Category: vocabulary

Language developement for L.

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

I really need to catch up with Baby L.’s vocabulary for the 19th and 20th months as she is getting closer and closer to her 2nd birthday.

 

In the 19th month she started babbling A LOT but with more and more resemblance to real words could clearly be noticed:

English expressions                              Hungarian expressions

cheese                                                                                     sajt

Ok                                                                                             –

bus                                                                                           busz

pigeon (pronounced as ˈpɪdʒi )                                           –

(to)mato                                                                                  –

windy                                                                                     –

sit down                                                                                –

cake                                                                                       –

happy                                                                                   –

pushing (the button on the lift)                                      –

knife                                                                                     –

–                                                                                             nemakami (I don’t want to)

–                                                                                             nemtud (I don’t know)

–                                                                                             puszi (kiss)

–                                                                                             tessék (here you are)

–                                                                                             bicicli (bicycle)

–                                                                                             azta! (wow)

– choo-choo t(r)ain                                                            vonat

– money                                                                              pínz (pénz)

20170816_110412
Favourite activity

With the 20th month her utterances were more and more understandable. She started chanting songs in both languages, counting, imitating animal sounds, making her first word combinations, to mention a few of her fantastic speech development. It’s fantastic to see that even her grammar is slowly developing (She can say Mommy’s, E.’s, L.’s or the plural of the Hungarian greeting word sziasztok).

English expressions                                 Hungarian expressions

Sit down, Mommy!                                                                      –

naughty                                                                                         –

Sorry (sounds like sorray)                                                  bocsi

tap                                                                                                  –

cold                                                                                         (h)ideg

broken                                                                                    eltört

second                                                                                         –

come/coming                                                                            –

Hi/Hello                                                                                    szia, szia(sz)tok

wait                                                                                             –

banana(nana)                                                                        banán

fork                                                                                          villa

(s)nake                                                                                      –

miaow                                                                                    miáú

Mommy’s                                                                                 –

he(l)p                                                                                        –

other                                                                                       másik/másikat

mine (from Spot goes to the Circus)                                enyém

I’m hot, I’m sick (from Doctor duck)                                 –

dirty                                                                                        –

head                                                                                        –

fall down                                                                               leesik a maci

yes                                                                                          igen

back                                                                                       vissza

man                                                                                        bácsi

lady                                                                                        néni

–                                                                                               pici (tiny)/ kicsi (small)

–                                                                                              nagy (big)

–                                                                                              pecsét (stamp)

–                                                                                              telcsi (mobile phone)

–                                                                                             Ne sírjál! (Don’t cry)

–                                                                                             kész-passz (finished)

knife (last month’s word)                                                kés (this month word)

girl                                                                                        kislány

boy                                                                                        –

–                                                                                             pancsi (bath)

–                                                                                             vacsi (dinner)

–                                                                                             nyaka (his neck)

–                                                                                            fakanál (wooden spoon)

–                                                                                             feldőlt (fall over)

–                                                                                             pukkan (burst)

–                                                                                             tapéta

–  nice                                                                                   szíp (szép)

20170822_174540

The Hungarian rhymes and songs she is chanting or singing (not perfectly, but it’s recognisable and some words a really clear):

Pont, pont vesszőcske (this was E.’s first Hungarian chant, too)
Boci, boci, tarka (and this was the second)
Hinta, palinta hintázik a tickle, tickle tickle (a little bit of mixing languages)

English rhymes and songs:

Incy-wincy spider
Wheels on the bus (she knows the end of the lines, like swish, open and shut, beep-beep, up and down and the last line of each verse: all day loooooong)
1-2-3 I’m L. who are you? (the Helen Doron lesson beginning greeting part)

20170827_130707
She loves music and dancing

E. taught her funny words or word combinations in Hungarian like “kicsi pecsét” (small stamp) and “kis próba” (small rehearsal) and they have fun time when L. repeats these expressions.

20170804_090514
She learns everything from her big sister

She is very communicative and social with everyone. She says hello on the street to EVERYone, identifies the people: man, lady, girl, boy, doggie, miaow, pigeon, bus, truck etc. Sometimes it feels she talks from the moment she opens her eyes in the morning till she closes them in the evening.

20170827_105257
The three of us on a choo-choo train ride

Sometimes she stops me in whatever I’m doing because she wants to say something. She talks for minimum a minute or two. Here and there I catch a few words but I don’t really understand what she’s talking about. But she’s dead serious about her message. She’s just too cute and loveable.

 

Our first dental project 2. with free printable

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E. turned 3 in May so we needed to show her teeth to a dentist. Just a general check-up. How lucky we have a dentistry next door! Visiting the dentist gave me the idea to take a closer look at teeth as a whole project.

1. Flashcards – matching real objects and cards

One afternoon on the way home from the nursery E. asked: – Mommy, did you make a task for me?

I did. This is what was waiting for her:

I prepared some flashcards with everyday objects related to dental health.

