Griffin greets Spring!

Yes, it has snowed twice in the past three days here in Colorado, but I'm clinging fiercely to the idea that spring has arrived. We've been working in the yard, ordering seeds, taking walks, dressing in in pastel colors. Griffin is now in charge of the local Earthworm Repatriation Program--constantly on the lookout for worms, he delights in picking them up and depositing them in the garden. "Oooo da ver-terre, Maman? I need rose ver-terre!" (He likes the pinkish ones best, for some unknown reason.)

He also made a very funny inadvertent pun: while cleaning out his closet, we happened upon a long-forgotten stuffed peacock. "Paon!" he shrieked, using the correct French word and pronunciation. Then his eyes lit up even brighter, and he sang the first line or two to "Sur le pont d'Avignon"--a traditional song about dancing on a bridge. You see, "paon" and the word for bridge, "pont," are pronounced identically. [Er, make that, "I pronounced them the same"--turns out they are similar but not identical!]

We've been having fun playing inside, too--lots and lots of reading, "cooking" in his little kitchen, attending French playgroup. And as you can see from the photos, our regular playgroup has had some fun outings to the zoo and the firestation and to see some fishies. (Griffin now differentiates them as "playgroup en francais" and "playgroup with firetrucks.") Griffin and Carl still get together once a week as well--that's them coloring together above.

This morning, Griffin and I had the following awww-inspiring exchange:

Maman: Je t'aime! (I love you!)

Griffin: Je t'aime!

Maman: Je t'aime aussi! (I love you too!)

Griffin: Je t'aime aussi too!

We hope your spring is turning out fun and warm and springy and that you have lots of people to love too too.

remembering the early days with Carl

Now that I've got my own would-be bilingual baby, it's fascinating for me to reread early blog posts about taking care of my nephew when he was Griffin's age! I'm finding that the experiences are quite similar. Here, in italics, is what I had to say almost two years ago, in a post entitled "Afternoons with Carlicot"….

I've been babysitting Carl from 11:45 to 4:45 on Thursdays since his mom went back to work. After a month of this, I have been able to establish that he doesn't like naps, feels good after burps, has an infectious smile, and generally pays attention to me when I talk or sing to him in French. In fact, his face lit up the first time I serenaded him with "Savez-vous planter les choux?" He reacts the same way, of course, when people address him in English.

As for Griffin, he definitely has the infectious smile as well. He watches people's faces intently when they speak or sing to him--in fact, he's quite the little flirt!

Initially I felt silly talking to an infant about anything, much less narrating our afternoon in French. I'd point to things in the room or out the window and describe them to him. I'd list his body parts, his family members, and what we were going to do that afternoon. But after a couple of hours, it seemed like I was already repeating myself. (And it's disconcerting not to get any reaction, not even groans when I came up with bad bilingual puns.) So I'd grab a board book about counting dinosaurs or loving bunnies and read it to him, translating it into French and describing the pictures. And music helps a lot, especially when I can't think of what else to say. While I don't know a lot of French children's songs, I can regale him with "Les Champs-Elysées" and "Étoile des neiges" and the aforementioned cabbage song.

I feel pretty much the same way now--it's still hard for me to talk so much to anyone, much less someone who can't reply. And of course I spend more time with Griffin than I did with Carl! I've stopped forcing myself to speak to him during his every waking moment--I'm still way too exhausted to do that even if I gave myself permission to do it in English.

But now I have many more French-for-children resources than I did back then. I'm making a point to play lots of French songs for Griffin (and I know dozens more by heart now, thanks to all the CDs I've accumulated while taking care of Carl). We have lots of French books now, so I don't have to translate our English ones on the fly. And I'm learning more comptines (finger plays and nursery rhymes), because those really appeal to babies.

(I do still sing my favorite "adult" songs in French to him as well!)

And after a couple of weeks, speaking to him in French started to feel more natural and I stopped expecting responses to my questions. I'm learning songs off the one French kids' CD I have and making some new ones up as I go along. ("Fais do-do, Carlicot, va dans le monde des rêves, fais do-do, petit Carl, on s'amuse quand tu te lèves! Tu as besoin de faire une sieste, dans ton berceau tu restes..." to the tune of the lullaby song. You know, it's a lot easier to rhyme in French than in English!)

I've continued to make up songs for Carl, and now I'm doing the same for Griffin.

I also have about a dozen fairy tale cassette tapes with picture books accompanying them. The ones we've listened to so far are quite short--only about ten minutes apiece--but I suspect they will prove to be good input for several reasons: the narrator is a native speaker of French and the illustrations help the child understand the story. When he's a bit bigger, I can start leaving a few in his room for his parents to play for him. I'm also going to seek out some other music and story CDs. (Is this a good time for me to talk my husband into a trip to a francophone country soon? I suppose I can find plenty to order online. Sigh.)

