This is an official launch and update of Multilingual flashcards for babies/toddlers.
Trying to find a language teacher for your child? Here are 10+ ways to find the right tutor or nanny to teach a foreign language!
Children need real photos and realistic pictures in their books. Here are the best English and Chinese books for babies and toddlers!
Trying to find a language teacher for your child? Here are 10+ ways to find the right tutor or nanny to teach a foreign language!
So you’ve heard that language development in babies and toddlers is important. And maybe you've heard things like "read to your baby everyday"
40 easy to implement tips for parents raising bilingual children from a linguist and mother of children exposed to 4 languages
Children need real photos and realistic pictures in their books. Here are the best English and Chinese books for babies and toddlers!
I know many of you come to Mammaprada for information on raising Bilingual Children. We are always on the lookout for great resources and passionate businesses who can help with this process.
Using Montessori approach when raising multilingual children at home.
Raising a bilingual child using the Montessori approach is quite complimentary and it is becoming very popular due to the many Bilingual Montessori Schools.
Would you like to raise a Bilingual Child? Where should you start with Bilingual Education. What is too early or too late? How do you support the minority language? We have raised our children with two languages and can tell you how it's done.
Inside: Spanish board books (or bilingual books) for babies and toddlers. The earlier you start introducing language, the better. Studies show, in fact, that babies recognize language sounds from the womb. By far, my favorite baby shower and birthday gifts have been books in Spanish, or bilingual books. And board books will last for years, through
French Bilingual Children's Books Bilingual Children - Week #14 This week on our Bilingual Children series I've decided to focus on the French language. Hopefully this will be useful as many families will have French as one of their home languages. However even if your family
I can’t believe it’s that time of year again when we all celebrate the brilliant initiative World Book Day ! It seems to come around so quickly and this year I have two children old enough to take part! They will be going to school as a shark and a penguin carrying their favourite books. There h
Children need real photos and realistic pictures in their books. Here are the best English and Chinese books for babies and toddlers!
Les Petits Tigres! French classes for children Bilingual Children - Week #18 Guest post by Jackie Colchester This week on our 'Bilingual children' series, I'm delighted to welcome Jackie Colchester, founder of the brilliant Les Petits Tigres! A wonderful company offering French langua
Following on from my post in April for the carnival, I was slightly puzzled by the fact that the articles I referred to managed to compile different lists of words 2-year-olds should know even though the seemed to quote the same source. So I thought I'd share my own list(s). A word of caution: there are no list of words for multilingual children (partly because of the endless language combinations possible). And while bilinguals are not two monolinguals in one on many accounts, it can be a good starting point to find out what monolingual children should say at a given age. Don't forget that if your child only hears English for half of the day, then it is possible s/he may only produce half of those words. The resource I used to make up this list is based on an assessment tool that parents fill in called the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories. This is mainly aimed at researchers but is easily understandable. The MacArthur Bates inventories produce tables (you can check them online) of the most frequent words understood and produced by children between 16 and 30 months old. While the articles reported that children should say at least 25 words at 2 years old, there is huge variability in children. 25 is most likely a minimum number and children can produce a lot more by this age (up to 8 times more on average). So I have compiled a list of 50 words: the 50 most frequent words produced by (American) English-speaking children at 2 years old. The table below can be read as thus: 'mommy' is the most frequent word produced by 2 year olds (24 months). It is produced by 99% of children this age. 'uh oh' is the fourth most common word (or sound effect) produced by 94% of children. Caution: this is a list for English. Do not try and translate this to any other language as there are cultural and linguistic differences which I will explore in a later post. Source: Dale, P. S., and Fenson, L. (1996). Lexical development norms for young children. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 28, 125-127.
Must-read nursery rhyme books for babies and toddlers that include multilingual and multicultural representation.
Explore the pros and cons of purchasing baby books or toddler books in a minority language for bilingual parenting.
Clothespin color matching is a favorite toddler activity for exercising fine motor skills, improving concentration, and learning about colors!
Would you like to raise a Bilingual Child? Where should you start with Bilingual Education. What is too early or too late? How do you support the minority language? We have raised our children with two languages and can tell you how it's done.
How to do Montessori at home with your baby from newborn stage to 3 months old. Learn how to set up a Montessori home from the start.
List of the best bilingual children's books in English and Spanish. Fun choices for babies, toddlers and elementary kids that even English speakers can read.
