Bonne Mama just posted a fantastic idea on her blog (Our Non-Native Bilingual Adventure) about creating themes for focusing on language learning with her toddler and baby. I’m so excited about it, I can’t stop thinking about it! It has a lot in common with what I’m already doing with my German story time, but at home with Aleksander I could expand upon it even more. The idea is to pick a topic such as farm animals, weather, holidays, etc. and look for resources and materials to use with our children to enhance their language learning. It doesn’t have to be terribly complicated (although knowing myself, I probably will spend way too much time researching and looking for materials!) – you can just use things you already have such as books, songs, food, etc.
I have to admit I have completely let go of my ambitions to follow Multilingual Livings Language Challenge. I still check out some of the posts occasionally, but I just couldn’t commit to it. (I think I have a pretty good reason, but that will have to wait for another post….) But this idea from Bonne Mama has me so excited, I want to start working on it right away! It’s just the kind of thing I love to do, so I figure this can be my new focus for the language challenge.
I thought I’d begin here by sharing the basic ideas of themes and categories I might want to focus on. Most of the themes come from books and songs we already have at home. I’ve already been collecting them in a spreadsheet for my story time, so it’s easy enough just to expand it. I have to thank Bonne Mama for some of these ideas, too! Some of the themes easily overlap, but I think that can be a good thing for reinforcement. Also note, my spreadsheet is in German, and in that list the themes are alphabetized – doesn’t quite translate here!
THEMES:
- alphabet
- outings / travel
- bathtime
- on the farm
- by day and night (I really wanted to focus on lullabies here, so I did books/songs about waking up & going to sleep)
- jungle
- Eric Carle
- food
- vehicles
- colors
- airplane
- shapes
- friends
- at home
- helping hands (this comes from books where the themes is helping each other)
- insects
- body parts
- nature
- playground
- in town / in the city
- days of the week
- animals
- birds
- water
- Winnie the Pooh
- at the zoo
- trains
- Valentines’ Day
- Easter
- Mother’s & Father’s Day
- Halloween
- Martinstag (St Martin’s Day)
- Nikolaus
- Weihnacht
- seasons
- winter / snow
- spring
- weather
MATERIALS:
- books
- songs
- fingerplays & knee bouncers
- games, puzzles, toys
- crafts
- coloring pages
- nursery rhymes
- food, recipes
- YouTube, DVDs, audio books
- pictures & photos
- field trips
I don’t exactly when I’ll get this going. I’m still collecting ideas and materials. As soon as I’m ready to go, I’ll post the first theme here, so you can follow along. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them!!
Hi Kate
I’m so pleased that my post got you inspired. Your theme list is great….I shall be popping back to keep up to speed with how things go with this for you and will also let you know if, whilst doing my research, I come accross anything I think may be of use to you. Let me know what topic you decide to start with. I have started with Les Animaux de la Ferme (Farm Animals).
Oh good! I’m glad you saw the post. I was trying to leave you a comment about it, but had some technical difficulties. I’m still not sure how or even when I’ll begin. There’s a lot of fluctuation going on in our house, so it might have to wait until we get back from the Netherlands in June. I must confess, too – sometimes I’m a lot better with collecting ideas than implementing them! Let’s keep in touch about it, though. Even though we’re focusing on different languages, we can try to share ideas and info and at the very least keep each other inspired!
I had a question for you, too: have you thought about how long you’ll focus on each topic? I wonder if a week is long enough? Probably for me, but I don’t know about Aleksander!
Oh, and I had another idea. If we have toys that fit the theme (like cars or farm-related things), I was thinking of getting a special basket to keep them in during the theme. Then Aleksander will know that when we play with those toys, we have to speak German, no matter what time of day it is. I do that already with his German alphabet puzzle, and it seems to work fine. Of course, since you speak only French with Poppette, you probably don’t have this issue!
Hi Kate
Great idea to share our ideas on this and help to motivate each other.
In terms of the length of time I plan to spend on each theme, I imagine that this will be driven by the content I manage to put together and Poppette’s interest (or lack of) in the theme once we get started. I think aiming for enough stuff to do for a week is a good plan. Realistically, there may only be a short amount of time available some days when something quick and simple e.g. singing a themed nursery rhyme whilst en route somewhere might be the sum total of the activity for a particular day.
I think my approach will be to put in the work upfront so that I have the resources available and then just use them as and when time and circumstances permit, rather than taking a rigid approach. Hopefully that will keep things fun for both of us.
Hi there! It’s great to hear back from you! It sounds like we have a similar plan. For some themes, I have a ton of things we could use, depending on Aleksander’s interest and what we’re doing that day / how much time we have. I was thinking about using each theme for two weeks, just we can get in plenty of repetition. But we’ll see…. Like you, I’m trying to gather resources for the first theme before I get going. We’re off to the Netherlands for a couple of weeks, so I’m going to wait to start until we get back.
Good luck with your plans! I look forward to sharing more with you!
[...] little over a month ago, I wrote a post about themed language learning at home. I also added a page with lots of ideas. Now I’m ready [...]
[...] Examples you may have read about? How about the Multilingual Living Language Challenge … themed language learning … even running the German story hour at our local library. And these are just the few that [...]