Music is a great tool. Playing games in the second language helps too- but that's for the nanny. What you as parents might want to consider is showing that you also are learning the language or improving your skills if you already do have some Spanish skills. My daughter is learning Arabic and my wife and I both not only speak a little of the language but make sure our daughter sees us make an effort to learn some more. Not only that, but we learn a lot from her because we ask her how to say something in Arabic or explain what an object is called so that she has to speak the language a little more even when she is not taking lessons. We also take her to a playgroup where Arabic is spoken.

IMHO, three languages may be a bit too much for one parent to handle without one or two languages getting short shrift. Maybe you can find someone else to work with your DD on the third language? I live in Germany not the US, and my wife is DE-EN bilingual and I am EN-ES bilingual. We use OPOL- she speaks DE with our kids (DD is 3 and DS is 1), I speak English, my daughter gets private lessons in Arabic and my son attends a Brazilian nursery. My wife doesn't speak Spanish, so we decided it didn't make sense for me to speak it at home. We also do not segregate books by language, but the kids usually know which books to bring to each parent. We also have Arabic books, but they're read by the teacher and we simply use them as practice material for our daughter to look at and tell us what the letters and words are. EDIT: I forgot to mention that we play quite of bit of children's music in the kids' third languages.

My son has been attending a Brazilian nursery since early October, so he gets plenty of exposure to the language now, including the written word.

Muito obrigado, Betania! I'll look into the books written by those authors.

Can anyone recommend some classic Brazilian children's books, maybe something akin to Dr. Seuss in the Anglophone world? I'll have a Brazilian reading them to my 9 month old.

Great resource, thanks. Your children might enjoy a foam mat letters or a wooden puzzle of the letters- my daughter learned the Arabic and Latin alphabets using them and written material at around 16 months of age.

I agree with the idea of waiting to teach reading in the second language (assuming they are related, e.g., Spanish and English), because there will be a lot of transfer of skills learned with the first language to the second. I'd also teach reading in the more phonetic language first, if possible.

I've taught my 2 year old daughter the first twenty elements by making a little song out of their names. It has come in very useful during long trips on public transportation and she loves "the elements". I divulged elements 21-27 today and we'll see how far she can go. I'd really like to find a periodic table puzzle (a physical one, not a software drag-and-drop) with each element representing a single element and fitting into the appropriate slot in the standard periodic table configuration. It would be a twofer- she loves puzzles as well, but she's obviously not advanced enough to handle a 1000-1500 piece puzzle.

Spanish is much more phonetic than English, and if your child can already read in English, a lot of the skills learned will transfer, although you will have to work with them on pronuniciation in some cases.

I'd suggest using materials that will address topics of interest to him- does he like soccer, for example?

All, My 21 month old daughter can count up to 20 and appears to understand that the numbers represent quantities when she is counting items, which is something we do a lot of. Given her age, I am not sure which math concepts I should introduce to her next or in which order- she already plays with and can identify 2D and 3D shapes and put together simple puzzles. She also plays with Legos. Thanks in advance...

Maybe playing Spanish language music and Spanish language cartoons would help a bit. Keep speaking Spanish with the kids even if they answer in English- they'll come around eventually. One other thing- if the 4 year old isn't reading yet, maybe you could try teaching her to read in Spanish because it's far more phonetic than English and the reading skills will transfer.

We may conclude that it's easier as well, but since the second will be a boy living in Germany, there a good chance he'll have a technical career and Chinese or Japanese may be more useful as a third language than Arabic for someone in a technical field.

Thanks for the advice. I think she may actually end up eventually learning to read in Arabic first, and I'd guess in German before English at any rate since my wife will be home with her and No. 2 and since German is anyhow more phonetic than English (so is Arabic, BTW). That's a ways off, though. I only speak in English to her and will continue to do that. When she was born it felt a bit strange at first to speak English with her because I was accustomed to speaking in German with small children such as our nephews.

I thought I would update everyone on my daughter's progress. She is now 20 months old and is talking quite a bit more, but apparently almost entirely in German, even with me, when she says something voluntarily. However, she clearly understands me and the Arabic speakers she has contact with 5x a week. When she sees Arabic words in a text, she decodes the letters and her Arabic teacher has begun to teach her simple written words such as Baba (papa) and Kursi (chair) using vocalization. One thing I found particularly interesting is that when I point to pictures in her Arabic alphabet and vocabulary books and ask her what it is I am pointing at, she will say the word in Arabic. When we do the same exercise with parts of the body, she will answer in English, although she clearly knows some of the body parts in Arabic as well because I have seen her babysitter testing her on them. EDIT: I forgot to mentíon that we play a lot of Arabic music for her, especially songs for children. My Arabic has improved quite a bit so I am certain hers has benefited greatly from that as well. I think we'll get Arabic language satellite TV when she is at an appropriate age to watch cartoons. We have a second child on the way and I'd like him to learn Chinese, but my wife prefers that he learn Arabic or Japanese.

