Bilingual children - help!

Stigi · Postby **Stigi** » Sat Oct 15, 2011 1:34 pm

I hoping to get some tips and advice from anyone that has bilingual children on helping your child learn another language. My husband is Finnish and I am English and I'm really keen for my children to be able to speak Finnish aswell as English. My husband has found it hard to come home and speak Finnish as none of us speak it so our children (4 years, 3 years and 4 months

) only know a few words with the exception of the baby who is of course fluent

We recently got an au pair from Finland who I'm hoping will be able to help the boys learn some Finnish words and also spur my husband into action and make him speak Finnish. I've been trying to think of ideas of things she could do with the boys and I thought learning nursery rhymes, getting some flash cards, reading Finnish books etc. If anyone has any advice though of things that help children learn languages I would love to hear from them. Thanks in advance x

Mingg · Postby **Mingg** » Sat Oct 15, 2011 6:13 pm

Have you thought about taking the older kids to the Finnish Saturday school in Rotherhithe?

Stigi · Postby **Stigi** » Sat Oct 15, 2011 6:36 pm

I need to look into it but ideally don't want to have a commitment at the weekend. I like to take it easy and know we don't have to rush any where

at the weekend because the week tends to be quite manic x

Sagittarius · Postby **Sagittarius** » Sat Oct 15, 2011 6:52 pm

Hi,

I don't know how you feel about your kids watching TV with the au-pair, but you could get them to watch some cartoons in Finnish. Have a look on YouTube and you will find that everything from Peppa Pig, to Dora, to Mickey Mouse Club House have been translated in pretty much every language... she could explain your kids what is going and teach them any new words they come across.

Sam

Mingg · Postby **Mingg** » Sat Oct 15, 2011 8:11 pm

We have also read the same stories/watched the same DVDs (etc) in Finnish, English and Spanish (my husband is Spanish).

I understand that you wish to keep weekends free but I think it is really helpful if the kids see and hear other children and adults speak Finnish. We have also had Finnish au pairs for the last 3 years and they have been allowed to speak English to our son only to the extent of explaining Finnish words if necessary.