By Tori Galatro

Your child can get a head start on reading if they learn to recognize letters and sounds at an early age. There are plenty of apps and TV shows that can help your child learn their letters, but hands-on activities are just as great for a number of reasons. For one, they can help your child to develop fine motor skills beyond tapping a screen. Hands-on activities can also help with memorization by providing spatial and physical interaction. Most importantly, hands-on activities tend to be more social, and involve contact with parents and other children. This social emotional contact is essential for learning and developing other crucial skills, as well as helping to create meaningful memories associated with their pre-reading skills. The following three pre-reading hands-on activities are easy to set up, easy to clean up, safe, cheap, and so much fun for young children.

Activity #1: Make an Alphabet Book

This idea comes from the mommy blog Teach Mama. Sick of throwing away those ads you get in the mail from the grocery store? Put them to good use by making an alphabet book! Gather 26 pages of colored construction paper and write one letter at the top of each with marker. Write both capital and lowercase. Even if your child isn’t learning to read yet, they can start to recognize these symbols and learn that they have meaning. Then, go through the magazines and ads with you child and help them to look for items that begin with each letter. Help your child to cut or rip out each item as they go and paste it under the letter. When you’re done, you can help your child to bind the pages together into a book with yarn and a hole punch. Don’t worry if they don’t finish the book. They can add to it anytime the mail comes in and continue to build letter-sound associations.

Activity #2: Play the Alphabet Memory Game

This is another game that you can return to over and over. Take a pack of paper plates and write uppercase letters on half and the equivalent lowercase letters on the other half. Then, mix them up and spread them out on the ground face down. The object of the game is to match the upper with their lower case letters by remembering where each letter was. Each turn, your child turns two letters face up, try to remember them, and then turns them face down. If they get a match, those plates get removed from the board. This game can be challenging for anyone, so it can be played in a group of varying ages. You can join in too! You can try this game several different ways depending on your child’s level of development. They can match equivalent capital letters, match letters to words beginning with that letter, or even match letters to pictures of words beginning with that letter. They can even write or draw on the plates themselves for a whole other activity!

Activity #3: Learn with Alphabet Bingo

All you need for this game are a few printouts which can be found at the mommy blog Crazy Little Projects, available in both capital and lowercase letters. This game is great for any number of children. When you pick the letter, you can show it to them, or just call it out for an added challenge. Children can use candies to block off the letters as they go, or if you don’t want to spoil dinner, they can use cotton balls, coins, or anything you can think up. Since every board is different, younger children can even look at the older children’s boards for help, and it won’t be cheating. Children can use the skills they’ve learned, but everyone has an equal chance of winning.

by Tori Galatro

You may already know that bilingualism can have a hugely positive impact on your child’s future. You may also know that the best time for your child to learn a new language is when they are young. However, there are many ways for children to become bilingual, and many factors that can influence the speed of their language education. When a child reaches preschool-age, from three to five, immersive language learning can be extremely helpful for children that have been exposed to two languages from birth, as well as children who’ve only ever heard one.

The following are common ways researchers distinguish between the differences in early language education. Learning these approaches may help you to think about how your child’s preschool language education can introduce, promote, or supplement their previous experience with bilingual learning.

The Six Models of Childhood Bilingualism

The Huffington Post recently published an article outlining the various ways in which children can learn languages at home, at school, and in their community. The article outlines six different models of bilingual language acquisition.

• Model Example #1: Both parents speak a language at home, while a different language is spoken by the child’s school and community. Such parents may have moved from a different country, or simply wish their child to learn a different language than the one spoken at home.
• Model Example #2: One parent speaks one language exclusively, and the other parent speaks the language of the school and community. In this model, the child would benefit from supplemental help during preschool in the first parent’s language, as they are getting only limited exposure, but would more readily absorb the community language.

The six language models referenced in the article are different variations on this general concept: the child’s preschool education should vary according to where, when, how often, and by whom each language is spoken. However, this research was published back in the 90s and many studies have since developed these models further.

The Two Types of Early Bilingualism

The models of childhood bilingualism mentioned above have also been grouped into two categories by researchers: simultaneous and sequential.

• Simultaneous bilingualism occurs when a child is exposed to two languages equally, from birth.
• Sequential bilingualism occurs when a child is introduced to one language after the other, during childhood.

Both are considered to be great methods of bilingual language education. Both methods fall under the category of “early bilingualism”, which means both languages need to be acquired roughy before the age of five, during the normal period of language development.

Children who learn sequentially, or learn their second language after the age of three, but before the age of five, actually learn the second language completely fresh, rather than using their first language for guidance, as older children might. This gives them an advantage since these younger children are less likely to rely on the grammatical patterns of their first language for support. They also tend to have a period of adjustment to the new language during which they may stop speaking in the environments where only the new language is spoken. They may use hand gestures only, until they begin to test out their new language. After that point, they have a high potential of becoming just as competent in their new language as a native speaker.

Understanding How Bilingual Preschool Education Can Help Your Child Learn

Your child is capable of becoming multilingual at a very young age, and speaking each language with the competency of a native speaker, but they are going to need the proper level of exposure, before the age of five. A child won’t become fluent in a new language by watching a foreign language TV show once a week. Their exposure to the new language must be consistent, immersive, and meaningful. Children don’t understand the long-term benefits of language learning, but they do have an innate desire to communicate and be understood. That’s why the new language must be more than a casual activity. It needs to be integrated into a meaningful and consistent environment for the child to truly care about listening and learning.

At Tessa International School, we create an environment where language learning is not just fundamental, but also enjoyable. Contact us today to enroll your young child in an immersive bilingual learning program, and encourage language learning that has already happened at home, or start completely fresh.