Oh, I'd forgotten about the fairy tale tapes! I quickly realized that an infant isn't the best audience for a picture book-on-tape (at least, not those ones)--he doesn't understand a thing being said and can't focus on the detailed pictures. But Carl's probably old enough now to listen to them and "read" along.

I never did find more tapes or CDs with stories, but I do have a few now with comptines.

And I did talk Ed into a trip to a francophone country eventually--we went to St. Martin before Griffin was born! (It's apparently a renowned shopping destination for cruise ship tourists--but we skipped the perfume and handbag shops and spent a couple of hours in a bookstore on the French side of the island instead.)

Here's what else I used to do in the early blog posts: include a glossary of the French terms from the post. Here's the glossary from the one quoted above:

Savez-vous planter les choux?: This is a children's song that teaches body parts. Its English translation goes like this: "Do you know how to plant cabbage the way we do here? We plant them with our [insert body part here and repeat the chorus and then embark on a new verse with a different body part]. " It's very cheerful and also extremely repetitive--ideal qualifications for an educational children's song! Plus I can poke or grab his toes, nose, elbow, bellybutton, etc. to help him learn the words. (We are creative gardeners here in Lafayette, yes.)

Etoile des neiges: This is a song I learned when studying abroad in Chambéry, France. When I spent New Year's Eve with her family in their chalet in Combloux, just across the valley from Mont Blanc in the Alps, they taught me this traditional song of the region. The title translates as "star of the snow" and refers to the sparkle of light that reflects off of pristine alpine snow. The song tells the story of a young man and his love who are separated because he has no money and must leave Savoie to become a chimney sweep in the big city (a situation very typical in the 19th and early 20th centuries). He of course comes back to her in the springtime and they are wed. Not a children's song, per se, but lovely and melodic.

Les Champs-Elysées: This iconic tune was made famous by French singer Joe Dassin in the 1960s and has been perpetuated by high school French teachers around the world ever since. It's a chaste love song about a couple who meet on the most celebrated street in the world, the Champs-Elyséees in Paris, and spend the night dancing and singing in a basement. It's also as infectious as Carl's grin. I find myself singing it often just by myself; in fact, at least one monolingual ex-boyfriend confessed to knowing the words after being around me long enough (without ever understanding what the song is about). Will my monolingual husband learn it too? Stay tuned!

(Note: two years later, Ed recognizes the melody, even if he doesn't sing along.)

Fais do-do: Faire do-do (v.): to go to sleep (baby talk); from "dormir" (v.), to sleep; also "un fais do-do" (n.m.), a traditional cajun dance party in Louisiana where the participants bring their kids who typically fall asleep to the accordeon music while their parents do the two-step

Carlicot: My nickname for my nephew. Steve and Elizabeth [his parents] call him their "bean," which is "haricot" in French. Calling him "Carlicot" just sounds good to me. (The "t" is silent.) Moreover, "ot" is a fairly common diminuitive suffix for male names in French: Pierrot, Jacquot. Carlicot the haricot! Awww. (Trust me, a nonsense French word is much preferable to how my brother-in-law referred to him initially: the bologna loaf.)

And now, speaking of nicknames, here's a new addition to the glossary:

Lionceau (n.m.): Lion cub. This is my favorite nickname for Griffin (after all, a gryphon is half-lion!).

ce que Griffin aime (what Griffin loves)

la Tour Eiffel:

Papa:

Tonton Matt:

et les livres!

(Here Griffin and Papa are visiting me at work at the Reading Buddies program at the Lafayette Public Library. The kids were falling all over each other to read books to him!)

profile: Marisol and Diego learning English and Spanish in the US

Here's another example of a family successfully raising their children bilingually! Muchas gracias to Neza and Demetrio for their thoughtful, detailed responses and for letting me profile their family!

• What is your language background and history? We are a married couple. Neza is from Minnesota. She studied Spanish in school, then went to Mexico as a college student, where she met Demetrio. Demetrio came to live in Minnesota in 1996 with Neza and he only started learning English at that point. He is now fluent in English. We have two children, Marisol, 5 and Diego, 2.

• What languages are you exposing your children to, and how? Demetrio speaks mainly Spanish with the children, and Neza speaks mainly English. There are some words which we only use the Spanish term for, (like ‘tina’ is the bathtub, milk is always ‘leche’) and some things are always described in English. We are very loose with our policy on which language to speak. We don’t make it an issue--but the children hear both languages. It’s just a natural part of our family life.

• Why do you want your children to learn a second language? It’s essential that our kids understand the language of their father. Also, they have a large family in Mexico, which we have visited, and we don’t want the kids to be alienated from their own grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins. Language is not only about ‘talking’-- it also connects you to a culture of a particular place. You can’t fully understand the language of a place without learning its culture (and vice versa). We want our kids to feel attached to the Mexican culture. They have a right to it as part of their identity. It’s also one of the greatest gifts you can give your child.

