Ready! Set! Go! Start Your Bilingual Journey Now!

The children are lined up at the starting gate. Toddlers and preschool age children are poised, ready to launch off the starting block and win the race to becoming the best global citizen they can be!

Banners of sponsors line the path of this great race. All the way from companies who make bilingual CDs and DVDs for babies to those who run private institutions designed to give Junior the best life has to offer during the first five years of his life. What? You did not know that the first five years of life are truly the most critical to the emotional, social and cognitive development of your precious child?

The studies have been conducted, the truth has been told, and numerous books have been written to share with new parents and educators about this young scholarly set. Between birth and the age of five, a child will experience almost ninety percent of his brain becoming developed. Think about that! You are born with twenty five percent of your brain developed, and within the short time of five years the brain experiences millions and millions of neural pathway connections.

The young racers jump off the starting block at the sound of the gun! All of them have equal chances of winning this race to becoming a great global citizen. The decisions they make along the path of the race will determine who excels in reading, math, communication skills, and lifetime language learning skills necessary to excel in a very global society and economy.

The toddlers are racing with excitement and pure recklessness towards the finish line, where they see mommy and daddy calling their names. They decide to listen to a little upbeat, bilingual music along the way to increase their speed and their cognitive development. Yes, it is true! The more you allow your little one to hear and read her native language right alongside a new language, the more neural pathway connections are made for language acquisition in her brain.

Did you realize that by simply popping in a CD that plays songs with English and Spanish lyrics woven into each song, your child will experience more neural pathway connections made in her brain that will assist her in becoming a better communicator? And by adding in the visual learning via a DVD or a bilingual book, she will also enjoy the benefits of early literacy skills? It is great to know these things as the race is still underway!

We witness some of the preschool aged children dancing along the path of this race, much to the delight of their moms and dads. These children are truly incorporating some fun movements into the race, all the while chanting vocabulary words they know in both English and Spanish. They must have gotten the memo that relayed the latest research findings where experts agreed it is just as easy for a child to learn two words for one item as it is for him to learn only one word.

Imagine that! Your three year old really can learn more than just one language before elementary school. In fact, a study out of Texas years ago clearly found that children under the age of five are capable of learning up to five languages, and they do not get confused. They will not experience language delays. They will simply excel in life with benefits such as increased concentration, improved problem solving skills and the ability to read sooner than their monolingual peers.

Oh my! We all see the finish line looming up ahead. The children are neck and neck. It seems almost as if it will be a tie across the board. Not one child chose to skip the advantages provided them from listening to bilingual music or chanting pairs of words that reflect their love of learning Spanish and English. These young scholars have claimed one of the best opportunities life has presented them to date.

They have chosen to no longer listen to the English only mentality that some people still try to hang on to. Instead they have made a decision to enter the global market and get with the program. The bilingual program!

Related to: early childhood learning , teach kids languages , early literacy , spanish for children , kids learn

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Comments

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 at 12:37 AM, by Sherry Artemenko
You are right that children can learn another language easily if exposed to it in their early years. I have seen parents give their children the opportunity to be around native speakers of a second and third language and the kids absorb it. I am a speech language pathologist with a blog, and lots of great activities and book suggestions based on their language value.

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