Counting up and adding up
What you do every day with your child adds up. It does not just apply to the target language but all learning. In the last month of the year, what do you do?
Are you counting down or are you counting up?
When you count up you add up all the things you have done with your child every day. When you count up you see the progress from Day 1 to Day 365. Can you see it?
Make it visible.
Start now. Every day is a good day to start the practice.
Have your child add a marble to a glass jar every day when she joins you to play in Mandarin or when she actively uses Mandarin. It adds up, no matter if it is listening to a story, singing a song, playing a game, working on a play page, practicing writing… All age-appropriate activities are welcome. Everything counts.
A 14-year-old student told me, “I love learning Chinese!” His big smile and enthusiasm are beyond words. When a child wants to learn everything becomes simple.
When my kids were little hands-on activities, engaging stories and songs worked wonders. Now they are teens and they are more independent. The engagement and dynamic with Mandarin have some change but reading good stories still tops everything else.
When a 16-year old student reads to me in Mandarin and laughed as she was reading I saw the joy of reading a story in a second language and the engagement of understanding the meaning of words as a whole in stories. It didn’t start like this. It has happened over time. Everything adds up from day 1.
“Learning Mandarin is like playing with Lego pieces. The more pieces you have the bigger a castle you can build.” I always share this with kids, parents, and fellow language teachers. When learning is playing the attitude shifts.
As a parent, you count up with your child and you add up what you or her teacher has shared with her in Mandarin. At the same time, you are counting down to the day your child takes this language skill along with her profession to the real world and uses it to connect with the world on her own.