• How well do your children understand, speak, read, and write Spanish? Our children speak mainly in English, because that is the dominant language here in Minnesota. They do understand Spanish--but what comes out of their mouths is English. We review the alphabet in Spanish at home, and read books in Spanish. We expect them to learn to read and write in Spanish as they do English, but we will have to teach it ourselves at home, since they don’t have Spanish reading lessons at school. (They’re only two & five years old).

• How you been able to expose your child to the culture(s) where Spanish is spoken? We have taken trips to visit family in Mexico. We try to visit Mexican businesses and events here in our city. We listen to music in Spanish and watch Spanish TV.

• What challenges have occurred as you teach your children a second language? We haven’t been able to get our kids comfortable responding fully in Spanish, although they understand when spoken to. Also, we don’t have enough other people speaking Spanish to them, so they mainly hear it just from their dad. We’re lacking the ‘community’. Also, Marisol has a Spanish teacher who comes to her school once a week, just as an enrichment program. The problem is that the teacher, although very nice, is an American who speaks the Spanish from Argentina. We teach our kids the Spanish spoken in Mexico, and Marisol sometimes gets confused.

• What resources have been most useful to you? For a while, I took the kids to ECFE (St. Paul Schools program for Early Childhood Family Education). But I went to the one for Spanish speakers, only so my kids could be exposed to the language in another environment. I was the only ‘American’ parent in the class, but I had fun, and my kids got to play with other kids speaking Spanish.

• What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? It’s really important to connect to the CULTURE of the country the language comes from. Without the culture, learning a language is just a bunch of memorization. Also, teachers need to stay up-to-date with the modern culture of the country they are teaching. I was really bored by my Spanish teachers in school giving us old information.

• What do you wish you had known when you started? What, if anything, would you do differently now? I became frustrated and bored studying Spanish in school. But it made a huge impact on my life when I actually went to Mexico and lived the language. You have to live with a language, and it’s culture. The way that my husband and I are teaching our children now is the best we can do with our specific family and lifestyle, and I don’t think we would change anything about it.

• Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you want to comment on? We don’t have a Spanish immersion school nearby, but there’s a French, a German, and a Chinese school not far from where we live. I have wondered if it would be good to put the kids in any of those schools, even though we don’t speak those languages as a family. Because so much of our child’s learning is at home, I don’t know if I would like my child learning a language at school that I couldn’t understand…Seems silly, but honest.

Qui parle avec Carl?

(Translation: Who's speaking with Carl?)

My parents recently spent a week and a half with us to help out with Griffin. I was also eager to introduce my mom to my nephew Carl, since she speaks French and he's now two years old and speaking some French himself!

Their meeting didn't go as well as I had anticipated--Carl isn't used to having anyone other than me and occasionally his mom address him in French. But even after he warmed up to her and tolerated her questions, he didn't always know how to respond, because the words she employed were often different from the ones he had heard from me! For example, there are two terms in French for the color brown: marron and brun. I tend to use the former, but she the latter, so he couldn't tell her if his toy car is rouge or brun. I imagine Carl stayed silent because he knew it wasn't rouge but wasn't sure what brun meant. Another time she asked him if the glass was vide (empty) or plein (full), and I realized that those were opposites I had not yet exposed him to. And then I started thinking about all the other opposites--and then ALL the other words--he has yet to master, and I started feeling discouraged and overwhelmed.

I wish I could bring Carl together with other French speakers, adults or kids, because it'll be a while before his cousin Griffin can converse with him, and because he needs to hear the language from as many people as possible! I need to start working on meeting local francophiles with young children so we can establish a francophone playgroup!

I'm also worried that Carl will make less progress, or even forget some of his French, now that I'm not watching him regularly. (Taking care of Griffin makes it hard for me to take care of myself, much less an active toddler!)

gratuitous Griffin pictures

I had promised myself not to let this blog turn into one of those where a mother breathlessly recounts her baby's every blink, sigh, cry, and poo--I want to keep the focus on ideas and stories about raising children with more than one language. But seeing as my entire life revolves around Griffin's, well, blinks, sighs, cries, and poos, that's all I can find the energy to think about these days! But I'll spare y'all the narration about his bodily functions and share some photos instead. (Now that he's been around for over two weeks, we've finally managed to get some pictures where his eyes are open and his mouth is closed!)

And here he is with his favorite cousin, who says things like "Griffin get down!" when he notices his own mother holding the baby, and "Carl's cousin is very little" when asked what he thinks about the newest family member:

owls, bon-bons, and puns for Halloween

This is a guest post by Elizabeth, Carl's mom, which concludes with a delightful example of how Carl uses French when you least expect it:

So in the end, Carl wanted to go in the neighbor's yard to look at their Halloween decorations. We said he had to put on his owl costume to go in the neighbor's yard. He was suddenly very willing to wear it.

