example is the “Change the Equation Foundation” that helps kids improve in science and is funded by the private and public sectors)

• We need to rethink how we teach kids using new technology at our disposal (John Chambers of Cicsco mentioned his two year old granddaughter’s seamless use of the iPad and questions how tablets, e-readers, and other new such devices are going to be integrated into the classroom)

Ursula Burns ended the keynote panel by saying she felt the most important question we need to be asking as a nation is “what are we going to do prepare our children to participate in the global economy?” She feels this means more science and math, and more exposure to the tools that will help our kids become global citizens.

We know that speaking a foreign language will give our kids at least one of the tools they will need… Do you agree with their take on where things are going? You can post your comments to our Facebook or Twitter page.

** Mommy Tech Summit http://www.mommytechsummit.com/

Digital moms’ influence as the “chief decision maker” for their families, extended families and friends continues to grow. In turn, the Mommy Tech market has grown into a $90 billion dollar marketplace driven by tech-savvy women who are recognized as both powerful consumers and advocates for new technology.

He notes that by 2050 our nation is on track to be 29% Spanish speaking and we are increasingly doing business with Latin American countries. He also makes the sobering case that more of us will be retiring to Latin America, where the living is cheaper. He says Chinese is more of a “specialty” language that will only help our kids if they become proficient and choose to work with China. which should remain in the foreseeable future one of the world’s economic super powers.

Here at Little Pim we have also seen the rising popularity in Chinese (it is our second best-selling language, neck in neck with French, after Spanish) and have noticed another trend – that more and more parents are choosing to introduce their children to TWO languages in addition to English. Thousands of parents in the United States are getting their babies and toddlers going on some combination of Chinese and Spanish or Chinese and French.

We field many calls and emails about this each week. Often parents explain that the Chinese is to give their kids what they think will be a competitive advantage in tomorrow’s economy, and the romance language is to honor a family heritage, or because one of the parents speaks that language and can help with it at home.

The benefits to kids of learning more than one language during early childhood are widely documented (it improves memory, advances verbal and math skills and analytic thinking). What about the benefits of two? Research shows that a child can learn up to three languages without any confusion. The learning results are even better if one of the languages is spoken at home, and if the languages have a different base, such as Chinese, which is tonal, and French, which is a romance language. A child will never confuse “sourire” with xiao’ or ‘笑’. But they might confuse “sonreía” (Spanish) and “sourire” (French).

Ultimately choosing a language, or languages, for your child is a very personal choice that takes into account your hopes for your child’s future (will she be part of a multi-national company someday? Will he be able to travel, work and live abroad? Can she communicate with family members who don’t speak English?). But whatever language parents choose, their children will be getting a huge advantage over their monolingual peers. Spanish is by far still the leading language being studied in the U.S., with 88% of all foreign language classes in schools in Spanish (per the Today Show – link to the home page video here?).

Picking up a THIRD language is much easier once a child has learned a second one, so rather than dwell on “Which Language is Best,” debate, parents should just dive in and know their children may make their own choice later about what language they want to learn, and it will be fairly easy for them to make that change if they have a solid base in any language.

My own sons, Emmett and Adrian, have been learning French since they were babies, because of my family connection to France (I know Spanish or Chinese might be more “useful” in their careers) but if they get to high school and decide they want to learn Chinese or Spanish I will happily let them change, and know they will have a much easier time understanding the grammar rules and acquiring new vocabulary thanks to their years of French.

What do you think? Are you considering introducing your child to two languages? Do you know people whose kids are studying Chinese and a romance language? We’d love to hear from you. Take our new QUIZ on our homepage about which language/s your child should learn, if you haven’t chosen yet.

Nicolas Kristof

*Kristof is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist, who writes powerfully about pressing international women’s issues, such as inadequate maternal health care and the shameful ongoing slavery of young girls, notably in his book Half the Sky, written with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn. Kristof resides outside New York City with his wife and their three children: Gregory, Geoffrey and Caroline.

We’ve just been featured on Savvyauntie.com! If you don’t already know this site, it’s a great resource for the hip aunts and godmothers out there who are looking for ways to indulge (and in our case, educate!) the little ones in their lives. I was interviewed by Melanie Notkin – the site’s founder and original Savvy Auntie – about the best ways to get kids learning new languages from a young age. So much of language learning happens at home, and helping kids on the road to fluency is very much a family affair.

Melanie and I spoke about how best to engage children (and their families) in a plan to foster a love of languages. We discussed everything from the benefits of speaking a second language to the ways you can best help a child with their learning, even if you don’t live nearby. Enjoy!

Read the whole interview!

As a mother myself raising bilingual children, we had so much to talk about! Dr. Steiner’s children speak German, French and English — and her teenage daughter started Chinese this fall! I am so happy Dr. Steiner is helping to advance the pediatric field’s understanding of the ways speaking two languages benefits young children’s brain development and she will be making important contributions in this fields. Keep an eye out for her.

