May 2012 Billingual Carnival

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This month of May I am honoured to be hosting the Bilingual Carnival here at Dominique’s Desk. Learning languages and teaching languages to my kids is what I am passionate about. My aim is to  enhance my children’s learning of languages and expose them to as many languages as possible. At present we are speaking English, Mandarin and Cantonese at home. The kids are also exposed to Japanese and Korean on the radio and through drama series which are aired on television.

This month we have quite a few  participants for the carnival

Jan from Babblekids  spoke about different it would be if they continued staying in France instead of moving over to England. He is quite certain that her kids wouldn’t be able to speak as many languages as they do now living in England.

Lyn from Open Hearts Open Minds wrote about speaking Spanish to her 2.5 yr old and how sometimes she struggles to find the correct term to use as she is not a native Spanish speaker.

Jen of Pergoies & Gyoza mentioned how she is  striving to get her children motivated to write in their heritage language. She would love for her children to write more in English however as adults we seldom do actual pen and paper writing with typing on the computer and phone being the norm.

Amanda of The Educator’s Spin on it has a very interesting concept of using Russian Dolls to teach the concept of counting together with giving her kids a short lesson on their Russian culture through storytelling. She has also been introducing her children by sharing  Russian food with their friends.

Fiona of Living in the Land of Chocolate talks about how being bilingual can have it’s awkward moments. She was shocked when her daughter Sofie mentioned that the lyrics “If you are sexy and you know it clap your hands” referred to her.   After reflecting on her daughter’s words Fiona realized that Sofie must have mistaken the word ‘sechsi’ in Swiss German which means “six” for “sexy” in English.

Luisa of Immersion in Language and Culture blogged about how they have come about after being in Philippines for five months. They have left USA for Philippines in bid to get their children immerse in a culture which provided the opportunity for speaking in English, Filipino and Mandarin.

Rebecca of Old News Legacy is sharing with us tips on how she teaches her children German. She shares how she gets her children immerse in German through books, TV shows and online websites which she has found.

Annabelle of Gato & Canard  shares a list of words what you child should be able to say in English at 2 years old. I’m intrigued by the number of words on that list and glad that my 20month old girl is able to say all of them and much more.

Cordelia of Multilingual Mama is raising her child multilingual. She and her husband subscribe to the OPOL system and they have been communicating in French, English and Spanish. Now being based in Thailand she finds it hard getting people to speak Spanish to so that her daughter can be immersed in the language.

Sarah from Babybilingual wrote about how she is relying on the IPAD to expose her children to French. I too do use the IPAD with my own kids but I restrict it to listening to interactive storybooks in both English and Mandarin.

I too have written a piece for the May carnival. This month my focus is on Mastering Comprehension and share my tips on how I teach comprehension to my kids.

Happy reading and I look forward seeing you during next month’s bilingual carnival.