Parents As Successful teacherS

Lady and the Tramp. Two books written in different languages (English and Romanian). It was interresting in the end. I am saying "in the end" because my daughter was hard to convince to use Lady and the Tramp in our comparison activity. She wanted other stories, but unfortunately this is the only book that she have in two languages. I have to fix this in days to come.
First of all I asked her to compare the two books by the criteria of size, color, format, consistence. Then we talked about images. What are the differences between the way the characters are drawn and the similarities. We looked at the writting (she knows the letters and she can read only some short words in Romanian) and page numbers and in the end we read the stories in both languages.
This are a few of the observations that she made. The English book is smaller, thicher (even if it has a smaller number of pages), it is narrow, yellow, it is not new, and the scene images are different. One of the scene from the book written in Romanian is missing.
The Romanian version is blue, is bigger, thiner, new and and it has more writting and more images and scenes. About the images she observed some diferences, little ones, on the cover.  Both of the books are soft and she said that it has the  "Disney" logo on the cover. While reading the story in Romanian, she watched carefully the images and we talked about the way they are drawn/represented.  I read also the English version and i asked her several times to try to "guess" what I read analyzing images.

We had a great experience in learning English with Nursery rhymes videos. My daughter likes songs and it was a pleasure to hear her sing in English... I discovered that PASS  suggests to listen Nursery rhymes in learnin English on the phase 0 cards. It is funny and entertaing and a good way for children to learn English. After listening for a while I realised that my daughter's pronunciation is better. Next time I will make her listen an English song and after that the same song but in the mother tangue. I am sure it will be interesting to hear her point of view about what sounds different or maybe similar.

I proposed Teona to play a game that we never played before. We used her kitchen set and 7 toys (a bear, a doll, a cat, two dogs, a cow, a deer) and we played "Lady cook in kindergarten". We agree on this name. One of the toy, Pluto, the dog, is a mediator. He helps her in the kitchen. The deer (one of the Santa's raindeers) is a visitor from the North Pole and he can only speaks English. The deer wants to know Teona's secret recipes for children in kindergarten.

Deer: Hello Teona!

Pluto: What does it mean?

While my daughter was eating her favorite soup made by her grandmother, I thought it will be a good opportunity to ask her about ingredients.

Me: Teona, this is your favorite soup. I never asked you if you know what makes it so delicious. Why do you like it so much?

T: Because it is my favorite. Grandma makes it for me.

I gave Teona the idea of making a salad on her own, to surprise her daddy. I also said that at the end she can give a name to her salad, because it would be her recipe. She took her little chair, open the fridge and selected the vegetables for the salad. 

She chose: tomatoes, letucce, cucumbers, green onions and carrots (I don't usually put carrots in a salad, so it was something new). I suggested her to take also radishes, but she refused! :-) She does not like radishes.

I helped her wash and clean the vegetables. She took her little knife, the one she usually use when she helps me in the kitchen and starts to cut the carrots.

Before afternoon sleep I let Teona choose a book from her library to read to her. This time I used a mediator, Peppa pig.

She chose Pinocchio.

Peppa: Why did you chose Pinocchio?

She likes now the TV show named Lazy Town. I proposed her a day before to watch together a new episode while I drink my morning coffee and she drinks her milk. Like girls do! :-) And have a little talk. She was excited by the idea. I did not know when to use the questions or when to discuss with her. During the show, at the beginning, at the end... So i tried to do it in all the moments. Sometimes it disturbed her, because she could not pay attention to the show. When I felt that I am annoying her I stopped for a while. Her favorite character is Sportacus. Initially I called him Spartacus (like the Roman gladiator) for a few times. It seemed more logical to me.  She corrected me until I understood. At the beginning I asked her why does she like Sportacus.

T: He is handsome, he helps a lot children in need and because he makes acrobatics.

I asked her to describe it to me. Because I don't know the character.

When my daughter asked me to play a game with her ("the show" game) it was my chance to ask her why should I play this game with her. But again, she looked at me really strange. :-) She is often used with responds like "ok", "in a few minutes", "ask dad because I have to cook" and so on...

I asked her again. Give me some reasons why I should play with you this game. The word "reason" really gave her trouble. She asked her dad "What does she mean by reason?" (I guess she wanted to ask "What's wrong with mommy?!" I encouraged her to try.

Reasons:

We go to the park every day. It is very close to our home. From time to time we change the location and choose another park. Yesterday morning I decided  to take her to the biggest park in our home town. I know she likes it. We had to take the bus. It was a good chance to do with my daughter thinking activities related to "being / going somewhere". I started to ask her questions (in Romanian, our language) in order to make some comparison between the two parks. I have to say that my daughter, T., is 4 years old.

Me: It's very nice in here, isn't it?

T: Yes, it is.