Boston has a very international population, which is why it isn’t that surprising that our soon to be Brazilian distributor calls this city home. This is Heloisa Fitzgerald, a talented and passionate fellow mom-preneur I met through Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO).

Heloisa is launching “Little Pim Brazil” in 2011. Little Pim is already distributed in 6 countries outside the U.S. and we are very excited that Heloisa, a native of Brazil who is raising her own two daughters bilingual in Portugese and English, is going to introduce the Little Pim method to English learning tots in Brazil. Magnifico!

This was a whirlwind 24-hour trip that left me charmed by Cambridge, energized by the people I met, and looking forward to going back for more Little Pim language fun events. Next time I’ll bring my boys, but may not be able to get beyond Curious George & Friends if I do…

When they suggested that SpanglishBaby and Little Pim partner up to help Roxana teach her 4-year-old her third language, French, how could we say no?

From Roxana via SpanglishBaby.com:

“In an effort to make this venture into a third language more of a reality, we’ve partnered with the fabulous Little Pim and will be using their entertaining and educational products and materials for our trilingual adventures.

The plan is for me to document Vanessa’s progress through regular posts and to also bring you expert advice in the form of vlogs of the consultations we’ll have with Julia Pimsleur Levine — Little Pim’s founder — to help us along our journey!”

Whether you’re using Little Pim to help your child learn English, start on a second language or a fifth, you’ll want to follow this journey and glean some tips along the way.

Watch the first vlog below. Happy language learning!

Contest: In the comments below, share one way you can help or are helping your child pick up words from a second language. One person who comments will win either Spanish Bop or French Bop!

Click “Share on Facebook” and receive a bonus entry by leaving an “I shared!” comment below!

Share on Facebook

If the winning person is also a subscriber of the Little Pim newsletter when they are picked, they’ll also receive a Little Pim Plush Panda! Subscribe here: http://www.LittlePim.com/

My older son Emmett (6) must have read those books because he is in a full on frontal defense mode, practically arm wrestling me with his eyes when I try to speak French with him. He says “don’t speak French!” and sometimes covers his ears in case I don’t get it. Happily, he has been hearing French since he was a baby, so even though he’s far from fluent, he’s pretty comfortable and I know that this is just a phase. I can also always speak French to his 2 1/2 year old little brother in ear shot!

Even so, I must admit that it has not been fun. For awhile I stopped speaking French to him, it just didn’t seem worth the battle. This was until last week when I was interviewed by Roxana of SpanglishBaby about helping her get her daughter started on her third language (French). We commiserated about kids occasional resistance to our language (she taught her daughter Spanish), and her persistence inspired me to re-commit to teaching Emmett.

I made a promise to Roxana and to myself that I would speak French at breakfast to my boys every day for two weeks. To make it fun for Emmett I told him that at the end of the two weeks I’d take him out for a special French breakfast ( he loves croissants and chocolat chaud!). That did the trick. Now we are back on track, drinking our ‘jus d’orange‘ in the morning and having ‘du lait s’I'll vous plait‘ in our cereal!

Thanks Roxana!

Too all the moms and dads getting through “No” right now, hang in there and remember to keep it fun! Make up a new game or offer a special treat but don’t give up. They will thank you later if you keep it up.

Watch my video blog with Roxana below.

When carried out across our national education landscape, this means Americans continue to devalue the advantages of teaching our children a second language. Foreign language learning is not mandatory in the national public school system and the percentage of public elementary schools offering foreign-language instruction decreased from 31% to 25% over the past ten years; in middle schools, that figure dropped from 75% to 58%. This simply makes it that much harder for our kids to succeed in tomorrow’s job market, a market where the US will not necessarily be the reigning economic power. They will also miss out on all the social, political and cultural advantages of speaking a second language. Why would anyone defend that?

In contrast to the bleak statistics, there are still pockets of parents lobbying for language teaching all over the country. A recent Fayetteville Observer article reported on a first-grade teacher in a public school based in Cumberland County, North Carolina who is getting ready for back to school by decorating her class with maps and pictures of koalas for their Australia study. All 650 students in her school will also be learning Mandarin Chinese (“Youngsters heading back to globe-trotting classroom” August 22, 2010). She explains, “Our kids, our children, when they graduate from here have to know there’s a bigger world out there than Cumberland County or the United States… And that they’re going to have to interact with kids from all over the world or compete with kids from all over the world.”

Elementary school kids watching Little Pim in French

What is your take on “English-only vs. raising global citizens”? If you are reading my blog, I assume you care about foreign-language learning and how it will shape our children’s future. Judging from your community, do you think America is going the way of the North Carolina school or the English-only defenders?

Little Pim teaches kids French planting words

Articles mentioned:
http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2010/08/22/1022759?sac=Home

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704002104575290602423212366.html