BhashaKids and Faiza Nguyen of @teacher_missfaiza have a fun and engaging conversation on raising multilingual kids, teaching heritage languages, and of course, bilingual read-a-louds.
Faiza is an author, a lover of kids' lit and the OG IG bilingual read-a-loud account. In 2021, she organized an amazing fundraiser for COVID relief in India with help from many members of our community, featuring many South Asian languages. Now based in Germany, she was raised in Pakistan and the US. She's the mom of 3 (and one black cat) and is raising a blended Pakistani-Vietnamese family.
Faiza is the author of "One Black Cat" Aik Kala Billa ایک کالا بلا - a bilingual board book in Urdu and English. It's currently of print but we do hope to stock one day here at BhashaKids. She leads Urdu- English read-a-louds every Sunday with the @urdulearninglab - all proceeds go to build a library 📚 for a co-ed school in Northwest Pakistan. Outside of teaching Urdu, you can often find her tirelessly volunteering and fundraising for various causes. She was recently instrumentally involved in educating Afghan children who made it to the US airbase in Germany.
Tips for raising bilingual & multicultural kids:
- Make it fun! How? Gamify or set to music.
- Make it easy and accessible.
- Don’t make it a chore. Turn heritage language into a gift.
- Read to them early. Read to them often.
- Aim for exposure and engagement.
- Don’t give up. There are many resources available now through social media that weren’t there even 10 years ago.
- Don’t fall for the “multilingualism causes speech delay” MYTH. The science proves otherwise.
The bottom line is that exposure to the target language EARLY an OFTEN is key to building listening comprehension, working memory of phonetics, will build vocabulary as well as build confidence. These young years of 0-5, pre-literate and pre-school, are crucial to building a bilingual foundation for your child. An easy way to do this - bilingual books and playgroups!
Watch the IG Live session below to find out more about her efforts and be inspired to work with your kids on language.
Urdu resources are in development here at BhashaKids. Sign up for the waitlist here.
Check out our bilingual language resources: bilingual books, vocabulary sets and worksheets
| BK Interview 6 |
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