Ploutus Lab for Bilingual Families: How to Use the Vocabulary at Home

In many Latino homes, Spanish is spoken and English is heard at school or at work. Ploutus Lab teaches money ideas in both languages, so the child can use them in either. At the end of each class, the bilingual moment reviews the key words with an image for each. At home, the practice becomes a habit.

How to do it

Using it at home has three steps: one word a day in an everyday sentence, the question of how to say it in the other language and letting the child choose the language to explain their answer. An example: in the car you say "Today I had income: I helped wash the dishes and got paid," and ask how to say ingreso in English. Two days later you return to the word: "What income did you have this week?"

Adults don't need to speak both languages perfectly. What matters is that the child sees money can be talked about in either. If they don't want to speak English, the word can stay at understanding, and that counts too.

What it's for

For your child, each money word has a use they know and a form in each language. For you, the practice doesn't depend on speaking English fluently: it depends on the word and the sentence you use.

What the research says

That second meeting with the word has a reason. Brown, Roediger and McDaniel, in Make It Stick, show that recalling a word after an interval fixes it far better than repeating it back to back. Chip and Dan Heath, in Made to Stick, explain that concrete things get remembered: "income" attached to washing dishes stays longer than its definition.

What you'll see over time

In the first weeks the child may answer with a single word. Between one and six months they use it in their own sentences and switch languages without being asked. In the long run they understand the idea in both languages, even if they prefer to use one.

Signs it's working

It's working when the child uses a money word in a sentence of their own, when they remember it two days later and when they explain an idea in the language they choose.