A Year of Bilingual Fun

A Year of Bilingual Fun with 8 Bilingual Parenting Tips to Engage Your Children in the Target Language Every Day

Wishing you and your family a healthy, happy, and joyful New Year filled with bilingual fun!   As we enter the New Year I want to share 8 tips to better structure your family’s target language learning in the New Year.

1. Daily Breakfast Booster:

Listen to the songs, music, or podcast in your target language.  You can use Chinese language streaming albums, YouTube channels, or podcast apps to set up a morning routine.  You can use the audio without the video or screen. We are looking at a relaxing start to the day with music.

Toolbox: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

 

Disney Songs in Mandarin Playlist by Miss Panda

 

2. Daily Immersion:

Listen to nursery rhymes, audio lessons, or stories when the children are in the car. Your children can use a whiteboard with a dry erase marker to draw as they listen to the songs or stories.

Children can also play the I SPY game with the numbers, colors, shapes, opposites, or any expressions that fit with the weekly learning goal.

The daily commute is a learning opportunity for your captive audience.

During the pandemic, distance learning became a part of schooling at home. We need to provide children time to take a break from the screen and participate in physical activities indoors or outdoors to help them to be calm, focus, and make their emotions.

Toolbox: whiteboard, storytime, and Playful Chinese podcast.

 

3. Daily Round Table:

This can be done in any time frame as time allows for the family.  This round table is the time your child can focus on practicing and learning something new in the target language.  If you follow a language program or a textbook then this is the time to review and build.

Read a story, then act it out.  Read a story and let the child share the words, expressions, or what happened in the story. You can do this according to your child’s proficiency level. You can do this with a song, a nursery rhyme, or a few sentences of a story.

When my kids were young they found it was fun to be silly when they act out the story we read together.

Take it slow. Less is more. Keep this time short and sweet so kids will want to come back for more each time.

Toolbox: First Mandarin Sounds Word Book, 10 Great Picture Books, iChineseReader.

 

4. Daily Reading:

Daily reading comes with a seasonal style. It is an inviting and welcoming place for kids to join you to read or listen to stories. Even if they are not reading yet listening to stories or looking at picture books is literacy building. In the summer you can read by the pool, in the yard or in the park.  In the winter, you can read by the fireplace. Read under the table. Read with a flashlight under the blanket…

Read, read and read more in the target language! It is a powerful tool to grow proficiency.

5. Weekly Game Night:

Kids love playing games. So are my children. My kids love the game night!  We use board games and card games.  Sometimes we play with poker chips and then the kids can redeem the chips for various goodies.  It is fun. There is no purchase needed. You just need to use the board games you already have but play them in your target language.

Do you need some support with the Chinese expressions to use? Here is an episode you can listen to for the essential words and expressions you may need.

 

 

6. Weekly Hang-Out:

With the internet and the convenience of video conference apps, you can connect with Chinese-speaking relatives or friends weekly or even daily.  This is a way to help the kids maintain a connection with the language and the culture.

It is also a way to keep the Chinese language relevant in their life. It is creating a need for them to use and keep learning Mandarin. It is to bond with the Grandparents if they only speak Mandarin.

This is a bridge we can build along with our children. They need our help to connect the dots, to see the value of speaking the minority/target language. We want them to grow with the minority language and be proud of being able to speak the minority language and understand the culture. It is not just at home but outside of the home. When there is an opportunity for us to share the minority language and culture in the community we need to go ahead and do the show and share!

You can orchestrate the conversation with your relatives or friends beforehand so they are up to date with your children’s activities and their important events.

Toolbox: Line, WeChat, What’s App, the FB messenger…

This can also be done by attending a local Mandarin Chinese language school on the weekend and hanging out with children and family who are learning or speaking the Chinese language.

Toolbox: OCAC Mandarin Schools (Taiwan), ACS USA Schools (Taiwan), CSA US (China)

 

7. Monthly Field Trip:

This is for kids to use the target language in real life. Some places to start with are the Chinese culture center, Chinese supermarket/store, culture events in Chinatown, Chinese restaurants, Chinese medicine herb shops, and bubble tea shops.

There are layers of learning involved with a field trip. It is important to involve children in the planning process. Even preschoolers can help.

The goal is to let the kids have fun, listen to the target language,  and have a conversation in Mandarin Chinese with people at the store or at the event. The most important part is the experience. It can inspire curiosity and it can go a long way in the learning follows.

Dive further with the geography, history, and cultural elements of each trip with research, a teacher, or a guide.

Toolbox: Culture centers (Taiwan), Culture share (China)

 

8. Annual Immersion:

During the pandemic, traveling is restricted, therefore, the annual immersion has been put on pause for many families. However, with the internet and video conferencing tools, there are many opportunities to create an immersion experience for your children. You can locate programs with local Chinese schools, or programs led by native-speaking teachers located in the U.S. or the Chinese-speaking countries you are planning to have the trip in.

Diversify the online program and personalize it for your child. In the past year, I worked with art teachers to provide Mandarin immersion camps for teens. Learning works very well with doing hands-on projects no matter it is an in-person program or an online program.

Toolbox: Niceday, Hahow (both sites are in Chinese), Outschool, hisawyer

What we did before the Pandemic –

Before the pandemic, we have done Chinese language immersion trips to Taiwan and each trip is amazing.  My kids attended short-term language and culture camps.  They participated in programs with children who were also learning Mandarin Chinese from all over the world.  My children were very happy to meet other kids who are learning Mandarin just like them. Years ago, they also had an opportunity to attend a local elementary school with the local children for a week.

If traveling is not an option then you can locate a language immersion summer program for kids in a weekend Chinese school or in a local university where they have summer language programs for children.  Here is a resource for summer programs in the U.S., China, and Taiwan.

 

For parents who need encouragement and support for bringing up bilingual/multilingual children, it is best to join a bilingual parenting community, such as  Miss Panda Chinese, Bilingual Monkeys, and Multilingual Parenting.  You are not alone on this bilingual parenting journey.

I am here to assist you to keep the learning moving forward and support your needs with my resources and private coaching sessions!

Happy New Year!  Wishing you and your family a healthy, happy, and joyful year filled with bilingual fun with your kids!

WIth big panda hugs, Miss Panda

 

Updated: 2021

 

 

 

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