That’s right, being bilingual is a superpower!
In fact, Miguel Cardona, US Secretary of Education, stated that “bilingualism and biculturalism is a superpower” during his recent address at the National Association for Bilingual Education’s (NABE) 52nd Conference. Continue reading Bilingualism is a Superpower!
There are so many reasons to read to your baby, especially when you’re raising a bilingual child. Not only is reading a great way to bond, it’s a chance to link spoken words with visual images on the page. And don’t forget to get older siblings involved in the bilingual reading fun! Here are 5 tips to getting your bilingual baby book collection started.
Your first bilingual books for your baby should be made of sturdy material that can withstand strong baby hands and teeth. Board books with thick pages are a great choice, as are cloth and vinyl books that can be washed off.
For babies newborn to 6 months, choose books with large pictures in bright colors. Older babies love books with images of their favorite things, like balls, bottles and other babies.
Life with a baby means getting a million things done each day (and night). Feeding, changing, nap time… repeat. Find a special reading time that works best for your family: maybe at snack time, after a bath or at bedtime. Soon, reading time will be one of the best parts of your daily routine.
Whether it’s animals noises, singing or character voices, your baby (and you) will have more fun when story time is full of excitement, emotion and enthusiasm. But remember to keep your expression pleasant, so baby doesn’t get frightened if there are scary parts.
Don’t limit yourself to the text on the page. Feel free to point to pictures and objects and name them all in both languages!
As your baby grows, don’t forget to add more challenging stories to your collection. These will have longer sentences, with more complex vocabulary. But it’s ok to keep the old favorites in the rotation! Find multicultural children books that are culturally appropriate. International holidays and common experiences, like making friends or trying new foods, are great topics that your little one will enjoy.
What is your family’s favorite story to read? Comment below and let us know!
This article by Breeana D. from takelessons.com is full of fun games that will get kids excited about learning a new language. Although it focuses on Spanish, these ideas can easily be adapted to any language!
Learning Spanish can be difficult, especially for kids. From complex grammar rules to difficult vocabulary words, there are a lot of tough concepts kids must learn.
While difficult, learning Spanish is well worth the time and effort. After all, learning a second language greatly increases a child’s cognitive abilities, improves his or her memory, and broadens his or her horizons. So how can you help your child stay motivated while learning Spanish? It’s easy; make learning fun by incorporating exciting games into their practice routine.
At TakeLessons, we’ve come up with 15+ fun and educational Spanish games specifically for kids. These games will help your child learn important concepts, while keeping him or her fully engaged throughout the learning process.
This game is the Spanish-version of the popular children’s game, Simon Says. Choose a student to take on the role of “Diego” and have him or her issue commands to the group in Spanish. For example, “Diego dice, toca la cabeza.” (Diego says, touch your head). Players are eliminated from the game by either failing to follow an instruction or following an instruction that doesn’t include the phrase “Diego dice.” This is a great game for teaching kids common commands in Spanish.
This game is the Spanish-version of another favorite game, Charades. First, take a set of index cards and write down different Spanish verbs; for example, bailar (to dance), correr (to run), and comer (to eat). Then, have a child choose a card from the pile and act it out in front of the group. The group will try their best to guess the Spanish verb the child is acting out. This game is a win-win for everyone, as it helps the “actor” and the “viewers” memorize common verbs.
A fan favorite, Who Am I? is a great game for learning conversational speak. First, write out a list of famous individuals on a set of index cards; for example, Taylor Swift, David Beckham, Pablo Picasso, etc. Have the child choose a card from the pile and tape it onto his or her back. Then, have the child take turns asking questions in Spanish about who she or he is; for example, “Am I male or female?” “Am I old or young?” After generating enough clues, the child will guess who he or she is.
For the full list of 15+ Spanish games, click here.
Using games to reinforce important language concepts is a great way to keep kids engaged. Next time it’s time to practice, try playing any one of these games with your child.
This article originally appeared on TakeLessons.com, an online marketplace that connects thousands of teachers and students for local and live online language lessons.
