help with plan for 2 year old bilingual education, please

[Xahm]

My husband and I currently have 2 young children (almost 2 and 6 months) and part of our long-term plan is to move overseas, probably to the middle east, central Asia, or eastern Europe, in about 8-10 years.  (Hoping to work for the State Department). Teaching our children multiple languages is important to us but so far we haven't done too much with it.  My husband knows a significant amount of Arabic, some German, a smattering of Spanish, and is currently studying French for a degree program. I am basically fluent in German (though adjective endings are very rusty), am conversant in Russian at a basic level, and know a good bit of Spanish. 

Ideally we would start now learning the language for our target country, but we haven't gotten so specific yet. It seems to me that German would be the most logical language to teach them now and that learning any second language will make the third easier when we get there.  I just need a plan. When I randomly start interacting with the 2 year old in German (she's only recently begun speaking well but is clearly bright), she becomes frustrated quickly and I switch back to English.

My current idea is to block off the same 30 minute period every day for activities in German. Probably 2-3 days a week reading a book (need to build my library), 2-3 days watching a short film (found a good bit on Youtube, like Curious George in German), 2-3 days coloring a page of different scenes, and every day singing songs (introducing a new song every week or two) and discussing the book/movie/scene, etc. It would be great if I had ideas for German games to play, but I don't.   Naturally no written work at these ages. Whether we homeschool or just "afterschool" for languages, we will eventually get to teaching reading and writing in L2.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I'm willing to spend some money on resources but would prefer to keep that somewhat limited. There are some native German speakers in our area, but none that I know well. When the kids are older, I will take more advantage of the Goethe Institute and places like that.

[yinanyinu]

I don't know if my experience is useful since we use OPOL, but when my children were the age of yours, I started to "teach" DS French. It was very casual. I used vocabulary books (imageries) and just read them out to him like a story book. Sometimes he would repeat after me. I also found a guided playgroup (crafts, games, songs, art, etc) of French-speaking children, once a week for just an hour or two. One summer, I used the Tatou le Matou programme, which incorporated songs, crafts, fairy tales, etc to teach French. I tried to buy French games -- word puzzles, peg boards with vocabulary etc. Sometimes we listened to French stories set to music.

 

At around 5, I enrolled DC in a week-end French lesson for francophone children (who weren't in a French school during the week, so their parents wanted them to maintain and improve their French) and started to let them watch French TV once a week. Around this time, I actively afterschooled him in French for about an hour a day. Starting the following summer, I enrolled DC in summer camps offered in French, making sure that they would be with other francophone children. I made a mistake the first summer enrolling them in a learn-to-speak-French camp, in which the children would speak to each other in English!

 

In the beginning, it didn't seem like there was any progress, and since I did not speak to DC in French, I never knew whether anything was happening with the language until I started to actively teach DS. In fact, DD didn't start voluntarily speaking French until she was 7. But now they both go to French school. And happily learning Arabic.

 

My recommendation is to find German playgroups so that your kids can be surrounded by their German-speaking peers. The Goethe Institute might be good for meeting other German-speakers informally and they might let you know of activities for children in German--plays or concerts, for example--where your children can spend time with others. For DC, making friends and playing with other kids seemed, and still is, the primary motivation to learning languages. Also, there might be a library attached to the Goethe Institute that has materials for children and story-hour that you could participate in with your children. Your children are young and will be thrilled with whatever you do with them; it doesn't need to be so formal as a set number of minutes each day, or a specific curriculum.

 

Hope that helps you a little.

 

Good luck!

[4KookieKids]

We started German with my son just after he turned 2. We made the transition by saying everything three times: once in German, once in English, and then again in German. I didn't wait to see if he understood the German first in the beginning; I just said things once in each language right off the bat, and then emphasized it with German again. I wanted him to know exactly what I was saying (I wanted NO frustration at the beginning -- he was talking up a storm already and it just seemed mean and also wasteful  to ignore all of his work learning English already), but start hearing it in German. I wanted to capitalize on the fact that he already knew all of this in English, but I confess that it was tedious saying everything three times.

 

Within 3 months, I was able to drop the English middle step, with rare exceptions. Within 9 months, he was beginning to speak it spontaneously. Two years later, he's reasonably fluent, but quickly reverts to English if I don't require him to respond in German. My endings are a little (or lot...) rusty as well. I'm studying up and practicing them a lot, but I also compensate by playing a LOT of audiobooks (now that he's reasonably fluent), especially in the car. And I've noticed marked improvement in his grammar and vocabulary since getting lots of interesting audiobooks for him.

[Xahm]

Thank you both for the advice. I will try to find German speaking kids around here, but it's tricky. Audiobooks are a great idea I'd overlooked, also, that will help counteract my accent. 

I'd been debating whether or not to translate between English and German.  With older kids, I think total immersion is best, but given her age, I think the translating will help get her comfortable.

I'm sure if I went to the Goethe Institute there would be so much help.  I just don't really like going downtown.:( I'll have to get over that, I guess.

[4KookieKids]

With older kids, I think total immersion is best, but given her age, I think the translating will help get her comfortable.

 

 

This is interesting to me. I'm inclined to have the opposite opinion, because it seems to me that once a child has some level of mastery over a language, that language can be used to aid in acquiring another language. E.g., If we're at the table, and my kid doesn't know German,"Hört damit auf und esst, bitte" (when they're playing around) might seem random to them (is she talking about food? drink? activities? something we're doing after dinner?), but if I say it once in German, and then once in English, then it seems to me they can make a better connection. 

 

But I'm just speaking out of what "makes sense" to me (and hence why I did things the way that I did with full immersion as babies, but not when kids were already older), and I'd be really interested to hear why you think the the flip side is true! :)

[Xahm]

My thinking is that right now, since she's just taking off in English, she often hears us repeat what she has just said to improve her pronunciation. So if she says "Dink milk" and I respond, "That's right, drink milk," she catches on that she should add that "r" sound (and I can see that she does understand this, though she can't usually put it into practice right away, of course). So if she points to a picture and says "dog" and I respond "yes, Hund," she thinks I'm correcting her English. If I respond, "Yes, that's a dog in English. Auf deutsch das ist ein Hund," the translation keeps her from feeling like she said something wrong.  Once she's got the idea that there are two separate languages, I think the immersion will go better.  If I could do the one parent one language thing, that separation would be totally natural and I could do full immersion right away.  

I have taught English as a foreign language to children and adults from age 4-60+, and I did total immersion for all but the youngest (who at the beginning of the semester sometimes needed classroom management-type language in their L1) and the oldest (who seemed to get frustrated sometimes as they could feel their ability to learn vocabulary was slower than it used to be and I wanted classes to stay basically fun for them after a long day at work).  Naturally I talked a lot more with my hands than normal to help make meanings clear. I'm sure it's a little different in a home situation, but in any classroom I've been in, as student or teacher, once you allow L1 to be used, it's very, very hard to take it away later. More likely it takes over the class and very little language learning occurs.  Part of why I posted here was to get the perspective of those who have done it in the family setting.

[4KookieKids]

Huh. That's really interesting, and definitely some things I've never thought about. Thanks! :)

[emilycarter]

very good informations, I will try to do this. Thank you !