Reading aloud baby books
Because I really want my 3 months old nephew to learn how to speak English, I’ve already started reading english books to our baby hoping this will acquaint him with simple english words and phrases. First, I tried Like Water for Chocolate (it was the only available english book in our house at that moment) but in the middle of reading it to him, I realized that the narrator talked about things like sexual desires, anger, unrequited love, etc., which are very inappropriate for minors, particularly for a 3-month old baby boy so I changed the book to The Birthday Burglar and A Very Wicked Headmistress. It’s just so funny because Baby Timberland kept on giggling and cooing while I was reading Tita’s recipe for Christmas Rolls, as if he already understood those things :) Honestly, I couldn’t find any book in my cabinet that suits his age. Margaret Mahy’s The Birthday Burglar and A Very Wicked Headmistress is suitable for children whose age are 10 years old and above. But I still tried to read him more grown-up books like Hannah’s Gift and Rain and I think he loves it! He likes it! He keeps on staring at my face specifically at my lips and he laughs and makes ”ooh-ooh” sounds. My mother, his grandmother, is against this because according to her, there is a proper age for studying and a conducive place for learning. She even cited my younger brother as an example. She enrolled him in kindergarten at the age of 4 (instead of the usual 6) and he became a consistent honor student but he also easily lost his interest in school. Of course I consulted this to Timberland’s mother, my sister, and she doesn’t mind as long as I don’t read to him my collection of Pugad Baboy Comic Book.
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November 28th, 2009 at 12:42 am
You are so funny.LOL. When my niece was born, being the only baby in the family we were so excited and decided that her first language will be english. And we were successful. Three more kids were born after her and they all speak english like it was their native language complete with accent. If you want your nephew to speak english… I can only give you 1 tip. SPEAK TO HIM IN ENGLISH! that’s all we did. yes we read english books but speaking the language helped a lot. We banned everything “tagalog”… books, TV shows [so no Eat Bulaga or telenovelas, it was easy because we are not fond of watching them anyway] and whatnots. But of course there are some drawbacks too. But the results outweight them. They excel better in school.
January 12th, 2010 at 4:43 am
hello, thnx foe visting my blog!
happy new year too!