We went to four neighbors. Carl rang the doorbells, though when they opened the door he tried to go inside. He said "trick or treat" twice after prompting, and "thank you" every time after prompting. Then we drove to Tatie and Tonton's neighborhood where a neighbor was having a small party that included several small children. The girls were fighting over the balls. Carl went for the kitchen utensils, though he played with the balls a little later too.

Eventually I convinced Carl it was time to leave and we rejoined Steve who was manning the door at home. Carl was beginning to get this whole "trick or treat" thing just as it was ending. He called the candy "blue trick or treat" (crunch bars) and "brown trick or treat" (twix bars) and wanted me to open the door so he could give it to someone. Poor Carl, there was no one at the door to give it to. I saw a woman walking her dog whom I called over and who kindly indulged me when I asked her to tell Carl "trick or treat" so he could give someone the candy.

I convinced Carl to get ready for bed by telling him he could hold onto the "blue trick or treat" while we did diaper and jammies and things. He started picking at the edges and found he could tear open the paper. "Bon-bon! Trick or treat has bon-bon," he declared. "Carl eat," he then said, and took a big bite.

Back to Sarah: I also dressed up for Halloween, capitalizing on my increasingly round belly: I wore my regular maternity clothes, but used safety pins to attach cards words like "couldn't," "we'll," she's," "I'm," and so forth. So that made me a pregnant woman…wait for it...

having contractions!

C'est un garçon!

Look at those cute little feet (les pieds)! Croissant squirmed and danced his way through the ultrasound (l'échographie).

He's got the Duex family pointy chin (le menton) (like me) and his father's great smile (le sourire).

Here he's crooking the index finger (le doigt) of his left hand (la main) towards us, beckoning us to come closer.

And here's the proof that he's a he! (le you-know-what)

conversing with Carl

As I mentioned last week, Carl is now nearly 19 months old. Over the past couple of months, he's been saying 2- and 3- word phrases, and more recently longer complete sentences in English. And now in the past month, he's started to put two and three and even four words together in French. Here's a recent conversation:

Carl: Carl mange yaourt. (~Carl ate yogurt.)
Tatie: Oui, Carl a fini le yaourt de Tatie. (Yes, Carl finished Auntie's yogurt.)
Carl: Carl fini yaourt Tatie.

Sometimes he's repeating what I've said--a process he's done all along--but now, in response to "Tu veux aller au parc?" (Do you want to go to the park?), he'll reply "aller au parc!" (go to the park) instead of just "parc," as he would say at the beginning of the summer. Or like today, when I pointed to an object and said "c'est un stylo avec de l'encre noir" (it's a pen with black ink), he agreed and repeated "stylo encre noir." This is interesting in two different ways--one, he had probably never heard the word "encre" before, but he said it pretty clearly with a nice gurgly French "r," and two, he seems to realize which are the salient words--nouns, adjectives--and keeps them while dropping articles and prepositions when he repeats. Here's another example of his understanding a new noun and dropping the article: when I noticed him looking at his parents' swords, I said "Tu regardes les épées?" (Are you looking at the swords?) In French, the "s" in "les" slides over to the vowel "é," so "épées" is pronounced "zépées." In response to my question, Carl said "regarde zépées." (On the other hand, one article that he always keeps is "de l'" in "de l'eau" ["some water"]).

He has also started to narrate his activities in French: "Carl mange" (Carl's eating), "Carl monte" (Carl's climbing up stairs), "ouvre Petit chien" (~ I'm opening Petit chien--the name of a book), "écris noir" (~I'm writing with a black pen), "pousse poussette" (~I'm pushing the stroller).

Carl likes to describe what he sees and identify objects, using the French as the equivalent of pointing a finger. The majority of times he uses single words--"pierre" (stone), "poubelle" (trashcan), "pain" (bread). But now he's beginning to get more precise: "courgette jaune" (yellow zucchini), "chaise rouge" (red chair), "tomber hibou" (~owl fell down), "Tatie porte chapeau" (~Auntie's wearing a hat), "Tatie mange pastèque" (~Auntie's eating watermelon), "photo Carl" (~you're taking a picture of me), "voiture Tatie" (~Auntie's car), and even "voiture Tatie dehors" (~Auntie's car is outside),

Carl can also use phrases in French to make requests, like "encore biscuits plaît" (~more crackers, please). We were having a snack a few weeks ago, me with grapes and him with crackers. And he was coveting my grapes, reaching for them, saying "encore"--which by the way always cracks me up, because how can you ask for "more" of something when you haven't had any of it to begin with? Anyway, I shook my head, and said "Carl mange des biscuits, et Tatie mange du raisin." (Carl's eating crackers, and Auntie's eating grapes.") With his hand still outstretched, he corrected me: "Carl mange raisin" (Carl eats grapes). So what could I do but give him a few?!

