Driving on and Motivational Monday Music

Tiger girl driving Enjoying her time behind the wheel of this kiddy ride.

My little tiger girl one girl who certainly inspires me. Even though she’s only 21 months old she does know what she wants and will go all out to get it. She is very focused and not scared to let you know her likes and dislikes. If she doesn’t know how to utter the name or word related to the product she would point or guide you where she would like to go. She gestures what she wants you to help her do and most of the time we do understand what are her wishes.

I love seeing her screaming with glee when she gets what she has set out to do. Last week while we were out shopping she caught her eye on this fancy car ride and promptly announced – ” Nana want car”.. ” Mummy go!!” before dragging me all the way to the car ride. At the car ride she had difficulty climbing into the car as it was a bit high for her. ” Mummy help… up”.. and asked me to help her into the car. After being seated in the driver seat she told me ” Mummy.. money.. please??”

Tiger girl happily put the $1 coin I gave her into the slot to activate the machine and was all smiles when it started moving. Mission accomplished. It’s great to see that she enjoys the little pleasures in life and that she really lives life to the fullest at her age.

These week’s theme is on patriotic music and I fell that it is fit that I am choosing the national day song which was sung by my cousin Corrinne May two years ago.

July 2, 2012

Creating a Multilingual Learning Environment at Home

Dominique Parenting and Kids, Recommendations, Thoughts June Billingual Carnival

Teaching material

Creating a conducive learning environment at home is essential for optimal learning. At home we are teaching our children in a variety of languages and it only seems proper to have a selection of material in the different languages to assist learning.

It is essential to give your child the opportunity to be associated with the various types of learning material be it books, DVDS, CDs, flashcards, interactive apps and programs from young. Through constant exposure and immersing a child in the different languages they get more accustomed to hearing, speaking and using it in their daily life. They will be able to relate to both the spoken and written version of the language and build up confidence using the language.

In our aim to raise multilingual children I have gathered materials in English, Mandarin and Japanese. I have purchased flash cards in English, Mandarin and Japanese. I also have different graded readers and story books in English, Mandarin and some books in both English and Mandarin for my 3 kids so that they are exposed to our two main languages from birth. I’m still sourcing around for elementary level Japanese storybooks which are not too expensive. I have printed my own learning materials for them in Japanese which are adapted from my notes or websites which I have found online.

I do not need to source for additional material for teaching the children Cantonese as the dialect uses the same written Chinese characters. The only difference is the pronunciation of certain words like for example the number ” ONE” is “一”(yī) in Mandarin and (yat) in Cantonese. It’s amazing that the kids are able to distinguish between the two and not get it mixed up.

We focus on English, Mandarin and Cantonese daily while Japanese is practiced once a week as it’s the fourth language we are introducing to the kids so the time set aside for this language is lesser then the other three.

One of our favourite games which we play with our 21 month old is counting steps. We count from 1 to 10 with her in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese as we go up or down the flight of steps leading to our apartment unit. She has fun climbing stairs and learns her numbers in four languages at the same time.

Dominique's Desk

Thoughts

Driving on and Motivational Monday Music

Creating a Multilingual Learning Environment at Home

How do you create a learning environment for your child at home?