If you are willing to consider works written as late as Faust was, then I guess Emilia Galotti by Lessing and Kabale und Liebe by Schilling qualify. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther might be another classic worth reading, and I also recommend Carolus Stuardus by Andreas Gryphius.

For your 14 year old, I recommend "Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana" by bernal Diaz del Castillo.

Can anyone recommend any geometric shapes toys that they use with preschoolers? My 19 month old daughter knows the basic 2D geometric shapes and some of the 3D shapes (cube, cone, pyramid, sphere and cylinder) and I'd like to get her more hands-on possibilities to build 3D shapes under my close supervision (the 3D shapes we have are solid and made of wood, and I really don't like her throwing the sphere around as if it were a regular ball), plus her Arabic teacher asked me to find some addditional colored shapes that she can use as part of the drills she uses to reinforce the colors (triangle, rectangle, square and circle are now too easy for her). Does anyone have any suggestions as to specific products that might meet my needs? Thanks in advance....

I don't have any specific advice for you, but I want to congratulate you on this. I plan to do something like this with my daughter, but because she won't actually be fully homeschooled (it's illegal in Germany), I will limit the subjects that she does in English with me to US history and math and to literature and Middle Eastern history with her Arabic teacher. I do wonder, though, if it makes sense to do math in both languages.

Henriette Bimmelbahn seems to be quite popular here.

Elizabet and skeuppers, thanks for the advice. I am going to teach her to read in English because I am her only contact with English.

Thanks for your thoughts. Our daughter already seems to be code switching, and I do intend to teach her to read using phonics. Reading Dr. Seuss books to her was primarily with the intent to drum up interest in reading, which has worked like a charm. I haven't found any English speaking kids in our part of town yet and she really doesn't like being on public transport for 45 minutes to get to the parts of town more heavily populated by native English speaking expats. Part of the problem is the dominance of German- to give one example, one of the kids in my daughter's nursery group has a father from Anglophone Africa. However, after speaking to the boy I realized that he doesn't speak English, and apparently only speaks German even though is mother is from Hungary. German is the parents' common language and they solely speak it at home. Speaking of learning phonics, TWTM recommends The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, so I will check out the reviews on it.

It's not unsual for an educated native Arabic speaker to be more comfortable in English or French if they have been educated in either of those two European languages and/or have been away from their native land for quite some time. I am a native English speaker who lives in Germany and am sometimes in situations where people don't like it when I speak English to my daughter or do not understand what I am saying to her and in these cases I speak to her in English and then repeat it in German for the benefit of the others. I wouldn't be surprised if there were situations where the OP's husband didn't feel comfortable speaking Arabic and thus didn't get in the habit of doing it.

Thanks for your thoughts. If I were here with SOFA status, e.g., military or DOD civilian, I could homeschool her, but I am here with the German equivalent of a green card. It doesn't matter that I am not German. DD loves Arabic, and we have an excellent teacher for her so I think there's a good chance she will learn to read prior to starting school at age six. I am also arranging for her to spend time at a baybsitter's who also has small children with whom she speaks Arabic, so she'll have other kids to speak to. DD loves books and brings them to me to read to her, so I wouldn't be surprised if she would be ready to learn to read in English before age 6. Although she speaks in German to me, if I point to something and ask her what it is, she tells me the English word. There is one English word she uses even with her mother- car. Maybe "Auto" (proniounced ow-toe in German) is too difficult phonetically at this point. jld- my father is a native Spanish speaker but I think three languages are enough for the little one for now. Spanish is relatively easy to learn so I think she could pick it up later.

Thanks for those suggestions- I'll definitely look into them. I am in Bavaria. The daughter of my daughter's Arabic teacher attends one of those language-focused Gymnasien, so that does sound like a good idea. I just threw age four out there as a possibility for her to learn to read- I don't have any expectations and am waiting until she shows that she is ready. The Arabic teacher told me that may daughter seemed particularly interested in abstract symbols so I figured that I could teach her the Latin alphabet and the numbers, which she learned pretty quickly. She now takes note of numbers and letters she sees within words and on signs, and also the letters within Arabic words, even pointing to the letters sometimes and saying the name of the letter. She loves Arabic, no doubt at least in part because it's taught in a playful way, e.g., with singing.