Following on from my post in April for the carnival, I was slightly puzzled by the fact that the articles I referred to managed to compile different lists of words 2-year-olds should know even though the seemed to quote the same source. So I thought I'd share my own list(s). A word of caution: there are no list of words for multilingual children (partly because of the endless language combinations possible). And while bilinguals are not two monolinguals in one on many accounts, it can be a good starting point to find out what monolingual children should say at a given age. Don't forget that if your child only hears English for half of the day, then it is possible s/he may only produce half of those words. The resource I used to make up this list is based on an assessment tool that parents fill in called the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories. This is mainly aimed at researchers but is easily understandable. The MacArthur Bates inventories produce tables (you can check them online) of the most frequent words understood and produced by children between 16 and 30 months old. While the articles reported that children should say at least 25 words at 2 years old, there is huge variability in children. 25 is most likely a minimum number and children can produce a lot more by this age (up to 8 times more on average). So I have compiled a list of 50 words: the 50 most frequent words produced by (American) English-speaking children at 2 years old. The table below can be read as thus: 'mommy' is the most frequent word produced by 2 year olds (24 months). It is produced by 99% of children this age. 'uh oh' is the fourth most common word (or sound effect) produced by 94% of children. Caution: this is a list for English. Do not try and translate this to any other language as there are cultural and linguistic differences which I will explore in a later post. Source: Dale, P. S., and Fenson, L. (1996). Lexical development norms for young children. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 28, 125-127.
Raising a Trilingual Child Is Not Always a Bed of Roses. by Nathalie Vieweger I was raised trilingual from birth. My mother was Dutch, my father - German and the community language was (often) English. I am a TCK - Third Culture Kid. I am now raising a trilingual child myself (English, Dutch and Spanish) as his father is English and we live in Spain. I used to go to international schools, and I’m a teacher at a bilingual school, so I have seen my fair amount of bilingual children. Read my full story: Trilingual mama - trilingual kid. Why would it be any other way? As much as I am a supporter of raising a child multilingual, I also see many parents struggle with their decision to raise their child in more than one language. Generally information and articles one can find on trilingualism are predominantly pro raising a child with more than one language. They seem to just surpass the struggles involved in a trilingual upbringing. I have decided to show both sides of a (in this case) trilingual upbringing. Bearing in mind that what I am writing is based on my experiences and my opinion I invite you to have a look at my perspective on this matter. Looking back as an adult I can not express how grateful I am for having been brought up trilingually. I have learned the languages effortlessly and have had many opportunities other (monolingual) peers did not have. My being “native” in three languages looks fantastic on my CV and it has opened doors that would otherwise have been shut. My personal identity is based on my three languages. The languages of my thoughts and dreams vary in different situations. The languages I speak are linked to the culture they belong to, having broadened my view of the world. I have become more open-minded (I believe) than my peers. My nicest memory of being trilingual must be going to a restaurant in the Netherlands with three of my (multilingual) friends. With four of us at the table mixing French, English, German and Dutch effortlessly, and the conversation making sense to all of us, we noticed being stared at by all the other visitors of the restaurant. I think all four of us realized at that moment, how special our conversation was to others, and we couldn’t help but be filled with pride. Being unique in this way certainly is a beautiful thing. Also, thanks to my upbringing, I have been able to learn a fourth language with less effort than a monolingual person would have. Having said that, and again pointing out how grateful I am, must admit that there have been quite a lot of downsides to my trilingual upbringing. Mainly, the fact that I do not speak any of the three languages completely accent-free or flawlessly. That is to say, I do not have a strong accent, and native speakers of either of the languages say I almost sound like a native… almost… in all three languages !! Because of that, many times people have asked me where I was from (a difficult question anyway for TCKs, and moreover trilingual ones). Apparently I am not a native in any language. Maybe the point of not being completely native has had an effect on the way I see myself as well as the way others see me. At work sometimes I get complimented about the difficult sentence structure I use (any monolingual person would be downright insulted), with friends I often struggle to find the nuances in certain discussions, making me sound tactless or just not very smart. I struggle to separate the languages fully, so I translate proverbs or sayings literally into the other language, or I use complicated long German sentence structures while writing Dutch. Making it look like I don not grasp the concept of a full stop. I personally believe something gets lost along the way, the thing native