Baby M is turning one and a half in three days.
He can say a few proper words, mainly bye-bye/papa (hard to tell which he's saying), baba (grandma), mama, possible attempts at ball and his sister's name. He is not prolific in the word use at the moment.
If you count animal sounds and signs, though, then his word count goes way up. He loves pointing out to us all the animals he sees, making sure to tell us MOO or BAA or CLUCK CLUCK. I'd say he knows ten or more types of animals, with a mixture of sounds and signs - for a dog he says HAF HAF, for a butterfly he signs 'butterfly', etc. - and he is very eager to learn more. He is always bringing me a book of animals to look through together. I am becoming hard pressed to come up with unique sounds or gestures that he can make for each one. :)
He watched part of Disney's Cars recently with K, and he kept tapping me on the shoulder and making his sound and sign for car. He didn't let up until I agreed that yes, those are cars. Then again a few seconds later, and again, and again, for at least twenty minutes.
We are pleased that his comprehension in both languages is good. He is able to point at things or pictures that we name, follow instructions (when it pleases him, obviously), and so on. Now if we could just get him to stop throwing toys at us...
Seriously, he is an unstoppable force when he gets in a throwing mood. His favorite position is toy in hand, with his hand cocked behind his head so that you never - quite - know when he is going to pull the trigger and throw it at you. One morning the Slovak came into the living room to find K innocently absorbed in play and M standing right behind her, big toy truck held up over his head, huge devilish grin on his face. Apo got there in the nick of time.
K puts up with it really well, and I can't even say I blame her (as an older sister myself) for occasionally losing it and beating him over the head. As a mother, though, I have to discourage that sort of behavior.
M loves books and has a great attention span for his age. His latest craze, as mentioned above, is looking through animal books - big children's encyclopedias with lots of pictures. If someone says an animal he recognizes (even in passing), he will sometimes go retrieve the book and find the picture of that animal to show.
He also loves rhymes and finger plays and if you do one, then he wants you to do them all. He will hold out one foot for This Little Piggy, then the other foot, then point to his belly for Round and Round the Garden, then hold out his hand for Varila myšička kašičku, then the other hand, then grab your hands to make you sing Row Row Row Your Boat, on down the list of all his body parts with songs or rhymes attached to them. It's really not acceptable to do one and then quit.
M is at a trying age right now, with lots of thoughts and not enough words to express them. He is on the path now, though, and we know he won't be a toddler forever.
Showing posts with label nursery rhymes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nursery rhymes. Show all posts
Monday, April 15, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
Picture Identification, Blueberries and Nursery Rhymes
Recently my daughter was practicing writing lowercase letters, each with a picture showing the sound the letter makes. She got to W, which had a stone wall. "Wock," she said confidently.
I couldn't say R at her age, either. She actually can say it now, but doesn't always remember which words it is in. It reminds me of the time my six-year-old sister gave me a hand-written note that said, "Have a nice twip."
***
Also while practicing writing, K identified the V picture as,
"Vesta. Why is this in Czech and not English?"
"It's a vest."
"Yes, but what is it in English?"
"In English it's a vest. In Czech it's a vesta."
K still looked at me as if to ask, "Are you sure??"
***
A new favorite nursery rhyme for both my children is "Káže Katke prísna mať" - Katka because she feels is it autobiographical (no comment) and Marek because of the "Ty ty ty, ty ty ty" part. He can find the book and page it is on and bring it to me, waving his finger back and forth and saying "ty ty ty!" until I read it.
He is a boy of few words, but he loves his books.
***
Also the lack of posts this week is brought to you by a particularly profitable work week for me. And gumbo. I made gumbo in the several hours on Monday between turning in finished translations and accepting new ones. It was delicious. Then I took yesterday off except for turning in and accepting a new one. But other than that, a busy March so far.
Oh, there were also blueberry muffins on Monday. We had a tense moment when K froze with her first bite half-way to her mouth, demanding to know if the muffins were made with FRESH OR FROZEN blueberries. I really thought she was going to refuse to eat my from-scratch muffins because the ingredients were not sufficiently organic and grown from a balcony garden, but it turned out she just wanted to know if frozen berries put into non-frozen dough would cook the same in the oven. Good save.
I couldn't say R at her age, either. She actually can say it now, but doesn't always remember which words it is in. It reminds me of the time my six-year-old sister gave me a hand-written note that said, "Have a nice twip."
***
Also while practicing writing, K identified the V picture as,
"Vesta. Why is this in Czech and not English?"
"It's a vest."
"Yes, but what is it in English?"
"In English it's a vest. In Czech it's a vesta."
