The Spirit of Halloween (no pun intended!)

I love Halloween although I didn´t celebrate it much as a child but I can´t wait to pass this slice of British(well, Irish really!) and American culture and tradition on to Chloe. I even thought about doing a party for her but then decided that she´s just a teeny-tiny bit young for a Halloween party at the moment.The week before Halloween it was my turn to host the bilingual playgroup at my house and I decided to do a Halloween theme. I don´t think there are many traditional Halloween nursery rhymes or songs or at least I didn´t know and couldn´t think of any  so we just did some pretty normal ones, Head,Shoulders,Knees and Toes and Row,Row,Row Your Boat. Unfortunately, Chloe was not very cooperative that day....I don´t think she was too impressed with all the other bilingual bubbas in her house,playing with her toys!!! Plus I think she was really tired! Oh and even better is that another of our bilingual bubbas and her parents joined us, increasing the group to 5 bubbas and 6 parents!!! I then read the story Owl Babies, not really a Halloween story but as it´s about owls and the pictures are quite dark, it was close enough without being scary. To end our Halloween bilingual playgroup, we finished off with a fingerprint spider craft (fun but messy and I think us, the parents ended up doing most of it but I think the children enjoyed it anyway!)I´m not sure I´ll be rushing to get the fingerpaints back out again for awhile yet though!!You can see our efforts in one of the photos!

The day before Halloween Chloe came home from nursery with her face painted, a paper pumpkin on a straw and a Halloween poem in English...I´m not sure if the native English people who work there made it up or whether it already existed but I´ve never heard it before...it goes along the lines of "Run,run,run, Halloween is fun, walk, walk,walk but don´t talk, play,play,play,Halloween is today!" I like the fact that although Halloween isn´t really a Spanish tradition(although it is rapidly increasing in popularity!)that the nursery is embracing it as it´s great for her to get extra imput on British/American culture.Also, on the 31st October, they had a Halloween party and it was optional to dress up. I definitely had to dress Chloe up and found a cute little witch´s costume complete with headband with a little witch´s hat on it. She came home with a little witch that they´d made at nursery.It was even in matching colours as Chloe´s costume!!!You can see Chloe´s costume and her witch in the photos above.

Thursday was a Bank Holiday as Spanish people tend to celebrate All Saint´s Day although my husband´s family don´t really tend to celebrate it so I took the opportunity to make some Halloween  Eyeball cupcakes. I tried to get Chloe to help me mix the green icing but she just wanted to eat it and put the spoon straight to her mouth,then lost interest and went off to find Daddy!! I´m looking forward to making and decorating other Halloween treats together every Halloween...it´s going to be a tradition!!So, all in all that was Chloe´s first Halloween. Hopefully I´ll be able to take her trick-or-treating in the future but it´s going to be difficult as I work in the afternoon/evenings so don´t know how I´ll get round that little loophole!

Bilingual Tots: 16-17 months

Since starting back at work this month, I´ve hardly had time for anything,let alone blogging,particularly as Chloe has been going through a rather clingy stage,meaning that I could hardly get anything done!! Anyway, I thought it was about time for an update even though there doesn‘t seem to be that much to report.                                                                     I was hoping that going to nursery school and our bilingual playgroup would encourage her language skills but I can‘t see much evidence of it yet . So far the words she can say are no, mama, papa, wow~wow(for dog), mas and more,ta(but she doesn‘t always say it), uh~oh, ba(for ball) and pa for pan. She can also make more animal noises such as moo and “coco“ for cock~a~ doodle~doo although the previous animal noises she could make, she no longer does! Even though she mainly says wow~wow for a dog,it‘s also starting to mean any animal. She also tries to repeat what we say occasionally for example the other day we were saying “bye bye granny“ and Chloe said something like“ay ay anie!" and another time I was saying to her "one more" and she repeated it quite clearly!Just the other day she started making the noise of a train "choo-choo!". I am pretty certain that she now understands 100% of what we say.

Apart from that,there isn´t much more that I can add! We are continuing to read to her in both languages and    she points to different things,for example in Goodnight Moon,she points to the red balloon and the two kittens although not always!!!I sing different songs and nursery rhymes to her...lately we´ve been singing Head,Shoulders,Knees and Toes and The Wheels On The Bus quite a lot.She touches her head when we sing Head,Shoulders,Knees and Toes and occasionally her nose(which reminds me she also points to her nose or mine and says "noe"meaning nose!!)and she does some of the actions to The Wheels On The Bus!!

Here are some more interesting websites that I have come across while trying to find out more about bilingualism and raising bilingual or multilingual children.The first is InCultureParent, an online magazine with tips and articles about raising multicultural children or global citizens.It has some good articles about bringing up multilingual or bilingual children, recipes,crafts and much more!Another great website is Mama Lisa, which contains children´s songs from all around the world, an English translation and even a MP3 recording which you can listen to the song and even the sheet music (I think it may even be possible to download both of these things!!)