Tuesday 5 March 2013

Bilingual Tots:20-21 months

I´m a little worried about the bilingual playgroup I started up as it seems to slowly be fizzling out due to us all being busy with other things and a variety of reasons. However,we are still trying to struggle on and meet most weeks so we‘ll see how it goes.
My daughter is talking loads more and is a little parrot as she is repeating many words and phrases. I think she is going to be a chatterbox! I was a bit worried recently because it seemed that she was saying more words and phrases in Spanish than in English.
Although this past week,it appears to be the other way around, possibly because my mum was visiting.
She can now say Granny and has starting saying something resembling Mummy and Daddy too.She is learning at least one new word a day or more I think! The other day it snowed for the first time and she could say "snow"...I think seeing one of the Peppa Pig episodes about snow has helped her learn this word too!!! Other new words are baby or bebe(it sounds more like the Spanish word!),cupcake,garlic (I think she´s going to have my love of food and cooking!!)frio, co(for coger"pick me up!"), it´s cold, milk(although she can´t say it properly!)mel( short for Actimel), yogur for yoghurt, pipi,caca,poo poo and probably more that I can´t think of right now!She has also learnt the word "mío" (mine) which she´s probably picked up from nursery.We aren´t too happy about this as she is using it a lot and we want to teach her to share her things even though is maybe a bit young to understand this concept at the moment.

She is also saying "a mi" as in "give it to me" and starting to use pronouns although she is a little confused as she says "tu,tu" when she means you but also to mean "me" when she wants to do something herself although I have managed to teach her the English equivalent "me". She is also starting to pick up other children´s names and joins in when counting but mainly in Spanish.She is also starting to repeat colours in both Spanish and English,such as blue, purple,azul,green and says "colour" when she wants to colour.When we sing certain songs such as "The Hokey Cokey", The Wheels on the Bus, or Ring a Ring of Roses or she hears them on BabyTV she likes to sing along and sometimes initiates the song herself and she loves doing the actions.It´s all very exciting,seeing how her talking and bilingualism is developing and so far I´m pleased with how it´s going! She´s been calling my mum "Granny" but the other day she said something that sounded very much like "abuela" to my mother-in-law so maybe she is starting to distinguish who speaks which language? Then again it could have just been a coincidence or it could have just been repetition!