What languages do you speak at home? At our household, we speak three languages: Japanese, Dutch and English. I mainly speak English with my husband and English has also become my daughter's (3 years old) dominant language. She can command the English language really well, she can explain her dreams and I've caught her speaking to herself in English. She also speaks Dutch well, given the fact that her dad speaks to her in Dutch and she gets exposed to Dutch at her playgroup. My daughter's passive Japanese is not perfect but good, and she struggles to speak the language. What astonishes me is that she can read Japanese hiragana (a form of Japanese written language) and she can read easy books. She can read it but not necessarily understand what the words mean. How children learn different languages is fascinating. They have no prejudice, it's quite inspiring, really.
She is also starting to grasp the fact that there is past and future. For her, anything that happens in the past is "yesterday" and anything beyond tomorrow is still "tomorrow". She is also starting to see that there are different seasons and that current winter is only temporary (I hope so!!)
So for our morning craft hour, I decided to make a "4 Seasons Spin Wheel" with her. It is basically a circle divided into 4 sections - each section representing the different season. And I thought I'd make it extra interesting for her by labelling each season in 3 languages: English, Japanese and Dutch.
Want to make one with your child? Download the step-by-step instruction below:
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