Millie books - Los cuentos de Millie
Reading in two languages - Leyendo en dos idiomas
Hace unas tres semanas, estuve en entrevista en el podcast de Reto Bilingüe. No había tenido la oportunidad de subir el link aquí al blog y pues aquí está. 🙂
Me encantó esta experiencia puesto que pudimos platicar sobre la magia de los libros bilingües. ¿Y cuál es esta magia? Da clic aquí y entérate.
Para leer la versión en español haz click aquí.
Learning the letters of the alphabet and identifying how they sound, are the first steps to start reading. If you want to help your kids to learn new letters, here are 7 tips so they can learn them. It is very important to remember that toddlers can’t be still for long and that they need to have genuine interest in the activity. The idea is that they learn while playing.
You can use the usual melody or a new version, sing it together many times. Repetition will help your child remember the letters.
Your child will love learning how to spell their own name. You can start little by little by showing the first letter of their name in different books or sounds. You can write down their name when you draw together in different colours while repeating the letter aloud. Very soon, you will hear them say “J for John!”. You can do the same with other words like “M for mum (mom in American English J), “D for dad”, or any other word that relates to anything that your child finds interesting, like dinosaurs or animals.
You can form words by drawing dots so your little one can join them.
This is a quiet activity that you can do together. You can start with a few letters at a time, two or four, depending on how long your child can focus her attention. I made this animal alphabet book colouring pages which you can download here. Also, you can find many other alphabets to colour in on the web depending on what your kid is interested in.
You can play I spy, especially when you have to wait. This has worked well for us when we are driving. Here I give you the Spanish versión which is called “Veo, veo”. You can see how it works with the following YouTube link.
| Veo, veo, ¿qué ves?
Una cosita ¿Y qué cosita es? Empieza con la “N” |
I spy
With my Little eye Something that begins with the letter “N” |
When you are in the street, you can point to letters in a big sign. For example, “F for Fatima”.
7. Reading.
Reading will always be one of the best ways to learn the letters of the alphabet and its sounds, especially when your kids show interest in letters. There are many styles of alphabet books either in English or Spanish. Some haver ryhmes, some have textures, some have sofisticated illustrations. You can pretty much find an alphabeth book for every taste.
If you are looking for alphabet books just in Spanish, this is a great list to start.
If you are after English only alphabet books, you can have a look here.
Of course, these are in addition to my book “Bilingual Zoo”. 🙂
I hope these tips have inspired you to play with letters and help your toddler to learn them in a fun way. If you want to share a tip that I did not include here, feel free to include them in the comments below.
Happy Reading!
Sometimes our kids ask to read the same book again and again, so much so, that we end up learning it by heart. In the case of alphabet books, you don’t only have to read from A to Z in that order. Here I share some tips so your trip through the letters of the alphabet is more fun.
Ask your child what the illustration is, what is it for, what colour it is. When your child says the word emphasize the sound of that word. If it is an armadillo you can say “AAAAArmadillo”. If it is a dinosaur you can say “DDDDDinosaur” and so on. The idea is that your child can relate that sound to the letter he is seeing.
This works very well with kids older than 3. You can pretend to say the wrong letter or the wrong word for the illustration. If your kid already knows that letter, they will be very happy to tell you the right letter. If they don’t realise you have it wrong, maybe you need to wait a little bit to use this tip.
You can talk about something special about the illustration, either the colours, the shapes or the characters expressions. Don’t forget to be expressive with your voice. For example “Poor Little fishy, the crocodile is going to eat it!”
Don’t limit yourself only to the word in the picture. Ask your kid what other words start with that letter.
You can show them how to do it and they can copy you. This is great if the letters in the book have textures, are embossed or a are hidden within the picture.
So there you have it, these are my tips to get the most out of your alphabet books. If you have different tips to the ones I included, feel free to share in the comments.
Happy Reading!
You can read the Spanish version of this post here.
I know you are wondering, what happened with “CH“ and “LL“?
When I was illustrating this book, I was wondering if I should draw a CHeeta and a LLama. I could not remember if CH and LL were part of the alphabet in Spanish. I sort of remember repeating in primary school “A, B, C, CH, D“…. but at the end of the day, isn’t CH the combination of C and H, and LL is L twice?