At times, Carl will describe what's going on around him, which often involves manipulating what he's heard, rather than simply repeating what I tell him. Upon hearing the question "Qui est dans la chaise bleue?" (who's in the blue chair?"), he responded correctly, "Carl dans chaise bleue" (missing the verb and article, but replacing the subject.) One day, I put him in his high chair and went to get food out of the fridge, narrating what I was doing, as usual. "Tatie cherche ta nourriture. Voilà le fromage! Voilà mes pâtes! Tatie va manger aussi." (Auntie's looking for your food. Here's the cheese! Here's my pasta! Auntie's going to eat too.") Carl responded, "Tatie mange aussi." ("Auntie eats too.") Now, I can't say for sure if he was merely parroting my last sentence minus a few words, or if he was creating a new sentence of his own, but the fact of the matter was he changed verbs and conjugated the new one correctly ("Tatie mange," not "Tatie manger"). The most impressive occurrence, however, was when I hid behind a cushion and said "Je me cache" (I'm hiding). He quickly responded, "Tatie se cache!" (Auntie's hiding). This amazes me, because not only did he change the subject appropriately (from I to Auntie), he also correctly modified the reflexive pronoun from "me" to "se" (in French, we have to say "hiding myself," "hiding herself," etc.). Does he understand the grammatical structure, or did he just remember my saying "Cheval se cache" and "Carl se cache" when he or his stuffed horse hid, and then just changed the subject to Tatie? However it worked, it was still remarkable to hear from an 18-month-old who only hears me speak French once a week!

Finally, Carl is also learning to invent with French, saying phrases that he has come up with entirely on his own. This is the most exciting part--it's proof that he's doing more than repeating words and phrases he's already heard. It means he understands enough of what he hears to combine the words in unique ways! When he saw me take out my notebook to write down some of these sentences today, he reached for it and said "Carl écrit stylo livre" (~Carl writes with a pen in the book)--his longest original sentence in French so far! My favorite example of this phenomenon, though, comes from yet another mealtime. I've taught him to clink his sippy cup with my glass and say "tchin tchin" (as they do in France--it means "cheers"). He gets a kick out of it--occasionally holding up his cup in the middle of eating to clink additional times--plus his milk gets drunk (he's usually recalcitrant when it comes to moo juice). Well, two weeks ago he held up his cracker and said "tchin tchin biscuit"! He wanted to clink crackers with me! I can guarantee you that no one has ever said "tchin tchin biscuit" around the boy.

But just so you don't think that his progress is so mind-blowingly speedy that he's completely bypassed the normal developmental stage of mixing up his two languages, I'll conclude by pointing out that he definitely does use both languages in the same phrase, especially when talking to me. I think he just calls upon whichever word comes to mind first, even if he knows it in French too. This has brought utterances like "stylo bleu away" (~Auntie put the blue pen in her purse), "de l'eau go micro-ondes" (~put the water in the microwave), "car Tatie dehors" (~Auntie's car is outside), "Tatie write stylo noir" (~Auntie is writing with the black pen), "Tatie drink un coca" (~Auntie's drinking a Coke), and "Tatie chaise off!" (Auntie, get off the chair!)

As I wrote this post, I realized that lots of his communication has to do with eating. Yep, he's definitely part of this foodie family. I can't wait to hear what we'll talk about over our next meal!

Carl's progress: from socks to signs to single words

My nephew Carl is almost 19 months old now. Everyone speaks English with him except me and occasionally his mom (when reading him books in French or making simple statements). Naturally, his English is better than his French--he is already making sentences, like "Green light go okay" and "Grandma help open littler pink box"--but his French is still amazing considering how little exposure to it he gets! (I take care of him one day per week.) In today's post I'm going to look back over the past year or so to show how his understanding and ability to produce French has developed.

As early as five months old, Carl's behavior seemed to indicate that he was noticing differences in the sounds that different people produced. (This idea jives with research that has found that babies can recognize and differentiate their parents' language from foreign languages and human speech from animal noises.) For instance, he would turn his head and stare at my mouth when I sneezed, blew my nose, made animal sounds, or answered the phone and spoke English. Therefore, I really do think he could usually tell from early on when the sound of the language changed.

By about eight months, Carl could sit still and listen to me read picture books to him in French (without trying to chew on them). He seemed to enjoy the songs I sang (particularly "Sur le pont d'Avignon") and the fingerplays I'd do along with nursery rhymes.

When he was eleven months old, I realized that Carl really "got" what I was saying some of the time when he started reacting appropriately to some of the statements or commands I made in French. Click here to read about the sock incident, proof that he understood a complicated series of directions!

