I have a dilemma and I would really like to receive your advices and suggestions.
I don’t know with which language start to teach my baby to read .
At home, we speak three languages and my baby hears all of them every day (Mama and her family speaks Spanish to the baby, Papa and his family speaks Dutch to the baby and between mama, papa and family, we speak English to understand each other. Yeah, it can seem really weird :wacko: ). So, I am having a hard time to decide which language start with.
I am creating my own categories in Spanish and Dutch following Doman books and I have bought Semester 1 and 2 of LR. I know that LR will have the curriculum in Spanish (some day) :yes: but I want to start as soon as possible with my baby. She has almost 11 months and the time pass too fast. :unsure:
Could you please help me to decide? Or comment how are you doing your program with your babies?
We just did every language we could get our hands on simultaneously. He reads all of them and it didn’t seem to be a problem. We only speak English so the rest was achieved through a variety of programs. I have no idea what the recommendations of experts are but I figure if they can learn to speak multiple languages simultaneously then surely they can learn to read them too
Glad to hear about your progress. My daughter is in a similar situation language-wise (Russian, Catalan, English), however her situation is different as she is speech and language delayed. In her case I am trying to focus more on the language of the environment (outside), that is the language she will need to use in nurseries, school, etc.
Thanks Gilma for reposting, it is interesting reading.
My son is raised in czecho-slovak environement, and I try to expose him to english since about 6 months of age. We hooked on LR English few months ago, mainly to add more native english into his daily routine. He is starting to speak now, mixing all three languages. He likes LR, but recently seems to loose his interest during phonics parts, so I might be pushed to skip them. I am thinking on translating curriculum to czech (his community language) and starting to flash it simultaneously, we will see if this helps to move him towards reading.
Hi Monika!
I want to translate the LR curriculum to German, but I do not think that you can do it, not with the current version of LR.How can you translate your LR curriculum on czehis?Thank you.
My problem is that I want to tech my baby to read Spanish (this is his ONLY language yet) but the programs (like little reader) I would like to use are not in Spanish only in English… Do you know if there is a place where I can get them in Spanish???
In the other hand we would like to teach Leo (our baby) English since now but we dont know how to start as it feels very artificial that one of us will ONLY talk to him in English when is not our mother language. Also our English is not perfect and I´m afraid that he will get confused or disconcerted with the change. As he is still in the process to learn Spanish, he is 21 months now.
Every time I say something in English he looks at me like saying: ¨what are you doing mom??? This is weird!¨
We live in Mexico, so we thought that we will speak English at home and spanish outside.
We have not started, I guess we are not too convinced yet.
Anyone with a similar situation or experience to give us an advice, we´ll be deeply greatful!!!
All the best and lot´s of joy to all,
Verónica Alvarez
I will create new presentations with new text and our family voice records, I might use same photos/videos from library or I will add some home made ones. You can do this with the current version of LR - that is the best about the whole program :yes:
Hi Elfazul (Verónica),
We were in the simular situation. I wanted to expose my son to english, but I did not feel it natural to speak just english to my son, it is was just not my native language. So, first I bought few english children books to see if he would be attracted. And he was! Than I added more and more, plus some videos and songs. Now we all memorised his books and songs, and we just sing/recite them along during the day. Try to do it this way, and english just will immerse into your lives
Hi Monika!
Thanks for your answer, but when I did ask not for a long time ago if you can translate the whole LR curriculum , I was told of KL, that this is possibel only with the new version, version 2 of LR.
with the current Lr can you only translate the Categories.Do you have the version 2 of LR ?How do you translaite the phonic part of LR ?Thank you.
I have the version 1.6.324. What I do is: for each curriculum day I create a new category and I add words, sounds and videos there. For now I just skip phonics, in czech or slovak language we basically “write what we hear”, each letter has just one sound and we sound out each letter in the word, so phonics might not be necessary.
Hi Veronica,
I think that the sooner you start with a 2nd or 3rd language the better. But… you shall find a way so that your son do not think your are saying weird things. I had a similar problem after a time. When my grandson was baby we listen to music in different languages (Wee sing Around the World) and i read to him many books specially in english. At preschool whe he had 2 yrs, he was the only kid that called the animal names in english. I understand it was much easier to say ‘cow’ than ’ vaca’ and ‘pig’ than ‘cerdo’ etc. But… a little after 3 yrs he was not pronouncing well certain words. So… after evaluation, a therapist said that we have to forget about other languages (Spanish is out native and we live in Peru). Maybe he listen sometimes conversationa about that. The result was that when i say something in english he said ’ i can not listen and do not understand, i like spanish’ After that i tried to not mention an english word (which is difficlt because we have a lot of material in books, songs, videos etc).
Long story but this week things are changing. He is learning english at preschool and he is telling me that he know the animals in english so we can watch out videos. Today he asked for Muzzy in english and before he only wanted in spanish.
The important message you have to take from this is:
the younger you start the better
if you see a negative reaction to the other langueage, stop for a while until he is ready
Do not worry about how you speak, he will pick the correct pronunciation if exposed to other material and realized which is correct.
Sidonia,
There are a few users that are working on translations of LR to german. That is a target language i will be looking for but in a 5th place after: spanish, english, french, chinese
.