K still looked at me as if to ask, "Are you sure??"
***
A new favorite nursery rhyme for both my children is "Káže Katke prísna mať" - Katka because she feels is it autobiographical (no comment) and Marek because of the "Ty ty ty, ty ty ty" part. He can find the book and page it is on and bring it to me, waving his finger back and forth and saying "ty ty ty!" until I read it.
He is a boy of few words, but he loves his books.
***
Also the lack of posts this week is brought to you by a particularly profitable work week for me. And gumbo. I made gumbo in the several hours on Monday between turning in finished translations and accepting new ones. It was delicious. Then I took yesterday off except for turning in and accepting a new one. But other than that, a busy March so far.
Oh, there were also blueberry muffins on Monday. We had a tense moment when K froze with her first bite half-way to her mouth, demanding to know if the muffins were made with FRESH OR FROZEN blueberries. I really thought she was going to refuse to eat my from-scratch muffins because the ingredients were not sufficiently organic and grown from a balcony garden, but it turned out she just wanted to know if frozen berries put into non-frozen dough would cook the same in the oven. Good save.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Baby #2 Language Update - 15 months
Baby M is really on a roll lately. I'm going to have to stop calling him "Baby M" soon. Maybe.
About a month ago he said his first words ("tam" - there, and "bye-bye") after using a couple of different signs for a few months before that. He understands the signs that we use, but tends to use "more" as a catch-all. Makes for a guessing game when he signs MORE and hasn't had anything - more what?? His preferred communication method, however, is usually a little more direct.
For instance, if he wants to nurse he picks up the pillow and hands it to me. When I'm out of the room and he is really desperate, he hands the pillow to the Slovak, looking at him like "If you really loved me, you would figure out a way, FATHER."
Also, if he wants to read a book he does one of the following: hands it to you, starts chewing pieces off of it, hits you with it, or occasionally uses the "book" sign. All these methods are equally valid. And frequent, actually, because in the past couple of months he has fallen in love with books and being read to. Surprising attention span for 15 months, too.
He tries to say "up" to be picked up, as well as repeating many words we say. He also seems to have picked up on shaking his head for no and nodding for yes, which he uses to its full extent.
M only says a handful of words, maybe five total? But what is striking is his comprehension, especially compared with our first child at his age.
He has been pointing to his nose on request for a while - in fact once he learned how, he did it all the time because we were always so pleased (That's right, that's your nose, good job!). I would look down at random and notice him pointing to his nose and grinning a big over-achieving grin like "Look what I can do! Are you still impressed?"
Then this week he pointed to his nose, eyes, ears, head, belly, hands and feet - in English and Slovak both. I was sure he would only know one or two in Slovak, but I watched as Apo went through the whole list with him. When they finished that, I asked M to get me his car, so he crossed the room and found a car for me.
We nearly declared him a boy genius right then and there, but then we remembered this is the same child who thinks the garbage can is a snack container.
This may not seem like a very impressive list of words, but our babies are late talkers. With K, it took a very long time for her even to understand what we were saying to her, much less communicate something back to us. For M it seems to come a little easier, a little faster.
He does all the motions for "patty-cake" and lifts his shirt when you say "Round and round the garden". Then he makes you do them 8 more times with him. Generally he's getting the point of games and basic pretend play. Last week he carried a box of animals (dinosaurs and sharks mostly) from K's room into the living room and proceeded to play with them for most of the day. He is also very partial to K's My Little Ponies. Part of having a big sister, I guess.
He is entering an exciting stage, decoding and starting to reproduce what he hears. Soon he'll have a real language explosion and the real fun will begin. The Chillest Baby Ever has just become the Chillest Toddler Ever.
About a month ago he said his first words ("tam" - there, and "bye-bye") after using a couple of different signs for a few months before that. He understands the signs that we use, but tends to use "more" as a catch-all. Makes for a guessing game when he signs MORE and hasn't had anything - more what?? His preferred communication method, however, is usually a little more direct.
For instance, if he wants to nurse he picks up the pillow and hands it to me. When I'm out of the room and he is really desperate, he hands the pillow to the Slovak, looking at him like "If you really loved me, you would figure out a way, FATHER."
Also, if he wants to read a book he does one of the following: hands it to you, starts chewing pieces off of it, hits you with it, or occasionally uses the "book" sign. All these methods are equally valid. And frequent, actually, because in the past couple of months he has fallen in love with books and being read to. Surprising attention span for 15 months, too.
He tries to say "up" to be picked up, as well as repeating many words we say. He also seems to have picked up on shaking his head for no and nodding for yes, which he uses to its full extent.
