Ni Hao! and Hola!

Toddlers love to learn. Mark is no exception. We started him at an early-preschool last year and he really took to learning sign language and Spanish. Unfortunately that school closed earlier this year. We've discovered that his old school was unique in that it taught Spanish to toddlers. Apparently most schools wait until Kindergarten or so. We knew Mark was at that prime point to continue on, so we decided to explore other ways for him to learn languages.

That's where Mark's two "cartoon girlfriends" come in. Ni Hao, Kai-Lan and Dora the Explorer are mainstays on our DVR. They both are on at least once a day on Nick Jr. Mark loves Kai-Lan and Dora. And we love that he's learning languages in a fun way.



Both shows encourage kids to learn and explore. And a second language is easily woven in there throughout the story. It's pretty cool to watch your two year old count to ten in Spanish unprompted. Or to sing the Mandarin Chinese version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".

Mark can easily weave both Chinese and Spanish in with his typical English as he goes about his day. Without a doubt we highly believe that these two shows are actually helping Mark. In addition to languages we've found he's also relating to the stories. In fact, he's learned to be "calm" and take a deep breath when necessary. And that comes from Kai Lan. It was so cute the first time he told me "Mommy, I'm calm." And now when he works himself up and is about to throw a tantrum I ask "Are you calm?" and he stops mid-tantrum and takes a deep breath. Sometimes it takes a few breaths but eventually he tells me "I am calm Mommy".

It was really cool that early on Mark figured out that YeYe is Kai-Lan's Grandpa. Mark calls one of his grandfathers "Keepa" and the other "Peepo". Keepa and Grammy were visiting us one day and Kai Lan was on. Mark was watching the show, then all of a sudden looked up and went to Keepa. He then exclaimed "YeYe is Kai-Lan's Keepa!" We thought that was pretty cool that he was able to put that thought together.

Nick Jr itself has a pretty good website. We haven't really explored it much yet, but as Mark is older and able to do more fun activities and stuff we will for sure. I am looking forward to doing some of the activities from both shows this summer with Mark. There are printables, flashcards, crafts and other fun activities.