By age 1, Carl was using gestures, facial expressions, movements, and sounds to show comprehension of quite a few words and expressions in French (though not as many as in English). Laughter, of course, was a clear indicator of what he enjoyed, and he got very good at scowling and pushing away food or toys he didn't want. But I also picked up on more subtle signs, like when he would bounce up and down faster during a French nursery rhyme about riding a horse, anticipating when the pace of rhyme would speed up with the words "trot" and then "gallop."

Carl's sign language came in handy, too. When feeding him before he could talk, I'd ask him if he wanted another spoonful of something or other, and he'd use the sign for "more" to let me know. In fact, he used the "more" sign regardless of what language the person feeding him spoke. The "more" sign also showed up outside of the kitchen--he used it if he wanted to be pushed in the swing at the playground or if he wanted me to reread a book we had just finished. Carl also signed "milk" when asked if he wanted milk or juice in either language. (I wonder if teaching a baby sign language while using two different languages at home helps the child understand what the words mean--does the sign act as a "translation" for him? My husband and I are hoping to use sign language along with English and French with Croissant, our baby due in January!)

Between 12 and 15 months, Carl responded nonverbally to commands in ways that made clear that he understood my directions in French much of the time. (At this point he was just starting to say individual words in English.) For example, I could tell him to pick out a book, and he'd choose one and bring it to me. Or when given the suggestion that he put the horse on the train, or one block on top of another, or the pot back in the cabinet, and he generally would. He could open and close doors on command, as well as turn the pages of a book. Carl even knew to wave "au revoir" when people left (although he had a tendency to wait until about 30 seconds after they'd left, or wave when he heard the car start up in the garage).

No doubt Carl's receptive vocabulary (what he understands but can't say yet) was growing all along even before he was a year old, and I just didn't realize it until around the time of the sock episode, as I spent most of my time with him singing and narrating rather than asking him direct questions or giving him directions to follow. From about age 1 onwards, when I have asked him where different body parts are, he'll touch them. In reply to "Où est le frigo?", he'll march into the kitchen and put his hand on the fridge. "Où est le hibou?" He'll grab his stuffed owl. When we play hide-and-seek and I say "Où est Tatie Sarah?", he'll find me and point and call out "Ta-tie"!

But the cutest of all was when I showed him how to give kisses. I'd been saying the French word "bisou" whenever I kissed him. Playing with his stuffed animals, I'd have them kiss each other and kiss him, always saying "bisou." He caught on, and then I could tell him to "fais un bisou à Winnie-the-Pooh" or "fais un bisou à Tatie" and he would. At one point, when we were looking in a mirror, I told him to "Fais un bisou à Carl"--give himself a kiss--an idea that I had never suggested before. Without a second's hesitation, he leaned forward and smooched his reflection and made a kissing noise! To me, this was proof that not only could he recognize and respond to questions and directions such as "Where is the cheese?" and "Give me the book" in French, he also understood what enough of the individual components mean to be able to react appropriately to statements that he's never heard before! At that moment, I was so thrilled and so proud that all I could do was laugh and hug him and give him another bisou myself.

Around 15 months, Carl could say 45+ words in English and produced his first word in French: tête (head). Tête was soon followed by Tatie (auntie), Tonton (uncle), pomme (apple), and atchoum (the sound for a sneeze).

Around 16 months, Carl could say about 18 words in French on his own without prompting (and would repeat many, many others). By then, he had definitely figured out that Tatie uses different words than the rest of the family. He doesn't know that it's a language called French, but he knows it when he hears it. Of the words that he knows in both French and English--"eat" and "mange," "milk" and "lait"--he tends to use the English terms with his family and the French ones with me. Then there's the one word he likes to say in both languages in a row: apple. When he's with his family, he says "apple, pomme," and when he's with me, he says "pomme, apple." One of his favorite books in French has a picture of an apple on the cover; he'll pick it up and say "pomme, apple" even if I'm not around. To me, this indicates that he knows that the book is in his Tatie's "pomme" language, not the "apple" language that everyone else speaks. Additionally, when his mom plays a French CD for him, he sometimes says "Tatie!", recognizing that it was music he hears when I take care of him.

Carl's mom, Elizabeth, can ask him questions like "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" ("What is this?") and he'll respond in French (if he knows the word). Occasionally he'll reply to a question in English with a word in French (like when he said "arbre" in response to his grandmother's question about a tree); more often he'll answer my questions in French with a word in English. (But it's almost always a logical response, showing that he understood the question correctly.) I rarely correct him explicitly in these cases; rather, I model the appropriate French word by using it in context in response.

The one word I tend to encourage him to use correctly is "oui"--yes--when he says "yeah" to a question in French. I'll look at him quizzically and say "oui ou non?" and he'll reply with "oui." I honestly don't know why I've focused on that--maybe because "oui" is such an essential word? However, this might be backfiring: Elizabeth has noticed Carl replying "yeah--oui--yes" to questions after I leave the house. Am I confusing him? Any thoughts?

