Good for you, Russ! Thanks for the recommendation on the Magic Treehouse books. Is there any particular movie series that you get for the kids? How do you and the kids pick the movies? Are you looking specifically at “fun” movies, or at more “educational” movies? And why no cable?

Did your kid’s school cancel the Spanish program because of budget cuts, or was there some other reason? From everything I’ve ever seen, the dual-language immersion programs are absolutely full with a long waiting list. If anything, these are the programs that should be expanded, not cut!

We had our kids in a foreign language school for a few years where they were learning Spanish and Mandarin, but the school closed, so we hired some of the teachers away. Unfortunately, one’s visa expired, and I haven’t been able to find a new Spanish teacher, and our Mandarin teacher found a full-time job in Orange County. We’ve been fortunate because a neighbor/friend of ours is tutoring our kids in Mandarin (and she’s very good), but we’re still trying to find a good Spanish teacher. Using Rosetta Stone in the meantime, but I don’t force it enough because the kids have so much else to do and I don’t want to burn them out.