TEACHING LANGUAGES

Dear Reader

My husband and I are both from South Africa, but, we live in England with our 2 boys. Our home language is Zulu and the language of the environment is English. Both my husband and I are so determined that our children will grow up speaking Zulu, or atleast when they are with us,family members and other people who speak the language.

We try our best to expose our kids to other languages as well: Zulu, English, Chinese, Spanish and French. Tehillah is fluent in Zulu and English.

I started to teach Tehillah to read in English when he was 2 months old using YOUR BABY CAN READ, BRAINY BABY as well as flash cards that I made myself. When he was about 6 months, while searching the internet I came across a very wonderfull website, http://www.brillkids.com/, which was just a lifesaver for me because making flash cards was just becoming too much. I decided to try their software, little reader as well as little math and was just hooked, I've never looked back, I would recommend this website, especially for working parents who don't have much time to prepare learning material. They have a 1 year curriculum in English, Math and Chinese.

Last year we decided to teach our kids Chinese, Spanish and French. I must say, both my husband and I don't speak these 3 languages. We decided to teach them languages because we learnt that it is very easy for children under 7 years old to learn languages. We decided on Chinese because it is one of the most spoken languages in the world and China is fast becoming the leading country in economy, and also because Chinese is a very different language. Spanish and French, for personal reasons.

For teaching Chinese we are using: LR Chinese, Baby learns chinese, Wink to learn, Little Pim as well as audio books and music.
For Spanish we are using: Babybit, Speekee, music and audio books, as well  as downloads from Brillkids.
For French: Professor Toto, wink to learn French, music and audio books. We are also using a program from http://www.languagemom.com/.

I will go into more details with each of these programmes as we go along.

Many Thanks for taking your time to read my blog.

Lungile

WELCOME TO MY WORLD

Dear Reader

Thank you very much for taking your time to visit my blog. I have decided to start this blog mainly for myself and my family and also to share, inspire and encourage other parents who are on this journey. I have two sons, 3 year old Tehillah and 5 months old Jaden.

When I was pregnant with my now 3 year old son, Tehillah, i started doing research on baby's development, baby's brain development and was very interested on everything that has to do with babies. On my research I came across youtube videos of babies as young as 12 months who could read, which to me at the time, that was just something that was impossible. But then I decided to dig deeper, and then I came across YOUR BABY CAN READ early learning system. I could not believe what I was seeing. I'd never heard of babies and toddlers reading before. I was very sceptical, but then I decided to go ahead and try it...

I aslo decided to dig deeper and I came across this wonderfull site, http://www.brillkids.com/, which is a website that is mainly about teaching babies and toddlers to read. I've learnt so much from parents in that website and am still learning. At first my aim was to teach my children to read, but then I found myself doing more then that...

I will go into more details about my journey as I continue to blog...

What an amazing journey.

Thank you very much.

Lungile

PROVERBS 22:6

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.