You can probably tell how excited I was about his one-word utterances....stay tuned, because now he can put two and three words together in French! I'll post more about his linguistic inventions and adventures soon.

(If you want to read more about Carl in chronological order, click on the label "Carl" at the bottom of this post and you can follow the thread of all the posts and photos he appears in.)

Carl's newest French book

I wrote a book! Well, not a book that will ever be published, and not too scintillating to us grown-ups, but Carl seems to like it just fine. Frustrated by the lack of books in French for kids which are both reasonably priced and available in the US, and tired of reading him books about baby animals and seasons and such, I decided I should just create my own about things that are important to my darling 18-month-old nephew.

So this tome is called Le quartier de Carl--Carl's Neighborhood--and it takes him on a walk from his house to the park and back. I've illustrated it with pictures of what we typically see and do on such a walk--for example, running through the grass, watching squirrels, playing with the mailbox, and so on. (I used a digital camera, and then copied the pictures into a Microsoft Word file. There are usually two pictures on each 8.5 x 11 inch page, with narrative underneath. Then I printed the story out in color, placed the pages into clear plastic sheet protectors, and put them all in a thin three-ring binder. Voilà! Instant toddler-friendly book!)

Here's the text of the story, first in French and then in English, with a handful of the 25 pictures. (If any fluent speakers of French catch any mistakes, or can suggest a more felicitous way to phrase something, please let me know!)

Voici la maison de Carl. Elle est en briques. Quelle jolie maison confortable ! Elle se trouve sur la rue X à Lafayette dans le Colorado aux Etats-Unis sur le continent de l'Amérique du Nord.

La maison a une porte, des fenêtres et un garage. Qu'est-ce qui habite dans le garage ? Les voitures ! Voici la voiture de Tatie Sarah. Carl aime beaucoup les voitures. Sur cette photo, Carl trouve la roue de la voiture.

Au fait, Carl adore tous les moyens de transport ! Dans son quartier, il voit aussi le bus, des motos et le facteur dans sa camionnette. Le facteur apporte le courrier à la maison. Carl aime regarder dans la boîte aux lettres pour voir s'il y a des lettres pour lui !

Carl se promène souvent dans le quartier avec sa famille. Parfois il s'asseoit dans la poussette et quelquefois il préfère marcher tout seul. Marche, Carl, marche! Sur cette photo il marche sur le beau gazon vert au parc.

Il y a beaucoup à faire au parc! Dans l'aire de jeu, Carl monte et descend l'escalier, traverse les ponts, descend le toboggan et et se balance dans la balançoire. Après avoir joué, Carl a soif, donc il boit de l'eau.

Qu'est-ce qu'il y a d'autre dans le quartier de Carl? Carl voit des écureuils, des oiseaux, des chiens, des abeilles (dans les fleurs), de grands arbres avec des feuilles vertes, des pierres, le trottoir, des barrières et des clôtures, la poubelle et la rue.

Carl est très content d'habiter dans ce quartier !

Here's Carl's house. It's made of bricks. What a pretty, comfortable house! It's located on X Drive in Lafayette in Colorado in the United States on the continent of North America.

The house has a door, windows, and a garage. What goes in the garage? Cars! Here's Tatie Sarah's grey car. Carl likes cars a lot. In this picture, Carl finds the wheel of the car.

In fact, Carl loves all types of transportation! In his neighborhood, he also sees the bus, motorcycles, and the mail carrier in the mail truck. The mail carrier brings mail to the house. Carl likes to look in the mailbox to see if there are any letters for him!

Carl likes to go for walks in the neighborhood with his family. Sometimes he sits in the stroller, and sometimes he prefers to walk by himself. Walk, Carl, walk! In this picture, he's walking on the beautiful green grass in the park.

There's so much to do in the park! At the playground, Carl goes up and down the stairs, crosses the bridges, slides down the slide, and swings in the swing. After playing, Carl is thirsty, so he drinks some water.

What else is there in Carl's neighborhood? Carl sees squirrels, birds, dogs, bees (in the flowers), big trees with green leaves, stones, the sidewalk, fences, the garbage can, and the street.

Carl is very happy to live in this neighborhood!

fun and games with English and French

Teaching languages to children, I'm finding, usually requires a very different approach than teaching languages to college students and adults. It's taken me a semester and a half of working with a four-year-old and her six-year-old sister for me to realize that I don't have to knock myself out by creating, say, an elaborate three-round Jeopardy-style game pitting different teams against each other one day, then a rousing game of "flyswatter" where students race to the board to hit pictures of words that I define in French the next day, like I might do to help my college kids practice French vocabulary. (Not that I don't enjoy activities like those--especially once I've developed them and then can just adapt them the following semester. Email me if you'd like a handout detailing my favorite vocabulary activities--I used it for a conference presentation and gave it to the graduate student teachers I supervised.)