people just grasp. Many of my friends at the European school struggle with the same issues now they are adults. I would say being a trilingual person has filled me with a sense of pride riddled with a faint feeling of incompetence. Observing my trilingual son So now I am on road to raising my own trilingual child. My son is 2.5 now, and I am proud to say he is in fact becoming pretty trilingual. He is starting to differentiate the languages, speaking to his dad in English, speaking to me in Dutch and to his teachers in Spanish. Am I proud of it? Very much so! But the poor kid does struggle at times. I sometimes wish he would be able to say what he wants to everybody, without having to think what language they understand. He excitedly wants to tell his dad that he has seen something, and then gets a confused look as an answer. He tries to tell his teacher he came to school by bike, she looks at him blankly, asking me to translate. The moment has gone and he goes off to do something else. I feel he is at times missing out on basic social interactions, and with that important connections to the people around him, that monolingual children naturally have. He seems to have to make an extra effort. Obviously in the future he will be much more capable of separating the languages, but for now it is a bit of a downside. Something I just recently noticed that is definitely a down-side of raising a trilingual child is the following: Very often my partner and I spend time together with our little boy. Making jokes, playing or reading books. As Daniël was not speaking a lot, we would usually both speak our own language to him. Recently Daniël has started speaking more…and there the conflict within him started. We were talking about pictures in a book when Daniël excitedly wanted to say something. He looked at Rich, then back at me, then back to Rich until he finally decided to talk in Dutch … to me. He most obviously had a bit of an issue deciding what language to speak, in the end leaving his dad out of the conversation. These loyalty-issues will come up more often until he realizes that we both understand English. I felt bad for him for feeling he had to chose between his mama or his dad. Struggles for us as parents As my partner doesn’t speak Dutch, we speak English together. When I speak to Daniël I generally speak Dutch. But when we are all together it seems a bit strange to first say something in Dutch to my son, and then translate it into English. Obviously, as he is just 2, we don’t really have any interesting, translation-worthy conversations. But it won’t be long before either my partner feels left out, I translate a lot of our conversations, or I speak English to both in family situations. In my opinion following the “trilingual rule-book” is secondary to all members of the family feeling comfortable when we are together. Something else is speaking to your child in public in a minority language, when it sounds like gobbledygook to everybody. The Dutch language sounds like somebody is having a stroke - and a serious one. We get many looks from people when they hear us speak. Obviously that does not stop me from speaking to Daniël in Dutch. But I would be lying if I said it doesn’t make me feel awkward at times. I worry about Daniëls reaction to this in the future, at some point it will be humiliating for him. What really gets me crabby however, are people correcting him. His Dutch and English being treated as if he is making a mistake. In a local bar he shows his car to the staff. He enthusiastically claims: “Car!!”. The staff shake their head and say “No Daniel, es un coche!!” as if he made a mistake. Conclusion Raising a trilingual child is not the easiest route to take. In the modern world full of mixed couples and expats it is, however, a necessary route for many. If your main (or even only) goal is to make your child speak more than one language, it is not very complicated. Speak to your child in your language and expose him/her to it as much as possible. Difficulties arise when the minority language is not spoken by both parents, the minority parent is uncomfortable speaking their language in public, the child finds it difficult to distinguish between the languages, or the child, as an adult feels incompetent in all languages. My advice is ask yourself if you are willing to take the challenges of raising a child with more than one language. Are you willing to be looked at in a strange manner by the community? Are you willing to speak to your child in a language your spouse doesn’t understand? I am, but up to a certain point. The OPOL (one person one language) approach is something I strongly believe in. But I believe that the well being of all of my family members is far more important. I will, therefore, not always speak the minority language with my son. I find it hard to accept the funny looks, when I speak gobbledygook with my child, but know it is the price I have to pay. I would have preferred to raise my little boy in one language, or two at the most, but our situation is what it is, and it being so, I am very proud of my little trilingual monkey/aap/mono. And I know he will be, as I am myself, very grateful for the gift of languages. UPDATE 21/02/2018: By now Daniel is 5 and very trilingual. The struggle stays the same (although my partner has learned some basic Dutch by listening to us speaking to each other. Daniels favourite language is Spanish (community language that we do not speak at home) his Dutch is near native and English is his weakest language. Having said that, he still does not feel embarrassed to speak Dutch to me in public (not thanks to the amount of people rudely staring at us in the bus). We still do a variation of OPOL but very flexible, sometimes using