It turns out that the Royal Academy of Spanish Language excluded CH and LL from the alphabet in 1994. The explanation is in this link, it is in Spanish though. You can imagine that I learned the alphabet a lot earlier than that! 🙂
¡Hola! Aquí te dejo la lectura en voz alta de mi libro Zoológico Bilingue.
¡Espero que les guste a tí y a tus peques!
If you want to read this blog post in English, click here.
Cuando mi hija cumplió 2 años, le regalaron un libro del abecedario súper bonito. El libro es pequeño para manos pequeñas, tiene las letras troqueladas y colores muy vivos. Yo siempre había estado traduciendo mientras leía libros en inglés, pero no es lo mismo traducir un cuento ayudado de las imágenes que traducir una palabra sola. Era muy difícil decir que la “G” es de garden en inglés, pero en español se dice jardín que se escribe con “J”.
Busqué libros con el alfabeto en inglés y en español, pero ninguno me llamó la atención como para comprarlo. Tenía que buscar mejor. Así que decidí mientras tanto, hacer unas páginas para colorear con el alfabeto y relacionando animales en inglés y en español. Y después se me ocurrió, “¿por qué no hacer un libro con estos animalitos? Tal vez, muchas familias bilingües tendrán este mismo problema”.
Fue así cuando convertí mis páginas de colorear en un libro. Justo antes de enviar el archivo para imprimir, y con la ayuda de mis buenas amigas, me di cuenta de que al libro le faltaba “algo”. Me di cuenta de que si este libro le iba a gustar a los niños, tenía que ser más divertido y no tener el animal ahí sin hacer nada. ¡Qué chiste! Entonces, mejor decidí escribir el tercer libro de Millie y dejar el libro del alfabeto por la paz.
Pero un día, escucho a mi hija decir “P for daddy”, en lugar de “P de papá”, “P for dog” en lugar de “P de perro” y casi me da el patatús. Si bien, yo sé que esto es ayudado porque viviendo en Australia, su idioma más fuerte es el inglés, eso fue suficiente para darme otra vez el gusanito de terminar este abecedario para niños bilingües. Así que ¡a volver a empezar con todas las ilustraciones! Todos los días después de terminar el trabajo, de cenar y poner a nuestra hija a dormir, le dedicaba una hora a arreglar los dibujos. Gracias a Dios, mi esposo y yo somos muy buen equipo. 🙂
Debo decir que ahora estoy contenta con el resultado. Espero que sea un libro que le guste mucho a tus peques y que disfruten leyéndolo juntos.
¡Hasta pronto!
I just wanted to share the read aloud of my first book ‘Millie goes to space’. I hope you and your kids enjoy it!
Erika
Aquí te comparto la lectura en voz alta de mi primer libro ‘Millie va al espacio’. Lo estoy leyendo en español del libro en su versión bilingüe.
¡Espero que tú y tus peques lo disfruten!
Erika
So I finally got around editing the book so it can work out on in iTunes. It is a little bit more difficult than doing it on Amazon but I think I will get used to it for the next book!
I decided to do this because a lot of the people I know, especially in Australia do not have an Amazon account!
You can download the book here. And please, if you and your child enjoyed it, please leave me a review so other parents can find it. Thank you!!
Erika
Hey!
This month I have been posting on Millie’s Facebook page something a little different. I have made a bilingual alphabet colouring pages printable for you.
A few months ago we were given this beautiful alphabet book (in English) as a present for my little girl. She absolutely loves it, however, it was very hard for me to translate to Spanish on the spot because I didn’t know whether to follow the image or the letter. So I got this idea to make my own little animal alphabet, but I didn’t really pay attention to it as I was also working on finishing up Millie makes a new friend. For some reason, this idea kept coming into my head so I decided that I had to do something about it.
For weeks I kept thinking of the animals with different letters of the alphabet that would be the same in English and Spanish and then finally I came up with a list! Here is where I gave myself a little challenge to post one letter everyday during February. Now that the month is over I just wanted to keep this somewhere as a printable version so you can come back to it any time you need it.
I really hope you and your kid(s) enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making this. Download the printable Bilingual animal alphabet (Spanish-English) and get colouring!
Happy colouring!
