I have written before about the importance of bilingualism and how you can nurture bilingualism in your children. It is something I am really passionate about. There are so many advantages to being able to communicate in more than one language, especially if you are part of a multilingual family. After all, it's important to be able to communicate with your family members or the wider community when you travel abroad.
Bilingualism is something I try to promote in my own family. My husband speaks four languages and the majority of his family members cannot speak English, so it is really important that our children learn to communicate with them. When you know another language it can open your eyes to a whole other culture which will also give you a better understanding of each other.
Getting your child to learn another language is always a worry for bilingual families. How can you go about facilitating that? One way is to incorporate bilingualism into play, crafts or other fun activities. When children are having fun they won't even realise they are learning. Also, when learning is enjoyable, they are more likely to take it in and remember it.
This activity was very simple to do. We took some paper plates and wrote words to decsribe snowballs on them. D was able to think of both adjectives and verbs that we use when talking about snowballs. It is a great activity to develop literacy skills and the different kinds of words we use; adjectives, nouns,verbs, adverbs etc. Then she stuck cotton wool around the edge of the plate to make it look more like a snowball.
As we thought of the words we wrote them down in both English and Turkish. So afterwards one plate had all the English words on one plate and another plate had the same words in Turkish written on it. They are now proudly displayed on the wall to remind us all of the words.
We concentrated on adjectives and verbs only but if you have an older child you could ask them to write sentences down, or how about asking them to write a poem about the snow? Afterwards ask them to translate it into the other language.
I need to start teaching my son Portuguese, so the bilingual snowballs are a great idea. Thank you for sharing x
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Kids are never too young to start learning another language. The younger the better. They're like sponges, they soak it up :)
DeleteThis is such a great idea i hope when boo and I have kids they are able to speak his languages and mine plus english and if they take after him it wont be difficult.
ReplyDeleteWow sounds like you future kids will be multilingual. That's so cool! Learning more than 2 languages is absolutely possible. My hubby knows 4 languages. I'm hoping my kids will learn at least 2.
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