all three the languages in one conversation. I can conclude that it works, and am very happy we were flexible and am still proud of the ease of which this trilingual upbringing works. I think one mainly doubts during the first years, once the child responds to us, we become more secure we are doing the right thing. Wishing you all the best of luck during your journey of the gift of languages. Books on Raising Trilingual Kids Language Strategies for Trilingual Families: Parents' Perspectives (Parents' and Teachers' Guides) by Andreas Braun - E-book - Book Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven (Parents' and Teachers' Guides) by Xiao-lei Wang - E-book - Book Trilingual by Six: The sane way to raise intelligent, talented children by Lennis Dippel MD - E-book - Book ---- Are you interested to participate in the Life Story series and write about your experience as a bilingual or multilingual child and/or a parent? Would you like to take part in the Multilingual Family Interview series ? You can contact me here. Are you a multilingual family and looking for a playdate in your language or another family to chat with? Click here to find it now! You might also like reading What language should I speak to my child in public? - Multilingual parent dilemma. Raising a Bilingual Child. How to Start So You Don't Feel Giving It Up Halfway Through. One parent speaks two languages. Raising a trilingual child. Life Story: Trilingual mama - trilingual kid. Why would it be any other way? Multilingual Family Interview: When your home languages are different from community language. Plus resources for teaching phonics and reading to children in English. 7 facts that can determine the language spoken between multilingual siblings. Listen to kids radio in your language ! Still undecided what language to speak to your child? Read about possible language strategies. And read my answers to parents questions in Question and Answer series. So excited! My first book was published and available on Amazon! in Russian language (КТО Я?) and in Italian language (CHI SONO IO?) View on AMAZON or visit my author's page.
How many languages can children learn at once? This multilingual family speak four languages on a daily basis, this is how they make it work.
26 writers, parents and experts share their tips, stories and ideas for raising bilingual or multilingual children
Top tips to boost your bilingual child's language skills and get them using the minority language with confidence every day!
Would you like to raise a Bilingual Child? Where should you start with Bilingual Education. What is too early or too late? How do you support the minority language? We have raised our children with two languages and can tell you how it's done.
Bilinguismo e Bambini Bilingui Un nuovo studio della Concordia ha testato se l’insegnamento precoce di una seconda lingua possa incentivare un più alto livello di accettazione della diversità fisica e […]
Enjoy these multilingual animal and their babies printables from our international bloggers.
An extensive list of Spanish Books for Kids of all ages. Recommendations for babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers, older children and teens!
7 Language learning hacks for holidays Are you off on holiday soon and not sure who to keep up with your child' language learning? Or maybe you're around this Summer and would love to begin or continue the momentum you've created? If so I've gathered together 7 products which can be used
For most people, having children and starting a family is the fulfilment of their purpose. Some also consider: which city would be ideal for raising my children?
We love white noise as a gentle aid to help babies and toddlers sleep. Lou Bear - Heartbeat comforter offers you the option of white noise or two other tranquil tunes. Its timer allows you to set the amount of time until the beloved toy will deactivate, and should your little one start to cry, the comforting companion will reactivate itself. Material cuddly toy: 100% PolyesterMaterial music box: ABSDimensions: 15 x 16 x 29 cmWeight: 160grTimer: 15, 30 or 60 minute timerPower: 2 AA batteries (not included) In the box Flow Amsterdam Lou Bear music box Flow Amsterdam multilingual manual About the brand "Because a good start in life means everything" - Flow Amsterdam has created beautifully stylish, soothing and comforting products for your child's play and sleep. Read more about the products here
French Bilingual Children's Books Bilingual Children - Week #14 This week on our Bilingual Children series I've decided to focus on the French language. Hopefully this will be useful as many families will have French as one of their home languages. However even if your family
Dimensions (Overall): 6.0 Inches (H) x 5.9 Inches (W) x .5 Inches (D)Weight: .3 PoundsSuggested Age: 0-4 YearsNumber of Pages: 20Series Title: Baby's First Language BookGenre: Juvenile NonfictionSub-Genre: Foreign Language StudyPublisher: HarperFestivalTheme: GeneralFormat: Board BookAuthor: Giselle AngLanguage: EnglishStreet Date: June 22, 2021TCIN: 88906667UPC: 9780062978691Item Number (DPCI): 247-55-2716Origin: Made in the USA or Imported
Without using a language regularly, fluency can be lost. So, it is important that every multilingual family has at least some of these in their home.
Multilingual parents often think that they have to choose one language to speak with your child. Read these ways on how you can pass on both languages!
What is it like to grow up with multiple languages? Raising bilingual children has become a hot topic over the last few decades. We are starting to understand more about the brain benefits of being bilingual or multilingual, but what does it actually look like to raise a multilingual family?
