Bilingual Kiddos

🌟 WHY & HOW do we celebrate Dragon Boat Festival? 🌟

It’s one of the most widely celebrated Chinese traditional festival with thousands of years of history.

There are so many customs related to the festival.

Here are 4:

🧡 Commemorate Qu Yuan 纪念屈原

Qu Yuan was a patriotic minister in his home State of Chu, who wrote a lot of poems and proposed many reforms. After the reform failed and he was exiled by the king, he drowned himself on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in the river rather than seeing his country invaded and conquered by the State of Qin.

💚 Dragon Boat Race 龙舟赛

The origin of the festival is said to be when locals paddled out on boats to scare the fish away and retrieve Qu Yuan's body. The races represent patriotism and group integrity, and are a symbol of the attempts to rescue and recover the body of Qu Yuan.

💙 Eat Dumpling/Zong zi 吃粽子

Fishermen began throwing rice into the river as an offering to Qu Yuan, so that his spirit could be nourished in the next world.

But one night, Qu Yuan appeared in a dream to one of the fishermen, telling him that the fish were eating the rice offerings, that to prevent it, the rice ought to be wrapped in silk – later replaced by bamboo leaves– to protect the offerings.

🧡 Avoiding the 5 “Poisons” 避五毒

The fifth Chinese lunar month is traditionally considered a month of death, disease and evil, due to the high summer temperatures in China. Pests, other poisonous animals and germs start to become more active, so people took measures to prevent the diseases from happening.

👀 So.. How many did you know? Which legends do you know that are not mentioned here? 🤗

More than half of the people in the world are bilingual, which goes to show that bilingualism and multilingual is is perfectly possible.

As a parent raising bilingual children, have you ever worried that introducing a second language will affect the first language negatively?

At the beginning of our family’s bilingual journey, I recall having so many questions including this one. It was certainly a confusing period.

So if you’re in the same position as I was, I hope that this post reassures that you are on the right track 💕

🌟 DID YOU KNOW 🌟

🌊 The sea covers 70% of Earth’s surface.

🌊 About 70% of the oxygen we breathe is produced by the oceans.

🌊 Less than 10% of the world’s ocean have been mapped.

🌊 The world’s longest mountain chain is underwater (Mid-Ocean Ridge at 65,000km).

There’s just something so magical and mysterious about the ocean (sea life, corals). Yet it can also be strong, powerful and deadly (tsunami and undercurrents).

Don’t you think?

I also always get mixed up between octopus and squid 😆 no more excuses now!

If you are raising a bilingual child, you would have definitely heard of the OPOL “one-parent-one-language” strategy.

While it CAN lead to bilingualism, it doesn't necessarily result in bilingualism. And there are other strategies that work too.

So what’s the best strategy for parents wanting to raise bilingual children?

The answer is:

Whichever strategy that ensures both high QUALITY and high QUANTITY exposure to each language.

Children can get these exposure through parents, grandparents, friends, school, tutors etc.

1) QUALITY

A great way to get high quality exposure is through social interaction.

Speak to your child in the language(s) that you want them to learn.

2) QUANTITY

Quantity can be measured by how many words that child hear per day in each language.

Hearing more words give a child more opportunity to learn about that second language.
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I feel that each family’s dynamic is so unique and different that it is actually hard to fall into just one specific category/strategy.

What is your experience with OPAL? I would love to hear your stories!

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6168212/

Have you smiled at someone today? 💕

Sometimes, I go about my day and my mind preoccupied with the million of things that has to be done.

I rush to pick the kids up, prepare their meals, do the laundry, clean the house.

You know, “being busy”, “doing life”, “adulting”.

I look at my phone for updates about nothing important.

I pass by people without even looking at them.

My family might think that they’re not important enough for my attention.

A stranger might perceive me as being cold and unfriendly, when the truth is that I’m shy.

And then I smile. I look at them and give them a smile from the heart.

The magical thing about a smile is that it breaks the ice almost instantly.

It connects us as human beings.

I am no longer cold, or unfriendly, or emotionless.

And the best thing is, I don't even have to say a word.

So I ask the question again, have you smiled at someone today? 💕

🌟 Insect FUN facts 🌟

💜 Caterpillars have 12 eyes!

💚 Dragonflies have been on earth for 300 million years!

❤️ A ladybird might eat more than 5,000 insects in its lifetime!

🧡 Grasshoppers existed before dinosaurs!

💙 One dung beetle can drag 1,141 times its weight – that’s like a human pulling six double-decker buses!

How many did you get out of 5? 😆🤗😂

The best way to pass on another language is to engage and communicate with your child in that language.

There is no single approach that will work with all children. What is effective for one might be less effective for another.

The best we can do is to monitor our children’s interests and what keeps them engaged, and introduce a combination of the 10 ways above to help with this bilingual journey 🙃!

What ways do you find most useful to your child? It is by no means an exhaustive list, so please feel free to mention other ways too!

Follow us for more bilingual tips and tricks! 👇👇👇
kiddos
kiddos
kiddos

Having a foreign accent means being brave enough to venture to a country that you did not grow up in.

Having a foreign accent means you are strong enough to get out of your comfort zone.

Having a foreign accent means that you are able to speak more than one language.

💚💚💚

When I was younger, I felt somewhat inadequate speaking in public overseas.

I studied in London, I’m living in Adelaide, but still, I have a Malaysian accent.

As time passes (and as I age), it dawned upon me that having an accent (or not) doesn’t really matter. You should not be ashamed to be speaking in the accent that you grew up with.

What matters more is how you present yourself and the depth of words that you are speaking.

There are people who can switch accent according to who they speak to, but not me. I have a truly strong Malaysian accent all the way 😆

Have you felt intimidated by another accent? Can you switch accents easily?? I’d love to know!

Happy Mother’s Day! 💕 Which is your favourite flower, is it in the list? Did you have a beautiful celebration with your family?

Mine was a bit meh as my husband was working and I had to look after the kids 😟 but the kids made some sweet cards which I’ll share later in my stories 💕

Which strategy do you identify with the most?

It could be a mix of a few, but the best arrangement is what works well for your bilingual family.

Comment below! 💕

A while back, I summarized the first chapter of the book “The Bilingual Brain” by Albert Costa.

What I really liked about this book is that it is backed by science and written by a neuropsychologist.

Albert Costa was a highly regarded Spanish/Catalan researcher on bilingualism.

So, what did you think? Were you surprised or did you know all the points above? Comment below!

🌟 The names of 6 common berries in Simplified and Traditional Chinese. 🌟

Just today I bought some raspberries for the kids but didn't know the name in Chinese, hence the post!

Do you know your berries? Are your kids a fan of berries?

They can be expensive so we only buy them in season! 😆