Anyway, the girls I tutor don't need complicated games, and they don't care if we play the same game more than once--in fact, they seem to prefer the repetition! This is refreshing. It means that as a tutor I don't have to come up with brand-new games for every session, and more importantly, playing the same game over and over builds the girls' confidence and gives them more exposure to comprehensible input in the language.

So I thought I'd share some of the activities that they've liked the most. The first ones are in English, because I'm also tutoring a first-grader who's struggling to learn to read in school, but the games we play could also work with children learning a second language.

Here's our first hopscotch game. We meet in the public library--no drawing on the sidewalk allowed--so I used a cheap plastic tablecloth. I wrote a simple sentence about what we had done the previous lesson (reading a book about making pizza and then actually doing so ourselves) and included two possibilities for two of the words. As she hopped, she read the sentence aloud.

Now here's the extreme hopscotch version with thirty different circles to choose from; to make a logical sentence you pretty much have to jump all over. Sometimes we take turns, and sometimes we have stuffed animals do the hopping. Either way, she has to read aloud and it has to make sense! I like these two games because they get her up and moving around. A solid hour of reading tutoring after a full day of school would be hard on anyone, but especially a six-year-old with a short attention span.

Hopscotch offers all sorts of possibilities for language learners. In this example, all the subject pronouns are third person singular, as are the verbs; but you could practice verb conjugation by using different subjects. For pre-literate students, you could always draw pictures, use different colors, or make other modifications. And I bet a Twister game with words could prove interesting, too!
Next, I adapted a Candyland game board by writing word families on each square (such as "eet" and "ump"). When you land on a square, you have to say a word that belongs in that word family (like "feet" and "jump"). Repeating words is not allowed.


We also worked on word families with the card game Go Fish. I took cards and taped one of her spelling words on each card, then three other words in that same family. We then played the game, asking "Do you have a word that rhymes with 'street'?" and so on. She had to read the cards she received and the cards she laid down.

I also used the same deck of modified cards to play Memory. With the cards all turned over, we took turns flipping two over. If they were from the same family, they were a match. If they weren't, they turned them back over and the other player tried. (Thanks to my mom, a retired remedial English teacher, for many of these ideas!)


I've also played Go Fish and Memory with my French tutees using purchased French flashcards (published by Usborne).

As with most language learning activities, first we start with recognition, demonstrating their passive knowledge of the words. The cards are set out on a table, I ask "Où est la chaise?" and they point to the picture of a chair. Only after they've heard the word many times do I expect them to produce it on their own, as I point to pictures and ask them "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" Then I might ask them--still in French--to show me animals, things in a house, things in nature, something they like, something they don't like. After a couple of sessions like this, we play Memory (I have a double set of these cards, and I have also made my own flashcards with other words I've taught them) or Go Fish (they have to find four cards in the same category).

We've also been working with a book-and-CD set called French for Children by Catherine Bruzzone, published by McGraw-Hill. Each very short unit includes a simple song using the target vocabulary and structures, a simple game or activity (matching, fill-in-the-blank, Chutes and Ladders, etc.), cute pictures, French cultural notes in English, and a cartoon called "Superchat." While it's a good introduction to topics in French that interest children, each lesson is too short on its own to really make an impression on the kids I tutor.


For example, in unit two, kids learn to say what they like and don't like. On this sample page, the directions for "I like" say "Listen to the tape. Draw a line between Oui and the things you like and Non and the things you don't." There are pictures of cats, pizza, strawberries, soda, ice cream, witches, monsters, and spiders. Well, this is a good start, but I don't think it's enough practice. Plus, once the child has drawn a line, it's hard to repeat the activity. Here's the game I made to supplement the book:

As you can tell, it's very simple (both in concept and for a non-artistic person like myself). The pictures are color copies from the book, but they include vocabulary from some of the other chapters to recycle it and reinforce the "j'aime" and "je n'aime pas" structures with expressions from outside of the examples. I also wrote in the words for family members (since I didn't have pictures of them). To play the game, we review the words for all the pictures first. Then we roll the die, move the marker the appropriate number of spaces, and say in French whether or not we like the person or object in the square. This is the type of game that my college students would scoff at--I would never try this, or hopscotch or Memory, with them--but the girls adored it and still clamor for it!

It's been fun trying to figure out how to help these kids enjoy learning so much that they forget that it's educational! Bingo has also been popular, both in English and French, with words and pictures and numbers. (Click here to read about other language-related activities that don't require game boards.) Please share your ideas for language enrichment and easy reading activities--just click on "comments." I'd love to hear from other teachers and parents!