Das Leben in einer Kleinstadt (life in a small city)

[leftyviolist]

The past few days have been fairly quiet. sourtrout has been home, getting better from his cold/sinus infection. Yesterday Rosebud and I took a stroll in downtown Penzberg with our friend Jeremy and his daughter Abby. We visited the Wochenmarkt (the weekly market), and although I was very tempted by some of the fresh food items, I didn't purchase

Comments

[thetygerlily]

I am teaching her baby signs, too. She is at a good age because she should be able to start understanding the correlation between the sign, the word and object associated with the sign.

I think I remember seeing that you were teaching her some German words as well. How are you handling the bilingual teaching? Do you speak German to her often? Repeat words in English & German? I'm just curious about how you're tackling it- when we have kids they'd definitely need to know Portuguese to speak with Fred's side of the family.

[leftyviolist]

I'd like to do more research on teaching a child to be bilingual. I mostly speak with her in English, but when we are out in the public sphere, it's mainly German. I think that if I were a native speaker of German, I'd ONLY speak to her in German. (I recommend that Fred only speak Portuguese with future kiddos! It's a proven approach; some kids will respond in English but at least they understand what is being said around them in the target language.) But my German is flawed and I do have a slight American accent, so that's one reason why I don't speak as much German.
One thing I really need to do is buy kids books in German and read them to her.

As for the baby signs, I am teaching her both the German and English; this goes for body parts, too. I think as I get more integrated into society, the German and English I speak to her will be more balanced. That's one reason I want to find classes and such so she's surrounded by the language and native speakers.

Babies and language formation

[thetygerlily]

Melinda, here's an article I remembered reading in Smithsonian about how babies begin to differentiate accents and language at 6 months:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/phenom_jan01.html?c=y&page=1

Nerak09

Re: Babies and language formation

[leftyviolist]

Thanks for the article - I enjoyed it! I'm glad that Ronni's going to her first German Baby and Mom music class tomorrow morning.

[jellymelly]

tori, still, isn't really interested in solid foods. some days she eats only a few bites and then, i guess, loses interest.

worries me sometimes bc i wonder if she's getting what she needs.

[leftyviolist]

I have the same worry for my daughter, too, especially because in the last month before we moved anyway, she hadn't gained a lot of weight. But she is very healthy, so I suppose I shouldn't worry *too* much.