Electric toothbrush

She needed to match the objects with the pictures. While she was doing the matching and she didn’t know a tool I named it for her. (Much to my surprise, she remembered dental floss. Once she was watching me flossing)

Then she experienced how to use some of them. (Of course, she knows how to open a toothpaste tube or how to brush with a toothbrush)

Flossing

A new word learnt: vibrating

*scream* Mommy! It’s funny… and ticklish

Smelling the mouthwash

We don’t drink it, just spit it out

I asked her to help me pack back all the tools on the bathroom shelf. She refused….

You can find a free printable of the dental health flashcards at the end of this blog post. The printable also includes some dental tools which can be found in a dentistry, such as a mouth mirror, a saliva ejector, explorer etc.

2. Brush, brush, brush

I searched for an image of a mouth (lips and teeth) online, next I printed and  laminated it (well, actually 4). With dry erase markers of different colours I created some plaque and germs on the teeth. Earlier I’d save E.’s old toothbrush and she used it to remove the plaque from the teeth. She enjoyed this activity so much for the first time that she’s already done it 4 times since then.

The reason why she is smiling in the next photo is 1. she loves brushing 2. she named the mouth after one of her kindergarten mates and she made up a story around it:

This is L. and she ate M&Ms and now her teeth are dirty. I’ll brush her teeth clean.

Later on, I had to name which little girl or boy’s teeth she needed to brush and what they’d eaten.

Source of this activity: It’s spooky. I’ve found it on pinterest, but now as I’ve just wanted to link the site and it’s gone 😦

3. Egg carton teeth

I took the idea from Sense of Wonder Mom’s Let’s play dentist blog post.

She didn’t describe it in details how to prepare the egg carton teeth so I can share how I made it.

What you need:

  • a sheet of red construction paper or cardboard
  • an egg box (made of paper and not plastic)
  • scissors
  • glue and or cello-tape
  • coloured crepe paper pieces and/or yarn
  • a white yarn piece
  • toothbrush

How to make it:

  • cut A/4 sized red construction paper and curve two corners – this will be the gum and the tongue
  • cut out the dimples (where you otherwise place the eggs) of the egg box (I cut 10 dimples out of 2 different egg boxes as I was creating only the lower jaw but if you’ve got a lot more time than me you can make the upper jaw too then you’ll need 20 i.e 2 egg boxes)
  • stick the dimples onto the red sheet in a semi-circle (first I tried cello-tape, then fast-drying liquid glue. The latter worked better. I glued the sides of the egg box dimples and placed them on the paper. To make sure they are firmly stuck on the sheet I put two thicker books on the top. It took 10-12 minutes to dry perfectly.
  • wedge the crepe paper pieces and yarn pieces in between the “teeth”

First, E. brushed the sides and the top and I raised her attention to the leftover food pieces between the teeth.

Then she started flossing:

Look, I can take it out

We also talked about what happens when you do not brush properly. A cavity appears on the tooth and you need the dentist to fill it in.

So we played dentist:

  • I gave her a mask to put on to protect her against the germs
    – Mommy, why do you need a mask?
    – To keep the germs away from your mouth and from the doctor’s mouth
  • I took Daddy’s electric screwdriver that magically turned into a dental drill (unfortunately the battery of it was flat. It would have been fun to drill the tooth)
  • I gave her bits of tissue paper to fill in the cavity.

Little Dentist is ready to work

Drilling the cavity

filling the hole

She drilled and filled in two teeth then she got annoyed with the mask…

4. Brushing movement on a big molar

I made a big molar out of a plastic bottle. I cut off the bottom of it and painted it white. I provided E. with her old toothbrush and she started to brush it. (The idea comes from the same link above)

I told (and showed) her how to brush

  • the sides back and forth
  • the top with a circular movement (round and round)
  • the inside with a sweeping movement (sweep sweep)

Round and round, back and forth, sweep-sweep

She enjoyed these tasks a lot. So much she wanted to do them several times.

– Mommy, can I brush the teeth again?

– Draw some germs on the teeth.

– I want to floss.

We were dealing with these activities for a week. She was so fascinated by them I made some more. Come back later to check them out.

Does your little one like brushing their teeth?

Here you can download the flashcards (just click on the picture below):

Christmas tree fail – or success?

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When E. asked for the Christmas tree set (construction paper cut-out Christmas trees and decorations, like tinsel, buttons, stars, cotton wool balls etc.) I was more than happy. It took me a while to prepare this Christmas tree activity but at first it seemed to be a failure.

nicely prepared set
E.’s choice instead

But at the second time it was a hit. E. was chatting away (in Hungarian this time), sticking and encouraged me to decorate my tree too. I did as she told me and didn’t take many photos. We just enjoyed being creative, being together, being full of Christmas spirit.

busy with decorating

Our final results (done in Hungarian)

Our first try (done in English)

In both cases E. made the light green trees.

