I'm extremely excited to announce the dates for he May storytime for a couple of reasons. First because storytime is cool. Second because storytime is super cool this month because we'll be doing a special edition and third because Multilingual Living published an article I wrote about storytime.
So the dates: the normal Wednesday storytime will take place on May 23rd at 3:30pm at the Wazemmes library. Then, we'll have a special storytime at Gare Saint Sauveur on May 26th at 2:00pm. There is a book fair and lots of special events going on so we're part of the festivities. It's really exciting because Stéphane Servant, the author of Le Machin/The Thing, will be there for sign books. So he'll hopefully get to see what we've done with his dual language book.
I promise it will be so very cool.
Since story time has really taken off, I contacted Multilingual Living, a really amazing webzine on all aspects of multi-lingual life. And the result is this article that I hope will be helpful to anyone else looking for ideas on how to increase the multi-lingual presence in your life. So here it is: Bilingual Storytime.
On another note, Max is increasingly proficient in franglais. I've previously said that Max doesn't mix his languages...and he didn't until the past couple weeks. I'm not sure what happened, maybe it's just the age where he's trying to say more things and doesn't have the words or grammar to do so in a single language. or maybe he's finally decided that not everything is black and white and can't be compartmentalized. In the past week I've heard Max use English grammar in French sentences a few times and use a couple of words in the wrong language. For example, he said "je veux les" to his grandparents which is a perfect translation of "I want them" (and he really did want those chips!). He also said "C'est pas droit" to his grandmother when she put on his boot. She thought it was funny because it wasn't right as in the direction (ie left and right) but what he meant was literally "it's not on right" ie the sock was scrunched up in his boot and it didn't feel right.
Another thing to note is that the kids spent all weekend with their grandparents speaking French. When I spoke to Suzanne on the phone yesterday, her English sounded French. It was very strange and interesting to see how quickly her language adapted.
Oh, tower of babble...
Monday 21 May 2012
May story time and Max speaks franglais
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3 comments:
That´s fantastic! I read your article in Multilingual Living and found it really interesting! I previously tried to suggest something similar at my local library but they weren´t interested unfortunately. Maybe it´s due to the crisis but I was talking about doing it voluntarily. Such a shame!
Congratulations on the success of your story time! It's an interesting format (read the article in MLL).
I started a German story time for toddlers in the Philadelphia suburbs last fall. It was doing quite well (which for our library means attendance of about 5). My biggest problem was actually my own 2-year-old. He was fine at first, but then recently decided he did NOT want Mama reading to others! It was so odd. He was so disruptive. Alas, I decided it was not the best time for me to invest in this project (also because I'm 13 weeks pregnant and would have to stop eventually anyway). I was sorry to give it up, but I do wonder about starting it up again in the future when my son is older and then target older children as you do.
Best of luck and continued success to you!
Thanks Tracey. Such a shame they aren't willing to do this! I thought it would be hard in France, but maybe I was just lucky and talked to the right people.
Germanintheafternoon, thanks for your comment. My kids - especially my 3 year old - have a lot of trouble with me reading to others. they are constantly climbing on me. I think it's because reading for us is such an intimate things...and because I take their books.
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