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