Author: nonnativemommy

"Amimals" – in zoos

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Going to the zoo was always my favourite activity as a child (still love it today) so I could hardly wait for E. to get at least a little bit interested. And the time has come.

Our first time to the Budapest zoo was when she was 6 months old. It was more fun for me than for her. She had a look at the camels (and smiled when saw them pee) and the farmyard and then fell asleep. She only woke up for nursing (which I managed in the disabled loo) then went back to sleep again.

But now as she is over 1 (15 months old more precisely) she takes pleasure in walking around and looking at animals.

Visiting relatives in Debrecen gave us the sudden idea to visit the zoo there. It was actually a great idea. We all loved it. We were already in the zoo for half an hour (saw some parrots, giraffes and monkeys) when I realised what a good occasion would this be to use English (our Hungarian relatives didn’t accompany us). So we just sang our song to signal the change in using languages and continued our animal adventure in English.

As we were walking around, we described everything to her in English (and as usual she was repeating everything like a parrot):

  • what animals we saw (turtles, a hippo, penguins  – her favourites, more monkeys, laughing doves, roosters and hens, camels, goats, ostriches and lions)
  • what they looked like (“Look, the camel has two big humps”; “Wow, this rooster has a huge red comb on his head”)
  • what sounds they gave (roar, squeak, cock-a-doodle-do, coo-coo etc.)
  • what the animals were served for dinner (fruits, vegetables, mouse, rabbit etc.)

At the end of our visit we found a wooden playground where there were a lot of animals. E.’s favourite was the caterpillar. She climbed on it and rode it for about 15 minutes. We also counted and named the caterpillar’s legs, eyes, mouth and antennae.

Our second English tour in the zoo was in Budapest with our native nanny, A.
I learnt some new animal names (e.g.:cassowary) and we had a wonderful day with a lot of English (I tried to stay in the background and let A. and E. interact with each other a lot). The photos speak for themselves.

E.’s favourite place was the Butterfly House, where we could see how butterflies come out of their pupa, and of course, there were plenty of different types of butterflies flying around, eating oranges or just resting on the plants. We had to go back once again before leaving the zoo. E. was running around and one could see on her little face how amazed she was. Her favourite animals are butterflies at the moment.

Morpho peleides butterfly – blue on the inside
E.’s pointing at the butterfly she liked the most, saying: “orange”

After the zoo experience I found a nice page where the metamorphosis of a butterfly can be seen quite nicely. So I printed it and E.”coloured” it 🙂 with my help.

We also watched the seal show at 11 o’clock. A big crowd gathered to see the seals but everything was explained in Hungarian only. (Sorry A., I didn’t interpret it at all 😦  )

E. was fascinated by the ball (and not the seal…)

 

Baby Giraffe

E. was sleeping when we went to see the Neanderthals. It’s a relatively new exhibition of a (wax) Neanderthal family. This little boy with the cave drawing was my favourite.

After E. woke up we had some lunch (vegetable dish for E. and sandwiches for A. and myself – I wish E. hadn’t said “people” for the first time while I put a spoonful of her dish into her mouth)

 

Flamingoes

We also went to see the baby elephant, but E. was more interested in a turtle shell:

Another favourite place was the traditional Hungarian farmyard. Rabbits were E.’s favourite. We had to return for a second visit. E. was repeating the words like “rabbit”, “hop”, “carrot” and “apple” all the way through. E. had an incident with the foal, which wanted to eat her shoes.

All in all, we enjoyed ourselves to a great extent and will return to practise our English as well as having fun around “amimals” – as E. says.

New flashcards – flags

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I have created another pack of flashcards: the European flags. The pack is not full yet, but quite a lot is done. First, I just wanted to check if E. is interested in them or not. As they are very colourful, she loved them at first sight.



I tried to concentrate on countries which are neighbouring countries of Hungary, or I have some information about, or we have already been to etc. I, myself, coloured them AGAIN. (I hope baby Jesus will bring me a colour printer for Christmas). To make the flashcards more durable I laminated them (that was the easier part).

Activities  you can do with flags:

  1. just have a look and say the name of the country
  2. name the colours on the flag
  3. say if the stripes are vertical or horizontal (E. loves long words)
  4. tell your child the capital
  5. talk about the country if you know it (in our case for instance: Ireland, Mommy lived there for a year a long time ago, the U.K. – this is where A. (our native nanny) comes from, Turkey – this is where Mommy and Daddy were on their honeymoon, Hungary –  we live in Hungary etc.
  6. show two flags and ask: which one is … ? and your child can pick the right one (E. likes this activity not only with cards, but also with soft toys, building blocks, flowers or coloured pencils…. whatever)
  7. turn down three cards and let your child turn them up one by one, then say the name of the country (and the capital or the colours – combination of 1.-2.-4.)
  8. spread all the cards on the floor and tell your child to choose his or her favourite one (maximum three – E. would give me all the cards 🙂 )
  9. pick the flags with the same colours and group them (red–white: Switzerland, Poland and Austria, blue–white–red: the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, red–white–green: Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, black–yellow–red: Germany, Belgium)
  10. if you make 2 sets you can play a memory game (I had neither time, nor energy to make two sets)

