Archive for July, 2008
Learn Mandarin Chinese for the Beijing Olympics: Hello and Goodbye
Aren’t you excited? In a little over a week, the world’s eyes will be on Beijing for the Summer Olympic Games. Take advantage of this incredible opportunity to introduce kids to the country, culture, people, and languages of China. I’ll be dedicating several upcoming posts to Olympic themes and Chinese for kids.
I’d love for my [...]
Chocolate Croissants: A Recipe for Learning French Shapes
If you’re ever having trouble exciting your kids about a new language or culture, just sugar them up and you’re good to go! My seventh grade French teacher just happened to have a culinary arts degree under her belt. Who knew that signing up for her class for the goodies would lead me down such [...]
Learning Spanish Fruits With the Wiggles: Fruit Salad
If you have a preschooler, you surely know all about The Wiggles. This wildly famous kiddie band from Australia became an obsession for one of my boys. I remember the magical moment when it all began. I innocently popped in a Wiggles video for my then 11 month old son. He went crazy dancing and [...]
Languages of the Olympic Games
A French teacher by trade, you can only imagine how much I love foreign languages. So, naturally, I look forward to the Olympics when they roll around. Sure, the sporting events are great. But for me, the real magic is in the flags, the cultures, and especially the languages.
In just a few more weeks, I’ll [...]
Kids Are Sponges: Natural Foreign Language Acquisition in Children
While playing at the park this evening, my five year old surprised me by spontaneously counting the numbers 15-19 in French: quinze, seize, dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf! He’s had the numbers 1-10 mastered for quite some time. Since I always seem to be teaching him along with other children who are French newbies, he hears [...]
Counting in Swahili: We All Went on Safari
Jambo! Introduce your kids to Swahili with We All Went on Safari: A Counting Journey Through Tanzania (Barefoot Books, 2003). This little treasure of a picture book is written by Laurie Krebs and illustrated by Julia Cairns. If you have a 3 to 8 year old, this book belongs on your bookshelf.
I must admit, I’m a [...]
Hit the Beach! Foreign Language Learning in the Summertime
I took a much needed break from the computer screen this afternoon–packed up the kids and headed out to the beach for a little sandcastle-building. Here in my little corner of Michigan, “the beach” is a metro park with gravely sand and lawn by an inland lake. It may not be the Riviera, but I [...]
Dinosaur King: Learning Japanese with Anime
My dinosaur-obsessed little boy has a new favorite show–Dinosaur King. We were searching YouTube for the first episode, when we stumbled upon the original Japanese version of the cartoon. My son was just as absorbed by the dinosaur action as if the words were in his native English. Here’s a clip:
While I don’t advocate watching anime as an effective way [...]
Meet Fuwa: Official Mascots of Beijing 2008 Olympics
Do you know the Fuwa? They are just the cutest little mascots you’ll ever want to meet. Fuwa are waiting to welcome you to China next month for the Olympic Games.
The Fuwa names provide a cool lesson in Chinese tradition and symbolism. Each character has a rhyming two-syllable name, which is a way to [...]
Spanish Colors of Colombia: Printables, Coloring Pages, and a Little Culture
This July 20, speak some Spanish in honor of Colombia’s Independence Day, or as the locals say–Dia de la Independencia. This festive occasion celebrates the day Colombia declared its independence from Spain in 1810.
Colombia, which was discovered by Christopher Columbus, is located in the northern part of South America. It boasts coastlines along both the [...]
