Hi hypatia,

You can remove the blanks before and after each word to make the slides transition faster. Under playback, go to the individual word settings, hit "edit," and to the right of the pronunciation, there is an "edit with editor" tab. Just click that and the Easy Voice Recorder window will come up. Highlight the blanks before and after the pronunciation of the word, hit delete, and save your changes. It is really easy to do once you get the hang of it. Unfortunately though, you will have to do it for each individual word. My daughter also gets distracted when there are pauses between the slides so I edit the slides before I show them to her.

Does anyone know of any mommy-and-me type classes conducted in Mandarin Chinese for 1-3 year olds in the Jacksonville-Tampa-Orlando area?

Hf,

Wow! The website looks terrific!!! Thank you so much for posting! Like you, I am always looking for educational materials in traditional Chinese for my 19 month old daughter. I always get so frustated and disappointed when I see really good books/DVDs on sale that are only offered in simplified Chinese here in the U.S. I have thought about ordering directly from Taiwan or Hong Kong but the shipping costs are prohibitive and most of them do not offer international shipping anyway. I am really excited to get home from work so I can explore the site further. Thanks again! 

Oooh! That's good news, KL! I've been waiting for this feature since I got LM. Thanks for continually working to make your products better! 

My hubby and I have been using the OPOL method with our daughter since she was 6 months old. My husband speaks Filipino to her, I speak Mandarin, and she gets English from daycare. So far, it is working beautifully. At 18 months old, my daughter understands complex instructions and responds appropriately to questions whether spoken to her in Filipino by her father, in Mandarin by me, or in English by her daycare teachers. From our readings regarding multilingual children, we were expecting her to have relatively slower language development than monolinguals in the beginning, but even in this area, she surpassed our expectations. At 18 months old, she has a vocabulary of more than 100 words in all three languages combined (monolingual children are expected to have 5-20 words at this age.)

We had the same anxieties and questions as you when we first decided on this method. In our case, my husband did not know a word of Mandarin. I had the advantage since I am fluent in both Filipino and Chinese. In the first few months, when I spoke in Mandarin to the baby, I would quickly follow it up with a Filipino translation to my husband to make sure he did not feel left out. However, as time went by, I found out that I had to translate less and less, as my husband would usually get the gist of what I said to the baby with the help of nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, hand gestures, tone of voice, and context. It also helped a lot that we taught her sign language and we would use the same sign with her whatever the language we spoke. Although by no means perfect, this helped a lot in our family conversations. Also, just by daily exposure to the language (and watching Baby Learns Chinese and Chinese cartoons with my daughter), my husband is slowly learning Mandarin even without any conscious effort on his part. It was really important to us for my daughter to preserve both sides of her heritage so we persisted in spite of our anxieties.

If you are interested in reading more about this method and other alternatives in raising multilingual children (such as using the minority language at home – not a good option for us since we wanted her to be trilingual), I highly recommend the book Growing Up with Three Languages by Xiao Lei Wang. Also we found a lot of useful tips and resources on www.multilingualchildren.org.

Hope this helps and good luck! 

Just visited your blog, Baining! I think it's great! It gave me a lot of tips and ideas on how to keep my daughter interested in learning Mandarin. Granted, she's only 18 months old so I will have to save your tips for when she's older. But we live in an English-dominant environment (she goes to daycare while I work), and although I have the advantage of being able to speak Mandarin to her while she's at home, I need all the help I can get to keep her interested in learning to speak, read, and write Chinese. Thanks for sharing!

 

Any updates as to when the traditional Chinese version will be released? I was told originally that the release date was Dec 2009 then it was pushed back to the end of January 2010. Also, will the entire 6-DVD set be available all at once or will it be one DVD at a time? I hope it will finally be released in time for me to take advantage of the free shipping promo!