M only says a handful of words, maybe five total? But what is striking is his comprehension, especially compared with our first child at his age.
He has been pointing to his nose on request for a while - in fact once he learned how, he did it all the time because we were always so pleased (That's right, that's your nose, good job!). I would look down at random and notice him pointing to his nose and grinning a big over-achieving grin like "Look what I can do! Are you still impressed?"
Then this week he pointed to his nose, eyes, ears, head, belly, hands and feet - in English and Slovak both. I was sure he would only know one or two in Slovak, but I watched as Apo went through the whole list with him. When they finished that, I asked M to get me his car, so he crossed the room and found a car for me.
We nearly declared him a boy genius right then and there, but then we remembered this is the same child who thinks the garbage can is a snack container.
This may not seem like a very impressive list of words, but our babies are late talkers. With K, it took a very long time for her even to understand what we were saying to her, much less communicate something back to us. For M it seems to come a little easier, a little faster.
He does all the motions for "patty-cake" and lifts his shirt when you say "Round and round the garden". Then he makes you do them 8 more times with him. Generally he's getting the point of games and basic pretend play. Last week he carried a box of animals (dinosaurs and sharks mostly) from K's room into the living room and proceeded to play with them for most of the day. He is also very partial to K's My Little Ponies. Part of having a big sister, I guess.
He is entering an exciting stage, decoding and starting to reproduce what he hears. Soon he'll have a real language explosion and the real fun will begin. The Chillest Baby Ever has just become the Chillest Toddler Ever.
Monday, September 17, 2012
English culture through song and rhyme
One thing I have really enjoyed doing with K in the last year is learning (remembering) old songs and nursery rhymes.
The Slovak has always sung her a lot of SK folk songs, since he knows more of them than classic children's songs. We did learn a lot of SK children's songs from CDs, though, and K learns even more CZ ones at school.
She would come home singing a fragment of a song and want me to finish it with her, not accepting "I don't know the rest of that song" as an answer. For instance, I knew the first line of "Skákal pes" but not the rest, so I couldn't help her get past that first line. She did not understand that there could be a song I don't know. After a while I had the (belated) good idea of looking it up online, and found it straight away of course. The look on her face when I started singing the whole song - awed. "HOW DID YOU DO THAT??" she wanted to know. Internet access + ability to read = superpower.
I always get kind of a kick out of a Slovak-American kid singing "Já jsem muzikant a přicházím k vám z české země" or "Okolo Hradce" or other very Czech songs. The first one is a call and response song that involves pretending to play on various instruments (drum, piano, violin), though the Slovak and I have improved it by adding verses like "na ukulele", "na zadek" and "na nervy".
For a long time K's going-to-bed song was "V hlbokej doline", every night, all five verses. The Slovak started singing it to her when she was very small and eventually she didn't want anything but that. I always thought it was a funny choice for a lullaby as it is really not for children. I also wondered how many Americans (or, indeed, Slovaks) there are out there who sing "V hlbokej doline" to their child every night. She made me laugh once when I asked what the song is about (to see if she knew) and she answered, "um, a doll" - it does mention "panenka" but in reference to the maiden in this case, not a doll.
The Slovak also taught K a song in eastern dialect called "Dža volky". It is very fun to sing because it gets progressively faster on each repetition. K can go longer than I can, and the Slovak can go longest of all. She once requested that song by calling it "the song with those wolves", which took me a minute to process because the song is actually about oxen (volky) while wolves is vlky (vlci). But she really thought she was singing a song about wolves hitched up to a wagon, I guess. (haha)
Between school and the Slovak's rich repertoire of SK (and the occasional Russian) songs, K knows a whole bunch of CZ and SK songs. Whether she understands all the words is obviously a different story. At some point, though, I realized that we hadn't really moved beyond "Twinkle Twinkle" and "Wind the Bobbin Up" in English. And of course I couldn't allow that to continue...
I started refreshing myself on all the nursery rhymes I could remember and teaching them to K. She has a good memory and enjoys reciting them for whoever will listen.
Just like in Slovak, she doesn't always understand all the words or concepts, but it is a good vocabulary enhancer. She can never remember that Jack and Jill "fetched a pail of water" - usually it is something like "went up the hill to get a package of little water". I tried to explain about wells and pails and indoor plumbing but I think packages of bottled water from the store is still more familiar to her!
She also started asking me to sing her "one of YOUR songs Mommy, a NEW song" several months ago, so I sang her every bedtime-appropriate song I could think of and then some. I often couldn't remember the words so had to look them up during the day so I'd have something new to sing at night. I was debating what kind of songs to claim as "my" songs - songs from musicals? Movies? Radiohead didn't seem very appropriate somehow.
