Hi everyone,
I just joined the forum and I wanted to ask for some advice on how to get started. My baby Gabriel was premature (born at 32 weeks) and is now 2 months and doing great! I currently speak to him in Spanish and my husband speaks to him in French. At home my husband and I speak Spanglish hehe (I’d say about 60% in Spanish and 40% in English). I want Gabriel to be fluent in all 3 languages (Spanish, French and English) and I’d like to teach him to read in all 3 as well. I also want to teach him math. It’s a lot to teach and learn but I know that the right time is when he’s a baby! Any advice on when I should start the math/reading lessons and if I should teach him to read in all 3 languages at the same time or start with one first and then introduce the others??? How should I balance the lessons?
For now I’m just doing the visual stimulation cards and I sing to him in Engish and Spanish and he enjoys it!
We are trying to teach our 11-month old daughter the same languages as you along with Mandarin and 2 Indian languages. She also gets exposure to Russian & German through my husband.
We are teaching her English, French & Mandarin (traditional) via Little Reader. We also use resources on youtube to play lots of nursery rhymes, songs, phonics etc. For Spanish - we are using flash cards + Wink to Learn Spanish DVDs. M also goes to Spanish, French & Mandarin playgroups each week which reinforces the listening/pronounciation etc.
As we don’t speak French, Spanish or Mandarin ourselves, we are learning them alongside. We have labelled most things around the house in French, Spanish & English so that she can learn that way too.
We got some audio-books through the library and so play those regularly in the different languages.
To get started just do any one thing consistently for one or two weeks. Once you have that one set into the routine add in one more thing. Work on the 2 for a week or two then add in the third activity.
You have actually already started by speaking three languages around your child. Do try to convert your Spanglish to English it will help your child learn English faster. Also if you don’t speak English to your child they will likely learn to understand it but not speak it. You don’t need to teach them to speak it now but just bear in mind for later once they start talking well in the other languages.
Small steps lead to big results, just a little bit regularly will get you there. Good luck
What is the community language? If it is English, he will learn it anyway. If it’s not, I think you should consider some time to speak in English with him, in a way that later he can have an active behavior with this language. Otherwise, it may happens what Amanda said. He will understand very well but may not speak.
Of course, it all depends of what you want.
Congratulations for your job!
At home we do OPOL. I speak English with my son (he is 20 months old) and my wife speaks Portuguese. We live in Brazil so he is exposed to Portuguese all the time. For reading, I’m so far teaching only English. My understand is that I don’t have time to try to read in both languages and that later with a strong knowledge of Phonics he will learn to read in Portuguese by himself. Or even if he gets to learn to read in Portuguese only at school, anyway he is having the benefits of EL now in English.