My husband & I speak English to our daughter.  My parents speak to her in Chinese.  My brother speaks to her in Spanish.  When we're altogether, we all speak English.

My brother speaks only Italian fluently (English for him is do-able, but he just doesn't know enough to have a real conversation besides what schools teach you which is more travel oriented) and those are all he knows language wise. My son knows select Italian because of him (probably would be fluent by now if my brother lived at all nearby, but he doesn't.) and actually helps teach him English lol. I think even if you can only teach some words at a young age, like my son, then when they get to school they can finish up the rest while having a bit of a head start to give them that confidence boost - keeping enthusiasm about it is always a plus. My son cant wait to be able to speak perfect italian with his uncle, just so nobody around here would understand them. haha. He's even trying to teach himself more (He had me buy him a 'learn italian' kit with tapes for his birthday... imagine that from a 7 year old.)

My brother, actually, is trying to teach his newborn using sign language, but he's getting it from a baby book so I'm not sure if thats real sign language... but either way, my nephew is only about 5 weeks old and theyre using the signs so that once he is able, he will have no issue recognizing them.

The Spanish hour is a great idea!

My nephew and niece are continually exposed to Korean, English and Japanese. My niece at 16 months can't say more than a word in any of the three languages, but from a child learning specialist says, it's not unusual for children to be quite delayed in speaking because of the cross-association between the languages. I myself am learning Korean in addition to Japanese, and most likely whoever I end up with will not speak either so the kid will probably speak 4 languages.

It's an international world.

I've taught all my babies the signs for please and more, so that they don't yell and or scream for their food.  Yes, it works!  when they are very small you just have to do it for them until they do it on their own. for example, if baby is crying or whining for food you take his hand, do the sign for him and say the words, "More, please."

We have done some work on foreign languages in our home but not very successfully at the baby age.

I am actually a Spanish teacher and hover somewhere between bilingual and pretty gosh darn fluent but even I don't speak Spanish with my daughter all the time. It isn't my first language so it simply doesn't always occur to me. I speak it as often as I think of it and frequently say the same thing in both languages when I am first switching from one to the other but I don't let that phase me. I have found that I speak Spanish with her pretty consistently during breakfast and lunch as it is usually just the two of us. We also have a bunch of Spanish language storybooks that we read right along with our English language books.

Don't sweat how much you speak it - just do. The more input they get the more output they will be capable of. I only know a smidge of French but I even throw that in when possible. I should have my stepgrandfather-in-law speak italian with her but it has never occured to me. He was actually a translator in the Army during WWII and has forgotten more langauges than most of us will ever master (but he is in his late 80s so I try to cut him some slack).

As for the Spanish hour, I think you'd be better off if you interspersed it throughout. Only becuase otherwise the Spanish is limited to one specific situation and is less likely to be used outside of the hour (oh, kind of like Spanish class). I also had a coworker once who did that with her kids as they grew up and they got to the point where they absolutley refused to speak to her during that hour. Both took Spanish in school even thought they had basic proficiency in French - wanted nothing to do with it.

Amusing sidenote - my cousin's son was "failed" during his kindergarten screening because he counted the pigs in Polish. Nobody knew what he was saying until they shared some of the words with his mom (who barely knows enough to understand that but his paternal grandparents were teaching him) - needless to say he was not held back at all!

we speak english to my daughter, hubby's mom speaks mandarin, and rest of the grandparents speak cantonese to her. we've taught her a few signs before she could talk, but now she is verbally telling us what she wants. a lot of her toys are have spanish and i took 3 years in high school, so we teach her a few words of that too. nothing too consistent with spanish or signs otherwise.

this is such a wonderful topic! ever since i took a life span class last year, i've always had it planned that whenever i do have a baby, i want it to learn as many languages as he/she can. and i've even mentioned this to my mom and i told her that i would want her to talk in visaya [a language in the philippines] and my dad would speak in tagalog ..or something like that [cuz i really dont know either enough to speak fluently myself] ..and this is especially because in my life span class, my teacher told us that kids do not get confused with all the multiple languages. he told of a story where one child had a mother, father, and grandmother who would speak to the child in 3 different languages while he was growing up ..and this child was able to differentiate which language to speak to who! its amazing! and my teacher always emphasized his belief that the best thing to give to a child is another language! =)

i'm learnng spanish xp lol..

I grew up as a missionary kid...learning Spanish from my caretaker in Mexico at the age of three (while my parents were in language school!) and Romanian from my friends in Romania at the age of 16. Though I'm a little rusty with both at the moment, I'd say I'm still fluent. (If you think and dream in another language...I'd say you pretty much know it!!) I also studied ASL in college...but my grasp of it currently is rather pathetic!!

My husband on the other hand grew up and has never traveled outside the US...and never learned a foreign language. He's taken a beginning Spanish class at the community college so at least he now knows more than taco, enchilada, and queso!!

We do plan to have our future children learn at least Spanish...as both a sister and a brother are married to Peruvians...and it would be nice for all the cousins to be able to play together bilingually. When they get older if they want to learn, one of my brothers can help 'em learn some Korean and since one of my sisters taught for a year in Taiwan, she can help 'em learn some Chinese. Of course, since Romanian is a fave of mine, even if I don't formally teach them it...they will most likely pick some up just from hearing it...as I am just as likely to listen to Romanian music as English!!

I think that living as we do in such an international environment, people who don't expose their children to at least one other language from an early age are really doing their children a disservice. I know my husband really regrets that he didn't have that advantage growing up.

I am not very fluent in Spanish, but I take some free on-line courses at LiveMocha.com, so I try to teach my kids Spanish.  We watch Dora and Diego on Nick Jr. and Noggin to learn most of what they use (I know that my 3 year old knows at least 50 Spanish words).  We learn some Chinese (Mandarin) from the show 'Nihao, Kai-lan'.  That is so exciting!  And I have always been intrigued by sign language so the kids and I try to learn and use that as often as possible.  :D  I think that this will help prepare them for using different languages in the future and you never know when you are going to meet someone who signs to communicate and it really helps to know some sign language.  :)

I'm Dutch, and my husband is German. I'm also an English teacher and have lived in the US for part of high school. I also went back to the States for a semester at an American college - nobody believed I wasn't American (apparently, I don't have a noticeable accent, or none at all...).

When I was pregnant, I read a bunch of books on biligualism. The main thing that is stressed is that a) it's best if both parents consistently speak their native language and b) the child needs lots of exposure (books, DVDs, songs) in both/all languages. We got started right while I was pregnant: my husband spoke German to my pregnant belly, because we wanted to get used to it (we used to only speak Dutch together, because we live in Holland). I speak Dutch to both my son and my husband, and whenever my son is with us, my husband speaks German to the both of us. We figured that if my husband always spoke Dutch to me, our son wouldn't get enough exposure.

My son is now 15 months old, and despite predictions that he would be much later in speaking than other kids, he is quite the chatterbox (can't IMAGINE where he got that... ). He uses mainly Dutch words, but after we spent a week in Germany with the in-laws, he started using German words instead of Dutch words he already knew (e.g. "bauch" instead of "buik" for "belly.")

Because of my studies, I know that kids younger than 12 (or whenever they hit puberty) can learn new languages quickly, and it's best to start them early, and too keep working on it until they are adults (!) because that way, you will help them keep the connections between the different language parts in their brains (ok that was a bit unscientific, but you get the point). I think you always have to be aware, though, that kids need lots of exposure to the language that is NOT spoken throughout the country (so the "other" language(s) besides English, in your case).