>Count it out

When I was getting my endorsement to teach English as a Second Language, one of my professors told us that people learn languages to do things they want to do with people who speak that language.  She was trying to show us not only why students learn the practical parts of a language before the academic stuff, but also why it’s so important that our kids who are learning English be connected to us and their peers.

As has happened often since I became a parent, this information came back to me in the past few weeks as suddenly Sebastian has become obsessed with learning French.   His daddy is more or less bilingual in English and French, and I learned some French in high school, but here in the states most bilingual toys are English and Spanish.  So we just figured that would be the second language he would pick up first by sheer constant exposure to his LeapFrog Learning table!  {Well, it would be his third language, I guess. We’ve been signing to him from a young age since my immediate family knows sign language.}  

Anyway, a few weeks back the three of us went to the library to pick out some new books, and I encouraged my husband to get some books in French since I saw they had a foreign language section.  The favorite bedtime book for the next week was a simple story called Hop, le Mouton about a sheep who gets his fleece from an angel because he gets stuck on top of a star.  We read it over and over again in French and our English translation of it.  

Then I discovered that I could keep him quiet in the waiting room at the doctor’s office by doing the alphabet for him in French.  Total fascination.  Requests to sing in English and French ensued.

And now the counting.  He has listened to that Learning Table sing and count in Spanish for over a year, but give him a week of interacting with us counting in French, and he has it down (except for 8, which he mixes up with the English).  I find this incredible.  It goes along with the research that says that kids this age aren’t learning much from tapes or videos unless you are sitting right there talking about it with them.  (looking for the link to the research, and will post it when I find it.)

Clearly I need to do more Spanish with him since he wants that next, but my accent is pretty terrible.   Anyone with a proper accent that wants to teach him Spanish is welcome to it (Tory, Mau, I’m looking in your direction)!