Hi Amber,

Welcome to the Forum. I really admire your effort to teach your children.  I am sure that we can learn a lot from your experience. You mentioned that you could recognize the signs earlier with your forth baby. May I know what are they?

thx Mom2bee

Do you mean sourat al massad sister?

In addition to books, homemade and free downloadable media, what's your top 5 tools / methods for early learning?

Here is my super squeezed list:

- LR & LM
- Montessori
- Doman (especially the physically superb, with no equivalent in the two items mentioned above)
- Tweedlewink
- Signing time

BTW, is there any expected date for the curriculum release? OMG! I can't wait!

I've just read this post! I hope it's not too late! I totally agree with Ayesha about being VERY careful about pronunciation, diacritic signs, grammar, etc. I am ready to help. Arabic is my mother tongue, my dad is an Arabic literature professor and my sister-in-law is preparing her PhD in Arabic etymology. So plz don't hesitate to contact me.

Wow! thx Sarah! that's my first one!

We live in an English environment, but our mother tongue is Arabic and I want it to be so for my baby. So we speak it 3 days a week. We split the other days between French and English. Surprisingly, It felt unnatural in the beginning and I couldn't wait for the Arabic days to come.  But I got used to it and It feels more and more spontaneous now.

I am also planning to introduce German and Spanish (even if I am not fluent). So I'll be just repeating few sentences hoping it will improve by time. In addition, I'll be learning Chinese with him, I'll try to repeat basic sentences (it sounds boring ) but I think I'll rely more on audio files and LR.

In a nutshell, speaking your native language may make you feel bonding better with your children but teaching them foreign languages means that you care about their education even if you won't be 100% comfortable with. If this is your firm choice than go for it, you'll get used to it eventually. If not, you can always adjust it.

Thanx Carpe Vestri Vita for sharing. That gives many ideas about teaching babies languages.

@annisis: we're all having dreams now but it would be great if we share the progress our children are making so we learn from each other

@tracyR4:

Public schools in the US really lack language teaching, but there is a HUGE opportunity to learn about culture and languages in private institutes or within communities. So, I think you really can teach your child many languages by simply hiring a nanny who will use her native language or by using those community services.

http://multitonguekids.blogspot.com <--Quadrilingual family. Danish Father, Italian Mother, living in France, the parents use English between them. No recent updates.

http://busyasabeeinparis.blogspot.com/ <--French father, Spanish-American mom. They now live in Paris, but started out in the states

http://babybilingual.blogspot.com <-- American Francophone mom, using only non-native French with her son to help him be bilingual.

http://babelkid.blogspot.com/ <-- family raising quadrilingual children.

http://trilingual.livejournal.com/ <--a globetrotting family, an Indonesian mom, French father. Raising their kids with OPOL. They lived in America, where their son went to preschool and learned English, then they lived in Germany for a little over a year and their son picked up German language, now they live in Australia. In both Germany and Australia, their kids attend French Ecole (schools) but they only cultivate English, Indonesian and French.

There are many more blogs, many of them you can find through the links on the recommended blogs above.

This should be enough to get you all started. Happy reading.

Thx a lot! karma point to you!

We are teach Zed 7 at once though. He has, at nearly 14 months, picked up about 60 words and a dozen or so phrases. But they are nearly all English (the language of the environment here) I'd say at least three dozen words and 7 phrases are English. 15 words and 2 phrases are French. He has no Spanish words but does have a couple phrases. And two words in each of the other 4 languages, and one Chinese phrase. Which just proves that my sample size is too small. 

Congratulations, your child must be very smart!    What's the method you are using to teach him all these languages? Are using any special programs?

Hi Chiraz,

I started teaching my baby English, Chinese, Filipino, and ASL when she was 3-6 months old, introduced French and Spanish at 14-16 months and Japanese at 29 months. We only speak English, Chinese, and Filipino at home. The rest of the languages she learns from exposure to native speakers, LR, audiobooks, music CDs, DVDs, and games. So far, it appears to be working well. Just this morning, I woke up to hear her reading from one of her French books!    And now she is watching and laughing along with a French cartoon.    We actually debated whether to introduce Japanese or Arabic as her 7th language but decided to go with Japanese since her dad trained in Japan many years ago and can still remember a few words of rusty Japanese (although nowhere near fluent). I am really interested in the Arabic lessons you are working on though. You may find this website useful: http://multilingualchildren.org/ On that forum, I have read of children growing up fluent in as many as 6 languages with constant exposure.

Hope this helps! 

Hi Aaangles,

I am so glad that your little girl is progressing that well in French! This is really encouraging!
I'll try to add sounds to the files I upload so that people who don't speak Arabic can learn directly from LR, I'll be more than happy if you use them with your little girl. She's so cute by the way, I can't stop singing "Tchin Tchin" after watching the video

sorry about that, I'll upload it again.

I tried to download it again, but it works fine with me. Can you try to delete the first one and repeat the download?