More flags are on the way:

  • I want to make England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
  • I cannot leave out the USA and Australia as they are among the most important English speaking countries
  • Countries of Asia, Africa and South America  are coming too

I wish a day would be about 36-38 hours long…

More and more words

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Just a short post on how our language development is going. E. is 15,5 months old and about a few weeks ago I stopped counting how many English and Hungarian words she knows.
Now here are some random interesting features of her language knowledge:

English:

  • she knows all the main colours (in both languages)
  • loves saying 3 (or more) -syllable words (aubergine, apricot, butterfly)
  • started to say combination of words (green peas, red rose, purple plum, yellow balloon)
  • she says what she really wants in both languages (more-még, drink-inni, bread-kenyér etc.)
  • her functional language is outstanding – she says thank you, Mommy – when she gives something back to me or when I give her something, here you are (not clearly though – it sounds like: heeyaa), please – when she asks for something, don’t like it – if she doesn’t want to eat something
  • sometimes she sounds like saying a sentence that she doesn’t do in Hungarian (it’s incomprehensible, though)
  • when she points at a spider she says: incywincy
  • potty time is mostly in English so she rather says poopy and peepee
  • prefers songs in English

    Favourite songs now:

http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/RPAZHVNVJp0&source=uds
http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/hr3jtrXc_hU&source=uds
  • loves to watch/sing/chant the English alphabet

    • http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/qux8CbHPlgw&source=uds
  • E. likes certain books in English, though I “read” most books in both languages

    • Still, her favourite is Fran Manushkin: How Mamma Brought the Spring

    But she also takes pleasure in Great Day for Up! by Dr. Seuss and Goodnight, Spot by Eric Hill nowadays.

    Hungarian:

    • she is trying to say long words (more than 4 syllables) – palacsinta
    • prefers the countries in this language (her favoutite one to say is Svájc, and her favourite flag is the Belgian – because of the black in it -, though she cannot pronounce it clearly)
    • when she sees the Turkish flag she starts to chant: pont, pont vesszőcske, készen van a fejecske, kicsi nyaka, nagy a hasa, készen van a TÖRÖK basa – her utterence is 50% right, but the intonation is perfect
    • prefers rhymes in Hungarian (Boci, boci tarka, A török és a tehenek)
    • she says tetszik  if she likes something or someone (doesn’t say it in English)



    Some cute details:

    • her favourite animal is the penguin at the moment
    • out of nowhere she calls out her native nanny’s name
    • her favourite colour is black, though she says pink or purple
    • her favourite body part is her belly button (when she has a look at her own, she makes us show ours)
    • her favourite flower is carnation
    • she claps after pooping
    • she loves drawing (onto the parquet, at the playground, on sheets of paper, on the door – but not on the wall yet)
    • she pronounces Peppa Pig as if she were a little native British girl  🙂

    Home-made tools for language practice – matching colours

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    E. LOVES colours and all the games in connection with colours. One of her first words was a colour (red in English, kék -blue- in Hungarian). So I though I should make some fun activities with the colours. Here is one of them:

    I drew circles and coloured them on two white sheets. Just to be on the safe side, I laminated them to make them more durable. On one sheet there are the basic colours: red, blue, green black and white. On the other one: brown, pink, orange, yellow and purple.

    From the kitchen I picked some bottle caps, lids of different colours, but I didn’t have black and orange so I took off an orange and a black magnet from the fridge.

    I put all the caps, magnet and lids into a box and put it in the living room. E. went there and took it off immediately. Without me showing her what to do, she started to match the colours. She can concentrate on it for few minutes only, but she always says out loud the name of the colours. Most of the time she uses one language, either English or Hungarian. Only very rarely does she mix them.
    Sometimes I pick the caps from the box and she shows me where to put them.

    We never get to the end of the matching, though. Either she gets tired of it, or runs away with the two favourites: yellow and purple. 🙂

    Home-made tools for language practice – Peek-a-boo house

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    This idea came from the “lift-the-flap” books, like Spot goes to the farm by Eric Hill. E. likes peeping to see what’s behind a door, a bush or a gate. Also, I saw this technique to be used at the Helen Doron lesson to practice new/old vocabulary. So why not make my own?

    The basis is cardboard and I decorated it with orange and green paper, as well as red and yellow craft foam sheets (“dekorgumi”). The door and windows are laminated and glued on the surface. The sky is made from coloured paper and the green grass is painted.

    (E. has already torn the clouds partly, so I strengthen them with Cellotape). I hide animals, people, babies, pieces of furniture etc. behind the flaps. Whatever works.

    It’s a good idea to stick the house on the floor or on the wall as while the kids are fidgeting with it, it moves a lot and makes it more difficult to open the flaps and easier to tear off a window.

    E.’s favourites are the sun and the butterfly. She picks them and walks around with them in her hands. When I changed the pictures she was surprised at the change. Now she’s found the box of pictures and not surpised any more. She tries to change the pictures herself.