re aangeles: I too find sign language to be really helpful. (we have babysigningtime and signingtime) And I'll check out the trilingual book you suggest. thanks!

Hi, it's me who wrote a blog entry about One Parent One Language.
http://wenjonggal.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/one-person-one-language-and-other-theories-that-bug-me/

Frankly, I said as a single parent who is bilingual with English my dominant language, and learning Mandarin, and wanting to do three languages with my son, One Parent One Language is just... impossible. I am not going to raise my son to be a monolingual anglophone because I am a single mom. My parents are thousands of miles away, and in any case, they don’t speak some interesting minority language: they are monolingual anglophones like most of North America. And I certainly don’t have the money for a nanny several days a week.

My son started daycare in French (the majority language here in Quebec, but I wouldn’t say the dominant language in that most of our friends are anglophone, english radio, tv, books and all other media are readily available, and most things like packaging are bilingual: French is present but so is English) when he was three years old, and goes now 2-3 times a week. So he gets French immersion there, but for the first year he only replied in English.

So, basically, I read books in English and in French. I put on French and Mandarin cds and dvds. I speak English to him but also French... more often French outside the home as people in the park, stores etc are majority francophone and I want to help contribute to the French atmosphere and not run around speaking English in public with my son.

There is no way I could speak “only one language: don’t mix the languages while talking” esp in Mandarin. I teach him French words while speaking English, and translate French while I’m speaking it into English if there is a word or ten he doesn’t know. And in Mandarin I integrate new words we are learning into games and everyday speech. Every language I know I learned that way... definitely almost all teaching materials and language classes are conducted in more than one language... adding in more and more of the second language into the mix as more vocab, sentence structure and understanding is accumulated.

I certainly haven’t found it has “mixed him up”... he has a noted preference for English since it is our home language, and it is so available in the outside world, but he can tell you what language any word or sentence is. Anyways, it is normal for anyone who is multilingual to “code mix” ie use words from another language if they don’t have the word for it in the language they are speaking: In Quebec even unilingual anglophones say “dépanneur”, “cafe au lait” and “croissant”.

So, while some parents might have two parents with two languages they are fluent in, OPOL might work as well as any other method, but for some of us it is just not a possibility and without it we are doing just fine.

Here is a great article on Raising Bilingual Children by the Linguistic Society of America:
http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-faqs-biling_child.cfm

Hello Wink to Learn people! I just signed up at your site. I am confused: in the left side menu it says Free International Shipping by Air... it appears to be all the time? And then in the right menu it says that there is a Free Shipping special only until Feb 15. Is it always free shipping, or only for the next week or two? Or is the special the white tiger dvd added on top of the regular offer of free shipping?

thankyou for clarifying!

Thanks!

Is the new Sing and Sign dvd available in Canada yet?

Hello, has anyone used books with an audio pen, in Chinese/English, that work like the Leapfrog books and pens? (At least I think this is how they work, never having used the Leapfrog ones). I want to read my son simple books in Chinese, but do so haltingly, and he gets fed up and asks me to read English books instead. I was thinking that books with audio pens that read out loud with a proper chinese voice would be great for both him and me. I could practice reading without the pen, then have the pen say it and check/better my fluency. And he could use the simpler books with single characters or words of two or three characters, and go at his own pace with the pen that reads the character out loud in Chinese.

I have found at least one on the market in the US and Canada: eReadbooks Touch Reading Pen. It is available at Amazon.com in outside vendors, and in Canada at bigreach.ca I haven't bought it yet and want to know if anyone has tried it, or a similar audio reading pen in Chinese.

If you wish to see the pen and books in question, I blogged about finding them at http://wenjonggal.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/ereadbook-touch-reading-pen/

Thanks for any insight anyone can give me before I take the plunge!

Hi, there are tons of Chinese kids' songs on youtube.
Try typing in "liang zhi lao hu song", there's lots, including my 4 yr old singing it (username "artistcolor") or "twinkle twinkle little star chinese version".

Not sure what the name of the "Yi er san si wo liu qi, wo de pengyou zai zhe li?" song is, but here is an example: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/nafpkNcmouA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/nafpkNcmouA&rel=1</a> and you can click on the related songs on the side menu.

Here's an example of "zhao pengyou" <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/x4QxN0OE7b4&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/x4QxN0OE7b4&rel=1</a>... again check related songs on the side menu.

You  can try finding even more by copying and pasting the CHINESE CHARACTERS instead of pinyin or English name of the songs... just copy and paste only the chinese characters from one song into the "search" on youtube, and you'll be "into" the Chinese-language stuff... again you can follow "related videos" and "more by this user" on the side menu. Try 上学歌 (Shang xue ge... going to school song)

You can also go onto sites like http://childbook.com and click on song cds, and copy and paste the chinese character song names in the listings of what is on the cd, into youtube.

Have fun!!

EEEE! I looked at the video you linked to and it looked great, so I looked up the requirements (since it is Florida and I am in Canada)... turns out that it is $375 per semester for instate students, and the Chinese 1 and Chinese 2 are each two-semester classes. And then it is $25 more per semester for out of state and international... so $400 per semester, means $800 US for each Chinese 1 and Chinese 2 on that site. $1600 in total. I suppose it gives one university credits, but I don't know if they are transferable anyways.

Anyways, that was the video for Chinese 2 (you need Chinese 1 as a prerequisite). Here is Chinese 1 http://breeze.flvs.net:9090/p57308815/ video, and Chinese 1 course description:
http://www.flvs.net/areas/flvscourses/Pages/Course%20Catalog/courselisting-outofstate.aspx?CourseID=119

Thanks, but it is too expensive for us.

