helping my 3 years old girl to fit in

Mai khater8

Hello we are new in Dublin.
My girl is 3 years old she speaks Arabic.
I want her to get used to the English language can u help me with any ideas?
She will join creche in September.

mordeith

Mai khater8 wrote: »

Hello we are new in Dublin.
My girl is 3 years old she speaks Arabic.
I want her to get used to the English language can u help me with any ideas?
She will join creche in September.

I presume you speak English? Would you not use it in the home to get her started? Watching kids TV shows would help a bit too. Especially the more educational ones. Baby TV would be alright seeing as she's only getting used to the language. Obviously you'd be looking at recommened screen time etc.

pilly

Look at whether there are any mother and toddler groups around you that you can bring her along to.

Also speak English too her all the time. And as poster above, children's TV is a good idea.

yellowlabrador

Don't worry, children are very quick to pick up another language. We travelled to live in various countries when I was a child and I was fluent in 3 by the age of 5. My parents took much longer and never lost their accents.

Dardania

mordeith wrote: »

Mai khater8 wrote: »

Hello we are new in Dublin.
My girl is 3 years old she speaks Arabic.
I want her to get used to the English language can u help me with any ideas?
She will join creche in September.

I presume you speak English? Would you not use it in the home to get her started? Watching kids TV shows would help a bit too. Especially the more educational ones. Baby TV would be alright seeing as she's only getting used to the language. Obviously you'd be looking at recommened screen time etc.

pilly wrote: »

Look at whether there are any mother and toddler groups around you that you can bring her along to.

Also speak English too her all the time. And as poster above, children's TV is a good idea.

Welcome!

I agree with moredith and pilly about potential children's TV programmes
(I find the https://www.youtube.com/user/SuperSimpleSongs and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6zhI71atP7YLoZyIyCIGNw great for my almost 2 year old...one can really see the effects when chatting later with the little one)
and the mother & toddler groups are great for networking and let's face it, your own sanity!
But for yourself and respecting your own language, if you want your daughter to keep up her Arabic (and maintain links to extended family etc...) it may be better to separate who speaks to your daughter in what language - that way she should find it easier to be bilingual in future. The recommendation my wife & I received was that one of us should speak English, the other should speak the other language, and that way a strong distinction between the two languages could be made... see this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-wong2/raising-bilingual-childre_b_9558006.html

Ranjo

We moved to a non-English speaking country and my youngest went to the local kindergarden with no local language.

The school had a system/assistance for this circumstance, so you may be able to get some support from the school. I would contact them to see if they can advise/help in advance of starting.

The little guy was fairly quick to pick it up, but there was some painful time at the beginning as he spoke nothing.

Mai khater8

Thanks all for your help

LirW

But for yourself and respecting your own language, if you want your daughter to keep up her Arabic (and maintain links to extended family etc...) it may be better to separate who speaks to your daughter in what language - that way she should find it easier to be bilingual in future. The recommendation my wife & I received was that one of us should speak English, the other should speak the other language, and that way a strong distinction between the two languages could be made... see this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-wong2/raising-bilingual-childre_b_9558006.html

Agree with this one, we're a bilingual family too. My son attends a school with a very high number of bilingual kids, most of them polish. The pure polish speaking couples struggled the most. I had a long talk with the language support teacher in my school, who basically said, if you want your kid to grow up bilingual keep your language up at home.
When I came here with my son to live with my Irish partner he couldn't speak a word english but all the advise I got was to keep up the german when I'm talking to him. After not even 3 months he was pretty much fluent in english.

Definitely look around for groups in the area. Once your daughter starts school, lots of schools do have language support, look into that.
Hang in there, you're not the only one.

Mink

As others said, she'll be fluent in English in no time once she starts, give it a month or two.

Little Baby Bum or Max the Glow Train on youtube is great for numbers, letters, colours & shapes. And of course there are so many little picture books - charity shops are a treasure trove for books.

It will be great for her to be fluent in English and Arabic so do keep it up at home and teach her to read it and write it later as well.