Teaching Spanish To Kids Starting From Birth Or Preschool - Meet Beth Butler Of Boca Beth
October 21st, 2007
| My guest today is Beth Butler, the founder of Boca Beth. ‘Boca Beth’ is the creator of the program that introduces Spanish to young children in a fun and easy way. Her program has been very successful with very positive results. She has won numerous awards and has also appeared on various magazines and television and radio networks. Boca Beth’s products even found its way into the ’swag bags’ presented to the Oscar nominees and presenters. Her products makes teaching Spanish to Kids even at preschool (or even younger) easy. Her well researched methods are highly productive in teaching Spanish to Elementary Students. Read and get inspired. | |||
| How did you come up with the idea for your business? | |||
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I have a teaching degree from Stetson University right here in Florida (where I was born). During my junior high and high school years I had studied Spanish and then had the great fortune to travel to Chile and Mexico as an exchange student. It was during those visits there that I became truly bilingual, fluent in Spanish (reading, writing, speaking and dreaming in my second language!). I used to set up listening centers in my classrooms for my first, second and even fourth graders; one of those centers introduced Spanish vocabulary words to the children with English words also said alongside and index card pictures to match!The children LOVED it and kept asking for more’! Their parents thought I was a hero! Then, after my youngest was born, and I began doing ‘Ms. Music’ classes in her preschool I started to write my own songs to bring Spanish fun into the one, two, three and four year old rooms. The little ones loved my songs - piggyback songs they are called. Where you take a familiar tune (say ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’) and write a new song with new words/lyrics! I introduce days of the week, colors, numbers, seasons, shapes, opposites - more than 700 words and 250 phrases throughout our CDs and DVDs in Spanish and English. A fun, easy-to-follow bilingual presentation! | ||
| What was your main motivation behind starting your own business? | |||
| Frustrated with a lack of quality, easy to use and affordable materials to use to help parents and teachers nation wide bring Spanish language learning into their children’s lives I knew I had to make a difference. We are so far behind many other countries who DO teach their little children second (and even third and fourth) languages. The United States public school system does not typically begin any type of language offering until middle school - when experts all agree the brain has switched gears (so to speak) in how language acquisition takes place. Experts agree, the earlier the better with the window of opportunity for optimum language learning being birth - ten. I knew I could bring to market my Boca Beth integrated multimedia classroom full of materials and make them available to parents of children ages birth - five along with their preschool teachers, home care providers and family and friends! We need to help our youth of today become better communicators - and that includes speaking more than just English! | |||
| What age is a good age to start kids on “BOCA” products? |
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We design our products for children ages birth - ten. We suggest pregnant moms to listen to our CDs - we all know babies in moms’ bellies hear sounds and come into this world recognizing many of them. Then, once that little baby is in our global society, begin playing the music as background music while changing diapers, feeding, playing, sleeping (some parents have told me they use our first CD called ‘My First Songs in Spanish’ as a lullaby CD due to my soothing voice!!!). It’s never too early. And the flip side would be - it’s not too late to begin at age 3 or 5 or even 8! Kids in elementary school love our stuff! | ||
| Does learning a second language help a child intellectually? |
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| Oh my gosh! The research keeps pouring in about the many, many benefits derived from learning a second language early in life - before the age of five can be HUGE! Children receiving some daily bilingual fun (say a little bit of my Boca Beth CD in the car, some of the coloring book at play time, and then some of the DVD during monitored TV time) will read sooner than their monolingual peers and will score higher on standardized tests’ math and verbal sections by a noticeable margin of points. Children being raised to understand and eventually speak two languages experience advanced cognitive development, have better communication skills, demonstrate high levels of problem solving skills and open their world up for extra future opportunities! The latest, and very cool research study, shows that people who are bilingual and speak in both languages daily will experience about a four year delay in the onset of dementia and dementia like symptoms during their golden years! WOW! | |||