On the other hand, I was pointed out this site for learning Chinese, that is an online roleplay gaming sort of thing: http://enterzon.com/

I haven't tried it out yet, and it is too advanced for my 4 yr old. It is University of Michigan and HanBan together.

Hi,
thanks to parents on this site giving the thumbs up to Readingeggs.com, I have been trying it now for three weeks with my son, who was four in November.

Tonight I wrote a blog entry reviewing it, with lots of links and some videos.
http://wenjonggal.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/hatching-a-reader-with-readingeggs/

Please drop by, leave a comment, and subscribe to the blog if you are interested in multilinguism (English, French, Chinese), education, preschoolers!
thanks!

Hi,
can't say anything about using readingeggs.com with younger kids, but I am so thankful you mentioned it here. I am doing the free trial with my 4 yr old son and he just LOVES it... he is so motivated to get the golden eggs and have the "easter eggs" crack open and collect the creatures. He asks to do it every day, and in three days has done 6 lessons, with pretty much 100% success.

They do say to repeat lessons 2-3 times, which he has zero motivation to do. He just wants to go to the next lesson to move along on the map. anyone have ideas of how to get a kid to repeat lessons? I am not so sure that the learning is transfering out of readingeggs onto real books... I would say yes for the letter recognition, but less for word recognition like am and sam. (He got it all right on the readingeggs but didn't seem to recognize them at the start of the book Green Eggs and Ham (I am Sam, Sam I am, that Sam I am that Sam I am, ...)

Anyways, he is totally hooked on the program, and has gone from a complete newbie on the computer to understanding curser control, clicking, and drag and drop in just three days!! So thanks! I will sign him up for a year when our 14 day tree trial runs out.

Gloria, I just looked quickly through the beginner ones, and they seem to be mostly simplified, though usually the point is being able to speak, use tones etc, what with being videos. More focussed on sentences, conversation etc. Go take a look.

thanks, hypatia!

Thanks for the chinesetapes.com tip! I hadn't heard of it before. Some fun stuff like puzzles and posters. Lots of classic animation dvds (foghorn leghorn, popeye, little mimi, daffy duck, tweety and sylvester) but not sure how the translations are... the english printed on them is horrid and missing a lot of letters! ;D Anyways, great to have another good site to order chinese materials. It is also a good place for those who want to learn Cantonese.

My gosh, Nikita's story is really bad, and explains a lot about the attitude against "fitting in" and being in school in the "too much knowledge" thread. Frankly, it doesn'T sound so much about East vs West early learning education, and much more about the sort of cult-like community atmosphere of private schoools, esp those with a religious or other ideological bent, where people feel attached and supportive of the school , teachers and other families, even if the behaviour is very bad. No outside control or sanctions available, no higher authority, no willing to go against what is bad, for fear of undermining the religion or ideology. Of course even small towns can be like this... where families in positions of influence or power are not brought down or outed for bad behaviour for fear of being thrown out and ostracised from the community.

I am not sure that teaching by rote, or the amount of homework or learning outside school, or the amount of housework and chores has anything to do with it. It sounds like a lot of very bad community behaviour. Here there is a lot of programs about bullying, harrassment, both sexual and otherwise etc, in the schools, to make both children and teachers aware of the standards, alternatives, systems for speaking out etc. The situation Nikita describes just sounds unacceptable from any point of view, and I am sure there can be bullying or sexual harrassment even if children learn on weekends and do chores.

I am a bit like Nikita in that I think that learning should be not confined to school and also children should have chores and responsibilities. I also think they should be responsible for things like walking to school, caring for pets etc. My son is only 3 but if he takes his bike he is responsible for it. He must ride it, push it or carry it, not me. And he locks it up himself. He must feed the dog, hang up his clothes etc.

And he sees me all the time learning chinese, practicing writing etc, as well as we take the opportunity to learn whenever it arises. On the other hand, I don't believe that children should have homework all the time and be sitting at a table or desk doing lots of "learning"... Sometimes we need to learn by playing in the mud, or watching the construction workers building, or watching Dora in Chinese. Sometimes he needs to learn to entertain himself without having someone tell him "do this' do that"... I hope as he gets older to lead him to delve further into subjects he is interested in... how to research things, to take learning further, to find people to instruct him etc. I do know that some children in Asian countries live at school, and don't play all week, and only go home on the weekend. I am sorry, I just don't think that life is only to go to school. Or only to do " copy your letters over and over, then do the timestables, then read the dictionary and do flashcards for vocabulary" even if it is homeschooling and not in an institution.

As an adult who DOES buy picturebooks, I was excited to see this post. I am a children's illustrator, and I do buy picturebooks for myself which my son isn't allowed to touch! LOL! There is a whole slew of books by Edward Gorey that are picturebooks for adults, and I love Hillaire Belloc's "Mathilda Who told such Dreadful Lies" illustrated by Posy Simmonds. The kid dies in the end.

However excited I was at the possibilites of this book, just reading the reviews at Amazon convinced me I'd probably give it 2-3 stars as well... Personally I don't know that make of car, and it seems very centered around particular American media and political references that hold very little resonance for me. It is too bad, as certainly one could have gone beyond that with this premise and parody and created something that speaks to all of us whom have read Where the Wild Things Are. It is FINE that it is not for children, and indeed, the child under the age of 8 or 12 who really gets parody is a rare child indeed. It just needs to be a bit less "pop culture joke of the minute" I think.

(note, it is NOT the fault of the authors if the marketing dept or the tag word department of Amazon put it in the kids' section when it is for adults)

On the other hand, has anyone read any of the other parodies listed on that page, esp the Goodnight Moon ones? Goodnight Goon, Goodnight Bush and Runaway Mummy seem to all get high praises.