If you give it a try you can widen your little one’s vocabulary in the field of

  • Christmas: tinsel, bauble, star, snowflake, beads
  • colours: light green, dark green, silver, gold, shiny
  • shapes and sizes: round, star-shaped, snowflake-shaped, long, tiny
  • texture: prickly=stingy, soft, fluffy, hard, velvety, silky, rough, sticky

Christmas tree crafts and some more ABC

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As Christmas is getting closer we are doing a lot of Christmassy crafts. They give us the chance to talk about a lot of things in English, like colours, decorations, presents and E. has already learnt plenty of Christmas vocabulary (like candy cane, gingerbread man, angels, advent, wreath, candles, sparklers, baubles, tinsel, gifts etc.)

Here I’d like to present you 2 ideas in connection with decorating a Christmas tree.

  1. Sticker decorations and letter recognition:

I searched for a Christmas tree colouring sheet and I copied it in WORD, then I added the letters and a little table at the bottom. In the table I put the letters and above them you can see a Christmas related word. (We didn’t read them I just wanted her to see the words written down. I can send you the word document if you wish to use it)

I had some Christmas stickers from last year (I’d bought this sheet in KIK for 300 HUF) and I added an angel, a star, a candle, a bauble and a gingerbread man. These stickers are really cool. They easily come off the paper, so I took off the candle and the gingerbread man, just for fun. Later, E. put them back.

One afternoon after her nap this was the scene waiting for her.
She needed to search for a figure and stick the right sticker on the starting letter of the word.

But first she coloured the tree green, the star on the top yellow and the trunk brown. A little more colour talk.

artist at work

Then searching and sticking started:

peeling

sticking

 I had to add some more letters as she wanted more baubles and stars.

When she’d finished we displayed it on the door of our living-room.

            2.     Dot marker decoration

We got a box of DO-A-DOT markers for E.’s birthday in May and ever since we’ve had so much fun with them. Actually, I saw this dot the letter Christmas tree activity online, though we’ve done a similar dot marker activity at Halloween with a pumpkin.
This time I drew a Christmas tree with some presents below it. I wrote the beginning letter of the colours, like G for green (a lot of them, though I should have written even more), R for red, Y for yellow, P for purple, B for blue.
I prepared all the dot markers well in advance. I took off the lids so E. didn’t need to although it could be a nice fine motor skill practice. There were quite a lot to do with the Christmas tree and I didn’t want her to get bored with the opening of the markers.
First, she tried almost all of the colours, then she stuck to one colour and finished dotting all of them on the sheet. As I’d always been telling her to put the lid back on the markers she decided to put it back and pack away the marker when she’d finished with a colour.
packing away
red baubles
She mentioned that she was putting red and purple baubles on the tree. When she was doing the yellow decoration she said they were candles. I asked quite a lot of questions to make her talk while she was working. We even sang the “Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree” song:

Then we put the finished Christmas tree next to the other. 
I have some more Christmas tree ideas from paper plate with some painting and sticking, however some snowy crafts are on the way too. We’ll see what we have time for.
Also, I’d be happy if you let me know in the comments what Christmas tree projects you have with your little one

Dem bones – the skeleton craze

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Let me start with THE song, the small pebble that started the avalanche
Dem bones

(Around Halloween it is quite relevant)

E. got crazy about bones and skeletons. So it’s time for us, parents, to learn a little too.
I didn’t have the faintest idea about the names of the bones. I used to have problems with them in my native language, not to mention English. However, I did everything to satisfy my little one’s hunger for knowledge.

Flashcards
I made skeleton cards for her. I found a blog (montessoriworkjobs) where there are black and white skeletons with the major bones highlighted in red. So I printed them and made flashcards.

Cotton bud skeleton – craft
Cotton bud skeleton craft can be reached in another post in more details.

fascinated by the skulls

 

gluing

 

sticking and pushing

 

final touch
finished

Child size skeleton puzzle
I found a child-size printable skeleton on a colouring site. You need to print about eight A/4 pages. You do not need much colouring 😉 I laminated the bones as I want to use them next year too.

the skeleton puzzle
after mixing the puzzle E. put the bones in place

 

“I’m a skeleton”

The book – The skeleton inside you

It’s a funny book with a lot of information on bones. When it says “your skeleton helps you run, jump and stand”, I added some more actions (squat, walk slowly, sit, roll, make a bridge, kick, clap etc.) and E. needed to do what I said. She enjoyed it a lot.

You have 32 bones in your arm

 

the rib cage and the skull protect important organs

 

Halloween costume skeleton

 

“Look Daddy, this is the femur”

Skeleton as food
E. was absolutely amazed when she saw this snack on her plate. Since then I need to cut skeletons out of everything.

Last but not least: Skeleton costume for Halloween

These are H&M skeleton pyjamas and gloves



I do not need to comment this. Or if you wish you can read about our MEC Halloween party we had.

I hope you found some ideas useful if your little one is also obsessed with bones and skeletons.