| Can you tell us the most effective bit of marketing you have ever done? |
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| Writing and submitting articles through ArticleMarketer.com has been awesome for positioning myself as an expert in the field of how to give children a jump start on becoming bilingual with parents and teachers who struggle to find easy, fun and affordable tools! Blogging and press releases go right along with this whole mind set of using Social Media to help catapult smaller businesses into the limelight! | |||
| You have achieved tremendous success in your business. You have also received numerous awards. All this would have involved a lot of hard work. I don’t imagine things would have been easy in the initial days. Can you tell us a bit about the problems you faced in the beginning and how did you overcome them? Did you ever want to give up? |
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| I fell into a trap of thinking I needed to invest in a PR company to get myself national exposure. I failed to listen to those who told me I was my best PR person and should not use those dollars during such a start up phase. They were all so correct. Not only did I not have distribution in place for the little exposure I did receive, I also used more than $30,000 of money we did not have during those first two years on something I have found I can do really well myself (with the assistance of virtual moms who are experts in press release writing, search engine optimization and web hosting/mastering).Getting this product line to market has been and continues to be a daily challenge. And I love, love, love the challenge most of the time! I love cold calling - call me crazy, but I do! It’s just finding the time to do the cold calling as I wear most of the hats in our Boca Beth company. Whereas I feel that these stores should be knocking on my door to not only carry my CDs and DVDs on their shelves but also to have me do in-store promotions with my singing and dancing concerts with kids! It’s not such an easy sell I have found out! It is taking word of moms to spread the buzz and lots of perseverance to hang in there and know that one day it will all ‘click’ and big things will begin to snowball! | |||
| Finally, your five keys to success? | |||
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| Sites Of Interest | |||
| http://www.bocabeth.com | |||
| Visit Beth’s website to get more information about her educational toys for kids. | |||
| This interview was published on 10th May 2007 | |||
| To read more stories about women who manufacture kids products click Entrepreneur Home Business Idea. | |||
| Visit Beth’s website to get more information about her educational toys for kids. | |||
Entry Filed under: Kids
4 Comments Add your own
1. Web Site Marketing »&hellip | October 21st, 2007 at 2:56 am
[...] Home Based Business Moms - Get Business Ideas And Read Interviews With Successful Business Moms wrote an interesting post today on Multilingual Educational Toys From Beth Butler Of Boca BethHere’s a quick excerpt [ beth-butler-boca-beth] My guest today is Beth Butler, the founder of Boca Beth. ‘Boca Beth’ is the creator of the program that introduces Spanish to young children in a fun and easy way. Her program has been very successful with very positive results. She has won numerous awards and has also appeared on various magazines and [...]
2. Cheap Travel » Blog&hellip | October 21st, 2007 at 3:01 am
[...] Home Based Business Moms - Get Business Ideas And Read Interviews With Successful Business Moms wrote an interesting post today on Multilingual Educational Toys From Beth Butler Of Boca BethHere’s a quick excerpt [ beth-butler-boca-beth] My guest today is Beth Butler, the founder of Boca Beth … my junior high and high school years I had studied Spanish and then had the great fortune to travel to Chile [...]
3. Marketing Research »&hellip | October 21st, 2007 at 3:14 am
[...] Home Based Business Moms - Get Business Ideas And Read Interviews With Successful Business Moms wrote an interesting post today on Multilingual Educational Toys From Beth Butler Of Boca BethHere’s a quick excerpt [ beth-butler-boca-beth] My guest today is Beth Butler, the founder of Boca Beth. ‘Boca Beth’ is the creator of the program that introduces Spanish to young children in a fun and easy way. Her program has been very successful with very positive results. She has won numerous awards and has also appeared on various magazines and [...]
4. Business Marketing »&hellip | October 21st, 2007 at 3:15 am
[...] Home Based Business Moms - Get Business Ideas And Read Interviews With Successful Business Moms wrote an interesting post today on Multilingual Educational Toys From Beth Butler Of Boca BethHere’s a quick excerpt [ beth-butler-boca-beth] My guest today is Beth Butler, the founder of Boca Beth … and get inspired. How did you come up with the idea for your business … ! What was your main motivation behind starting your own business? Frustrated with a lack of quality [...]
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