Babel Babies

Super excited to announce that is taking part in the Creative Multilingual Discovery Day on 2nd November in Oxford as part of the Festival of Social Science!

Join us for a day exploring languages through:
🎶 songs (with Cate y Croc!)
🎭 drama with
📚 stories with from and
📝 creative translation with

This FREE event is organised by and from and is aimed at families with children from babies through to end of primary school age. See the link on image for more details. No need to book, but come along to in good time for your preferred event as space will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Parents: you need to stay with your children. There will be tea/coffee and biscuits, and time to chat with us about raising children with multiple languages, plus art and crafts with our brilliant team of doctoral researcher linguists and teachers (including the wonderful !)

Non vediamo l’ora - can’t wait! 🌏🌟 Drop us a 🎶🎭📚📝 if you’re planning to drop in for one of the activities!

Join Cate and colleagues Hamish and Faidra in a multilingual, musical tour of the world! On 🗓️ 27 Oct we will teach you to sing some favourite children's songs in new languages (of course!) and add dramatised movement with the guidance of actor and fellow applied linguist ! Join & discover the languages we speak in the UK! This event runs hourly all day Friday from 10am and is suitable for the whole family. There are lots of incredible events happening as part of - check out the site on
https://socsci.web.ox.ac.uk/a-musical-tour-of-the-world-through-dramatized-songs Why not come and make a day (or two) of it!

Did you know all the Babel Babies tunes are on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple, etc? Head to your favourite digital music provider and get that multilingual music playlist going today! 🎶🌎🥳

Join me to sing along to Spanish Twinkle Twinkle in our latest YouTube video! Or pop to www.babelbabies.com to get access to all the song videos in a library of curated resources for whatever price you can afford (yep, it's from just £5!) Start your family's adventures with languages today!

Spanish for babies: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (Estrellita) ⭐🤗🎵 Introduce your baby to learning languages with our version of the Spanish Twinkle Twinkle! This song is a snippet from the Babel Babies Children's Languages ...

At Babel Babies we strongly believe it is important to only ever claim something is FACT if there is the concrete scientific evidence to back it up!

Unfortunately, we do see lots of well-meaning but flawed discourse on here surrounding languages. Things like:

👉 When it’s best to learn
👉 The bilingual advantage
👉 The more languages the better etc

Quite often, the science quoted is very out of date or was from such a small study it’s impossible to find it conclusive.

Now, the flip side of this (so we don’t come across as too much of a party-pooper!) is that we LOVE talking about science when there has been enough evidence to make substantiated claims.

One such claim is that languages can actually SLOW DOWN the onset of dementia and also IMPROVE BRAIN RECOVERY and OVERALL RECOVERY following a stroke.

Better still, is that these cognitive effects kick in whether you start learning multiple languages as a child who has exposure to equal amounts of different languages, or later on life as an adult where you do not have equal exposure to different languages!

We are spreading the word that languages are a complete workout for the brain - to a point that there is an argument they should be prescribed by the NHS! There is no available drug that is better than languages at delaying dementia symptoms!

Please share this post to inform your friends about the amazing cognitive effects learning languages - at any age - has on your brain, supported by up-to-date scientific research.

Did you know young children (especially under-4s) are still learning the appropriate contexts for their languages - whether they speak one or many!

That’s why you don’t need to wait until they have more words in English first before they start exploring other languages.

Even if they’re learning just one language, they’ll be testing out different words for certain situations, just as they would if they were learning 2 or 3 languages.

They may mix their language and this is perfectly fine because they’re learning which words to use in which context.

So, you can start exploring languages at any stage with your little ones - from babies that are a couple of months old to older children. You don’t need to wait for them to have more words in English first because they’ll be appropriateness-testing regardless! They’re not confused - they’re little language scientists!

Join our Children's Languages Adventure today and unlock your little ones' languages potential! Pay what you can - from £5.

Cate is off to Chicago to speak at the American Educational Research Association conference in April. The theme is about “the pursuit of truth” in education research, which really aligns with our values.

We always ensure the claims we make in relation to early years language-learning are properly researched and substantiated, sadly something that doesn't always happen across early years language education providers.

We like to bust a lot of myths – 'the earlier the better', 'it's better to learn languages before the age of 8' etc – but we also really shout about something when it has the right kind of evidence behind it – e.g. learning languages makes your brain stronger!

Discover some new words in various languages with our spring-themed multilingual flashcard!

When you're next out and about, see if you can spot some narcisi 🌼, an agneau 🐑 and if you're lucky perhaps a regnbue! 🌈

Set a family challenge to learn a new word each day, and then see if you can spot it in real life.

Download here >>> https://www.babelbabies.com/spring-words-multilingual-flashcard-social

“The earlier the better” statement is one of our favourite myths to bust when it comes to learning languages! Swipe

Exciting news! Cate's first research paper, 'Folk pedagogy? Investigating how and why UK early years and primary teachers use songs with young learners' published in Education 3-13, the International Journal of Primary, Elementary & Early Years Education is now trending, and is one of the journal's most-read research papers of all time!

The paper explores teachers' purposes for and beliefs around using songs in education, with some really interesting findings about how this changes across the age groups taught.

The paper reveals a huge gap in the evidence base from reliable and rigorous research into how songs support learning (beyond learning music itself).

Cate will be gathering more data about how songs support second language learning in her PhD…the next step is to conduct a classroom intervention!

Follow the link to read Cate's paper, co-authored with her incredible and inspiring supervisor Victoria Murphy >>> https://bit.ly/42KWj5S

The idea that children are 'sponges' at a young age is really prevalent. Lots of people have said this to me about Babel Babies.

I often hear 'oh great idea to start languages early, children are sponges'.

If we analyse the image a bit more deeply, however, we can see that it isn't the perfect fit for the REALITY of how children learn a language.

Sponges are just immersed in water and soak it up. Babies might appear to be equally passive, but they are in fact actively listening, processing, storing and later reproducing the sound systems around them, learning the context that is appropriate for each language if they have more than one in their environment, and generating huge numbers (billions) of new synaptic connections as they experience new things.

The sponge idea suggests they just sit there, and the environment does the work, but learning a language is a really active, effortful process.

Children need the right support, time and input to learn a new language.

Some children will get on really well in a brand new language environment, such as starting in a new school with a new language, and others will be really unsure or even actively frightened and need lots more support.

Adults are the same. So let's stop talking about children being sponges, and learn about the PROCESS of language acquisition so that we know where we and our children are on the language-learning journey, and what support we all need to get to the next place on the route.

How about you? Are you embarking on a new language-learning journey with your little ones?

Or are you further down the road and seeking support? Let us know in the comments. 💬

Pay What You Can is here to stay! Inspire your little ones to fall in love with languages - from just £5 for our entire children's languages programme. Pay what you can afford.

Head to the linkinbio to join the adventure today!