3 languages? How to start?

Hello Everybody

I will start to teach my 5 months old baby to read next month ( need to prepare material first and also I want to do more research and fully understand this science). :clown: I bought Dr Doman book ( how to teach your baby to read) two days ago and have already finished it, I am so eager to start! Also i have downloaded
LR to study it first. However, I have a question and maybe you guys could help me ? My husband and I are Brazilian but we live in the UK with our little man. My husband although Brazilian he lived in France while a toddler so his first tongue was French ( he does not have an accent like I have with English). Well my question is: in which language should we do the flaschcard? Portuguese, English or French? I would be fascinated to see my baby read the three language but I don’t know if it is possible this early… Any thoughts? If i decide to use LR ( i think i will definitely buy the bundle LR-LM), if so how do i use it in Portuguese / French/ English?
Many thanks
Paula, Tavinho’s mum lol

There is no reason why you can’t do all three languages at once! LR is a great way to enforce language learning - it would be easiest to start with English as you just need to buy the ready-made curriculum.

Maybe your husband could do the French flashcards, you do Portugese and at the same time do English?

I am using LR for English, am preparing Russian slides to start in a couple of weeks (so we don’t start just before a holiday) and we’ve got the trial of Chinese which I would love to upgrade, if I can find the funds!

Personally, I wouldn’t do the exact same set of words in both languages simultaneously, because it gets boring (for me at least :rolleyes: ) seeing the same pictures over and over, but delay 10-20 days to allow the sets to be different. That will also give you plenty of time to create the slides for each subsequent language.

It might be an idea to prepare some samples in all three languages and let your baby choose! I know my son prefers other languages over English any day - maybe your son will have a preferred language to listen to, in which case - start there!

It’s nice to see another UK based mummy - there are so few of us around :happy:

Hello MummyRoo, :smiley:

Thanks for the reply! So good to know i can do all three languages at the same time I kinda have a feeling that was the case! But just another thing (or more than one thing!): how about the lessons: should I teach each language at a different time of the day or the flashcards could be mixed (the three languages altogether?). I am a bit confused. Sorry I am new here!

If LR is only in English, that means that i should make paper flashcard in French/Portuguese (or powerpoint) or can I edit LR to have these words as part of the curriculum…? I think my thoughts are not very clear, do you understand me? Also I don’t think my husband will be willing to able to do the task, he works all the time, and has little time to spend with the baby, actually during the week he usually is at home while the baby is on bed (go out to work too early and come back too late, if you know what a mean: the rat race!)

PS: I have already started using Little Reader (brillkids) in English.

thanks! Again!
Paula (Tavinho’s Mum)
:wub:

The LR cirriculum is currently only available in English and Chinese, but you can edit the words and record your own sound files to use it for other languages. I am basically translating the cirriculum slide-by-slide to Russian so that I don’t have to find images etc. There are also quite a few resources available in the LR library in other languages. Other parents have probably done a bit of the work for you :slight_smile:

If your husband can’t sit and do LR, could he spend some of his evening recording his voice for the french slides? It wouldn’t take long for him to say 30-ish words once a week, right :slight_smile: That way your son will still be hearing a familiar voice and will be hearing un-accented French. I believe LR is in the process of making French and Spanish cirricula, but I don’t know how soon they will be coming out. Not for a while, I think.

Good luck teaching your baby - he’s a lucky boy getting three native languages. :yes:

I would show one language at a time. Don’t mix them up - it will be confusing. You could do one set of English and then say ‘Now let’s read some Spanish words!’ or something to let him understand you are switching languages if you want to do two or three languages in one sitting. To start, as he’s so young, I would have a break between each language, or he might lose interest. :smiley:

Paula, nice to have you in this forum. You will find a lot of useful information on helping your baby. LR is an excellent program that allows you to personalize your videos, images and even voice. My daughter started LR English a week ago with her almost 4 month old daughter after choosing some of her family’s pictures and editing them. So now when the images pop up, her hair or her husband’s face will be show. It is really very good and holds your child attention. My grandaughter also hears French music since born and is watching Little Pim in French and my daughter who had a few classe of french when young is now learning with her. During the day she tries to use some words that they have been learned. So at this time she is expose to Spanish, French and English.

On the other side I am showing LR English to my grandson who is 4 yrs old and at first he did not like other than native language (spanish) but now he asks to do it himself and has shown me some tricks like going backwards, moving the arrow while showing the word in the multisensorial part etc. He is delighted every time a new word cames up.

I think Tavinho is lucky to have parents that can use 3 native languages. If you like you can make your own edition but take a minute to see what other language downloads you have in this forum made by other parents.
Bye