Now that the New Year has arrived and school is back in full swing, students are sure to be filled brimming with enthusiastic stories of what they did during their winter holiday. Ice skating in the park, opening gifts at the fireplace, lighting candles in beautifully wrought candelabras are just a few activities that children might share with an overjoyed twinkle in their eye. How could they not?!
As we all know first-hand, getting students to engage in conversations works best when they are inspired and excited about the topic. This is particularly true of bilingual students, especially those who may still be mastering the community language. What better time than now to get your bilingual students talking with you and one another? Their minds are so full of wonderful memories from the holidays, they will most likely want to share as much as possible.
Here are 5 tips on how to help your students direct their holiday excitement into fun language opportunities:
Continue reading Bilingual Students: Using Holiday Celebrations to Promote Language Development in Multicultural Classrooms
It is that time of year to celebrate: The bilingual child month is here!
We are delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate this wonderful month with you! Being bilingual is fun and fabulous – what a perfect reason to celebrate it! The best part of this celebration is that it doesn’t take much effort to focus on bilingualism: share a bilingual book with your students, visit an international district in a nearby city, or hang out together talking about the different languages spoken in your classroom or community. These are such wonderful ways to bring language and culture into our students’ lives.
Parents can be encouraged this month to pay special attention to the home language. Send home bilingual books and tell parents about the many benefits of speaking their home language(s) as much as possible!
Last year in our post Celebrate the Bilingual Children Month, we shared some of our favorite ways teachers can share bilingualism and biculturalism with their students. We suggest that you read it to find out if any of the tips might come in handy in your classroom this year!
To help teachers and families have easy access to information on supporting bilingualism in their classrooms and homes, we have put together a list of useful and informative articles. We hope you will find just what you need to stay inspired, motivated and engaged during this wonderful month of bilingualism! Continue reading The Bilingual Child Month Is Here Again!
Summer is a wonderful time of year to travel: Children are out of school and the warm days beacon for lazy hours at the beach or walks through cool forests. Whether we are traveling by land, air or sea, we can make bilingualism part of every bilingual child’s summertime adventures.
Both parents and teachers can engage bilingual children in fun travel activities, whether it is during a bus ride with a summer class or as a family on the way to visit grandma and grandpa. Nothing helps the time pass more quickly (and more enjoyably) than with travel activities. Why not make bilingualism a part of it?
Here is a list of some favorite travel activities to do with bilingual children: Continue reading Bilingual Children: Summer Travel Activities
The benefits of bilingualism has been a hot topic in recent years. Magazines, newspapers and blogs extol the fascinating ways in which the bilingual brain effortlessly manipulates more than one language at a time, working more effectively and efficiently than a monolingual one on specific types of tasks.
Thanks to their brain’s more robust executive control system (which comes from switching off the language that is not needed), bilinguals are believed to have better skills in tuning out distractions, which means that they are able to focus on what is most relevant at the moment. This can be a very important life skill. In addition, Prof. Ellen Bialystok discovered through her research on bilinguals that bilingualism helped those with Alzheimer’s continue functioning at higher cognitive levels despite having this debilitating disease. Basically, the symptoms of Alzheimer’s in bilinguals didn’t show up for five or six years later than those who only spoke one language. Another indication of the robustness of the bilingual brain.
While this research is exciting and inspiring, we also need to make sure that we are careful about how we introduce young children to additional languages. Using a grammar book with a young child may not be the way to go and can even cause a child to never want to learn another language ever again – even though that same strategy may be effective for a teenager or an adult.
Continue reading Teaching Children Languages: Benefits & Strategies
October is here which means it is time to focus on celebrating bilingual children!
Although we know that childhood bilingualism is fabulous and fantastic, it feels as if many in this country haven’t yet come to realize this (let alone celebrate it).
When it comes to bilingual children, words such as worry and concern are often used: “We are concerned that the bilingual children in this country won’t learn English, especially if their parents speak to them in their heritage languages at home.” We hear the word funding all the time: “The funding for our dual language learning program is being cut – yet again!” And, of course, the words motivate, encourage and inspire are key when it comes to bilingual children: “What can I do to motivate bilingual families to keep using their language(s) at home?”
But what about the word celebrate? When was the last time we called out: “Let’s celebrate bilingualism!”