I decided to take the opportunity of introducing some English folk songs, along with the occasional spiritual or other song (Over the Rainbow, Sarah McLachlan's Ice Cream). Pretty much anything I think might have some cultural or historical value or just that she will enjoy. We do several every night at bedtime. K's favorites are I Gave My Love a Cherry, Danny Boy, Greensleeves, The Water Is Wide, Wayfaring Stranger, Early One Morning, Black Black Black, He's Gone Away...
She makes up her own songs as she's playing during the day and I love hearing how they include "parsley, sage, rosemary and time" or other lines or melodic influences from these traditional songs. Pretty much if I notice that all her songs start to be about her lost love and sung in a minor key I'll know my work here is done.
The Slovak has always sung her a lot of SK folk songs, since he knows more of them than classic children's songs. We did learn a lot of SK children's songs from CDs, though, and K learns even more CZ ones at school.
She would come home singing a fragment of a song and want me to finish it with her, not accepting "I don't know the rest of that song" as an answer. For instance, I knew the first line of "Skákal pes" but not the rest, so I couldn't help her get past that first line. She did not understand that there could be a song I don't know. After a while I had the (belated) good idea of looking it up online, and found it straight away of course. The look on her face when I started singing the whole song - awed. "HOW DID YOU DO THAT??" she wanted to know. Internet access + ability to read = superpower.
I always get kind of a kick out of a Slovak-American kid singing "Já jsem muzikant a přicházím k vám z české země" or "Okolo Hradce" or other very Czech songs. The first one is a call and response song that involves pretending to play on various instruments (drum, piano, violin), though the Slovak and I have improved it by adding verses like "na ukulele", "na zadek" and "na nervy".
For a long time K's going-to-bed song was "V hlbokej doline", every night, all five verses. The Slovak started singing it to her when she was very small and eventually she didn't want anything but that. I always thought it was a funny choice for a lullaby as it is really not for children. I also wondered how many Americans (or, indeed, Slovaks) there are out there who sing "V hlbokej doline" to their child every night. She made me laugh once when I asked what the song is about (to see if she knew) and she answered, "um, a doll" - it does mention "panenka" but in reference to the maiden in this case, not a doll.
The Slovak also taught K a song in eastern dialect called "Dža volky". It is very fun to sing because it gets progressively faster on each repetition. K can go longer than I can, and the Slovak can go longest of all. She once requested that song by calling it "the song with those wolves", which took me a minute to process because the song is actually about oxen (volky) while wolves is vlky (vlci). But she really thought she was singing a song about wolves hitched up to a wagon, I guess. (haha)
Between school and the Slovak's rich repertoire of SK (and the occasional Russian) songs, K knows a whole bunch of CZ and SK songs. Whether she understands all the words is obviously a different story. At some point, though, I realized that we hadn't really moved beyond "Twinkle Twinkle" and "Wind the Bobbin Up" in English. And of course I couldn't allow that to continue...
I started refreshing myself on all the nursery rhymes I could remember and teaching them to K. She has a good memory and enjoys reciting them for whoever will listen.
Just like in Slovak, she doesn't always understand all the words or concepts, but it is a good vocabulary enhancer. She can never remember that Jack and Jill "fetched a pail of water" - usually it is something like "went up the hill to get a package of little water". I tried to explain about wells and pails and indoor plumbing but I think packages of bottled water from the store is still more familiar to her!
She also started asking me to sing her "one of YOUR songs Mommy, a NEW song" several months ago, so I sang her every bedtime-appropriate song I could think of and then some. I often couldn't remember the words so had to look them up during the day so I'd have something new to sing at night. I was debating what kind of songs to claim as "my" songs - songs from musicals? Movies? Radiohead didn't seem very appropriate somehow.
I decided to take the opportunity of introducing some English folk songs, along with the occasional spiritual or other song (Over the Rainbow, Sarah McLachlan's Ice Cream). Pretty much anything I think might have some cultural or historical value or just that she will enjoy. We do several every night at bedtime. K's favorites are I Gave My Love a Cherry, Danny Boy, Greensleeves, The Water Is Wide, Wayfaring Stranger, Early One Morning, Black Black Black, He's Gone Away...
She makes up her own songs as she's playing during the day and I love hearing how they include "parsley, sage, rosemary and time" or other lines or melodic influences from these traditional songs. Pretty much if I notice that all her songs start to be about her lost love and sung in a minor key I'll know my work here is done.
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