Thank you Krista G for introducing me to the Maisy books. Two months ago, we had never heard of them, but now, they're my toddler's all time favorite books! They are the first things she reaches for when she wakes up from nap and the last thing she reads at bedtime. I just bought a second set of them! Thanks for the review! 

oops...forgot to embed samples of the videos. here they are... they're very highly recommended!

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my daughter loves the malaysian children's singing group "four golden princess" who performed traditional children's songs that i remember from my own childhood. they have dozens of music videos and my 18 month old loves to dance along and copy their actions. they actually started performing when they were 3 or 4 years old back in the 80s, i think. the four golden princess are all grown up now and have branched out into singing chinese pop and love songs. just type in "four golden princess" or "vickyluvparis" and choose the older videos where the girls were little kids. they're cuter and appropriate for kids. my daughter also loves it that they dress up in different traditional chinese costumes for some of their music videos.

I just saw this new set of dvds - Your Child Can Read - on the YBCR website. It combines phonics and whole word learning methods to teach children to read. I was wondering whether anybody on this forum has used it and what they think of it? Is this program the next level for babies who are "graduates" of YBCR?

Hi Skylark,

This is the first time I've heard of Kiddie Viddie. Can you please tell me more about it? Thanks!

I want to customize all of my LM lessons in the same way. For example: forward order with dots for quantity lesson 1, random order with dots for quantity lesson 2, forward order with random fruits (each playback) without math symbols for math lesson 1, and random order with random fruits (each equation) without math symbols for math lesson 2. Can I customize all the lessons in the curriculum this way at the same time without having to edit each lesson one by one (too time-consuming)? Thanks!

wow! that's wonderful tobias8! isn't it exciting to discover that our babies are learning so much more than we think they are? my daughter has amazed me so many times already even though i constantly remind myself not to underestimate her capability to learn.  regarding her understanding 3 languages, it is quite easy for us to assess because she makes the same sign in ASL when we say things in english, chinese, or filipino (ex. eat, chī, kain or take a bath, xǐzǎo, ligo)

aside from english and chinese, are you teaching your baby to read in the other languages too?

Hi aangeles,
Thanks for the information!  I went and ordered from their web site both the DVD's and flashcards.  I also use wink to learn chinese.  Do you use this also?

I seem to also remember that you were teaching Tagalog also.  What materials are you using and how is the progress?

Thanks.

By the way, tobias also likes the Little Pim vols in French and Spanish.  I'll have to look at some of the other resources you recommended.  There sure are a lot to choose from...which is actually a good thing!  Thanks again.

Tobias8,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I am not currently using Wink to Learn Chinese because it is in simplified Chinese. I am waiting for the traditional Chinese version to come out (which they assured me will be at the end of this year).

Regarding Tagalog, I am happy to say that my daughter's comprehension has increased by leaps and bounds since my husband started being more consistent and conscientious in speaking Tagalog to her. At this time, I think her understanding of English, Chinese, and Tagalog are about equal. Unfortunately, I don't have any Tagalog books/DVDs to supplement her learning. Will have to wait until we make a trip back to the Phils. to get her these.

Are you also teaching french and spanish reading? or just exposing them to the language? I'm trying to figure out if it's a good idea to teach my son to read in both english and spanish from the get go or if I should get him comfortable in english first and then start the spanish reading. Any advice?  My hubby and I both speak English and he has 2 hours a day with a spanish play group for exposure, he loves little pim spanish and other spanish videos/music. He is picking up the language nicely but I wonder if I should also start teaching him to read in spanish now rather than later.

Hi LDS mom,

I am currently only teaching reading English and Mandarin Chinese. I am regularly exposing her to French and Spanish though, through music CDs, Little Pim, and GD bits. I tried showing her Muzzy French and Spanish but she was not interested it. I think it is because Muzzy is in cartoons and she prefers videos of real children, animals, and other things. I did discover a great Spanish language DVD called Spanish for Beginners by Whistlefritz. The videos are entirely in Spanish so the child learns through immersion and not translation. My daughter loves it!