Preschool Archives - Page 3 of 14

Reflections on My Five Weeks in Europe, Part 4: The Sweet Joy of Playing with Small Children

October 29, 2019

The adorable three-year-old girl was sitting on the stairs, telling me all about her “babies”—her dolls and stuffed animals that were adorned with band-aids (“plasters” she called them, in the British English she spoke) because, she said, they were ill or had gotten injured. And at that moment, in my very first homestay of the trip, I flashed on my own daughter when she was the same small, incredibly-cute age and I suddenly missed that time terribly. A large lump

If You Like Blueberries and Bilingual Children, You’ll Enjoy This Blog Post

August 22, 2019

Over the years, my family has followed an annual tradition, each August, of driving out to a large blueberry patch that’s located in the countryside about 90 minutes from Hiroshima. We spend much of the day there picking blueberries and breaking for a picnic lunch. This tradition started when Lulu was two. In fact, we originally stumbled upon the blueberry patch by accident when we were out searching for a larger fruit farm, our original destination. Here’s Lulu that first

Guest Post: Raising Bilingual Kids in Challenging Conditions Can Ignite a Parent’s Creativity

July 26, 2019

I have always liked the scene in the Disney movie “Big Hero 6” where, in a moment when the younger brother was feeling hopeless and out of ideas for a big project, the older brother carried him on his shoulders and turned him upside down to shake him and move him around their bedroom, encouraging him to look at things from another angle. Every now and then I feel like I need that kind of shaking up to reset and

Guest Post: Bilingual Ability Is Always a Positive Thing

July 3, 2019

Like all of you, I’m doing the best I can to ensure that my daughter (the little fairy above) grows to enjoy the benefits of speaking more than one language, and hopefully she’ll do the same with her own children in the future. At the moment she’s three years old and is a lovely, funny little girl and (at least so far) seems very interested in languages. My own interest in bilingualism/multilingualism is both personal and professional. I did my

This Key Strategy Can Empower Your Child’s Bilingual Ability Throughout the Childhood Years—and Even for a Whole Lifetime

May 30, 2019

In the recent post Make the Most of the “Golden Years” of Your Minority Language Influence, I introduced the challenging new stage of my family’s bilingual journey. Now that my kids—Lulu, nearly 15, and Roy, 12—are both in junior high school and are leading busy, increasingly independent lives in Japanese, I’m afraid my presence in their days, and the English exposure that goes along with it, is far more limited than it was when they were younger. In fact, the

Want to Raise a Bilingual Child? Remember This: You Get What You Pay For.

May 9, 2019

I won’t bore you with the details, but over the past couple of months, I’ve had continuous troubles with many parts of my digital life, and especially email. In fact, last week my entire email account for Bilingual Monkeys (adam@bilingualmonkeys.com) suddenly disappeared from my computer, with thousands and thousands of messages vanishing in a matter of moments. (Fortunately, I was able to locate a back-up folder and restore most of them, but still, it was a long and distressing day.)

Try This Really Fun and Effective Activity with an Early-Reading Child or Language Learner

April 20, 2019

Over the years, I’ve amassed big piles of papers that hold teaching materials, creative writing, and ideas for future blog posts, books, and other projects. From time to time I’ll sift through these piles in an attempt to file the papers I want to keep and discard the ones I no longer need. But the truth is, I never seem to get all the way to the bottom of these stacks and so the piles begin rising again as I

How to Create Breakthroughs in the Language Development of Bilingual Children

May 18, 2018

My daughter will be 14 in June. My son turned 11 in March. If you’ve been following this blog over the years—when I made my first post in September of 2012, they were just 8 and 5—you know that they’ve had very different inclinations when it comes to reading in English, our minority language. While both have become competent readers through a variety of long-running efforts—which include reading aloud from birth; flooding our home with books, magazines, and comic books

VIDEO: Important Research on Successfully Raising a Bilingual Child

May 4, 2018

In this video, I describe important research on success rates for raising bilingual children then explain the implications of this research for parents. The information I share goes right to the heart of successfully nurturing a child’s bilingual (or multilingual) ability and can be found in my widely-praised book Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability: Ideas and inspiration for even greater success and joy raising bilingual kids. View this video at Bilingual Monkeys TV and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Get

Raising a Bilingual Child, a New Podcast Episode with Adam Beck, Author of “Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability”

March 24, 2018

Breaking news! This week I was interviewed about raising bilingual children at the popular podcast Preschool and Beyond. The host is Mike Dlott and we had a great discussion. I hope you enjoy it! And I highly recommend the many other episodes at this podcast, too—it’s a goldmine of practical information about parenting issues. Listen to the Raising a Bilingual Child podcast episode at the Discovery Child Development Center website. Or listen to the Raising a Bilingual Child podcast episode

5 Ways for Your Bilingual Child to Interact with Other Speakers of the Minority Language

March 12, 2018

If schooling in the minority language isn’t an option for your family, and travel to a minority-language destination is limited (see Bilingual Travelers, an ongoing series at this blog, for personal stories that share the powerful impact of such trips), it’s important to be proactive and resourceful about finding or creating opportunities from your own location so that your children can interact with other speakers of the target language. Here are 5 ideas… 1. Online Conversations Of course, many of

FREE WEBINAR: How to Get Your Bilingual Child Eagerly Shouting Out the Minority Language (Literally!)

Preschool