Foreign Languages for Toddlers. A Mother’s Experience

Below, it is described how our little daughter is “mastering” the English language but the same approach can be applied to teaching any foreign language.

After Soniya had turned one year old, I felt that some diversity should be added into our “lessons” of English. Of course, daily (if possible) reading of books in English was still there (as for me, I believe that it is the most effective way of fostering love for and knowledge of a foreign language in little babies) but I also invented something else. But let’s start from the very beginning…

First, I would like to say a few words on how I am reading books in the foreign language to Sonya. At such an age (16 mo), the child is unlikely to just sit and listen (though Soniya, to my surprise, sometimes listened to English fairy-tales in contrast to the ones in her native language :) ). That is why I suggested her to play with some developing toy while I, sitting nearby, was reading “Robin Hood”, “King Arthur”, “The Beauty and the Beast”, etc. to her (I tried to read books of different levels, starting from 50-100 words up to the level of a native speaker).

Before to start reading, I try to “introduce” our daughter into the “English atmosphere”. Together,

we look through the cards with pictures and English letters. I explain to Soniya what is depicted in the pictures in English. Sometimes, she also says what is their, in her own language : “woof-woof” (for the dog), “wow-wow” (for the cat), “u-u-u” (for the wolf) and I confirm, “yes-yes”, dog .

We also watch videos with English speech: about children, animals (for some 10 minutes).

And now the main thing. During three months (our daughter’s age: from 12 to 15 mo), two or three times a week, I combined art, music and English for Soniya. I consider it right to show the baby, since an early age, that everything is interrelated in the world, that all the subjects are connected with each other, that one always can find connection even between, let’s say, biology and music. As for our experience, we did the following:

• First I sang some English song to the accompaniment of the piano.

• Then we took coloured cardboard, a pencil, glue and scissors and strated making the “main character” of the song.
• All the images were glued to a big sheet of white paper hanging on the wall/wardrobe. It was called “English Corner”.
• While I was cutting out the details, I repeated the name of what we were doing for Soniya: star, frog, rainbow, etc.

If, occasionally, I asked Soniya, “Where is the star/frog/fish”, she usually came up to our “English Corner” and showed me the right image. But I would like to emphasize that I do not try to teach our daughter English words now. Let her start speaking her native language well first! But I am trying to cultivate the understanding of the “atmosphere” of another language in her since the first days of her life.

We hope that this story will mark the development of your ideas! Of course, all children are different and all of us, being smart parents, try and experiment.

Right now I am in the middle of looking for new forms of “English lessons” for our Soniya. If you’ve got ideas, we would be very happy to learn about them!

Anastasia

Illustrations to the article

Photos by the author of the article

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To read this article in Russian, please, visit here.

Next time we will share with you a recipe of a tasty breakfast which includes the “gifts of autumn”…