Holiday Gift Guide for Your Bilingual Learner
I love doing holiday shopping for my kids and other littles in our lives, but my peeve is definitely buying toys that my kids use for a total of 3 minutes before moving on and never showing interest in them again. These are some fun gifts that I feel good about getting for my own kiddos because they can get a lot of use out of them and have a lovely educational (and often bilingual/multilingual) component! We either already have them at home or they're on my shopping list for this holiday season!
A Yoto Player
I think the Yoto Mini is by far the best gift we have ever purchased for our kids. A Yoto player lets kids play their own audio stories without having to ask mom, dad, or a caretaker for a phone or tablet. Kids intuitively figure out how to put the story card in the device, and it's screen-free...and parental guilt-free ;) The best part is that they've started adding bilingual options for Spanish and French learners. Or you can create your own cards with stories you love or even having a friend or grandparent record a story!
We have the mini and it's worked great for us for several years! It's legitimately prevented serious chaos during bedtimes and travel days. I remember one time, my son listened to his yoto as we walked through airport terminals and waited in like 8000 lines. It was AMAZING!
An interactive globe!
The Leapfrog globe is another of my favorite gifts that we've gotten our kids! It's such a cool way to learn about different places in the world. It has hours of audio content and is tappable so you use a stylus to tap different parts of the globe and get to learn about the animals, cities, and culture! It even has a few games the kids can play. We put this one away for a year or so, but it just got brought back out and our kids have been spending a lot of time playing with it again. A super fun way to encourage your little explorers!
A cookbook!!
One of my favorite gifts that I ever received as a kid (after very blatantly hinting that it was the only thing I ever wanted) was the Disney Family Cookbook. It was so good and I spent countless Saturdays trying to make everything in it! Now there is an even cooler book from the same author! Cooking Class Global Feast is the cookbook of my current dreams! This is the perfect gift from toddlers to older kids. You can cook with your toddler or start giving your older kids a bit of independence and hopefully also have them make your life easier by making family dinner! It is by Deanna Cook who wrote my cherished Disney cookbook, and it is spiral-bound just like the Disney cookbook was which makes it so much easier to use! Why aren't all cookbooks spiral bound?! It features recipes from around the world and is an awesome way to get a peek at different cultures! I've gifted this with a whisk or apron several times, and it's always been a hit! If you're looking for a Spanish language cookbook, my kids love looking at all of the recipes in Repostería divertida para niños. We've made things a couple of times successfully despite the fact that I'm very bad at decorating cakes and cupcakes.
Habbi Habbi Tappable Puzzles
Few things beat a family puzzle activity on a wintery day! And these puzzles re pretty cool because you can use the Habbi Habbi magic wand to activate Mandarin or Spanish audio as you use them!
Lufi & Friends Books that Sing
I have to include these because when my kids were little...these books bought me time to snack, catch up on errands and work. They would sit with them for 20-30 minutes at a time, happily dancing and eventually singing along. We now have Spanish, French, Italian and Russian so lots of options for families raising bilingual kiddos! They make the perfect gift you can feel good about! And our Christmas Spanish book that sings is here and basically the holiday music magic of my dreams!
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