The kids all together on the hotel bed during our trip to Penang in June 2011 (A year ago)
My boys are so not morning persons. It takes them ages to wake up in the morning. Only after countless reminders and threats do they move their bodies from their beds and drag themselves off to the toilet to brush their teeth and change their clothes.
Even though you have called for them to wake up they still give me ” Mum let me sleep a minute more” attitude. On certain days I literally have to yank them out of their beds and push them all the way to the toilet to freshen out. Sometimes more drastic measures have to be taken by taking out the cane to shock them into waking up.
On days when it seems impossible for them to wake up, this is the case for Doggie boy , I resort to stripping their pyjamas off him and putting him into his school uniform. It would only take me the most 5 minutes while if left to him would take like forever to get ready.
I personally too would like to laze in bed and sleep in till 8am-9am. However Tiger girl is an early riser and won’t stay in bed past 7.30am. Now I have outsourced to her to wake her brothers up every morning. It does help having an additional helper to wake the lazybones up.
Are your kids early or late risers?
How do you get them out of the house on time for school?
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.
