For Families

Future Workshops

We will continue giving workshops! Please let us know at Maiko{at}japanlanguagesolutions.com  if you would like to host a workshop for your playgroup/preschool/childcare etc. We can create one that meets your needs as well. 日本語でのワークショップも考えております。お問い合わせはMaiko{at}japanlanguagesolutions.com まで日本語でどうぞ♪
Past Workshops

Interactive Workshop for Parents & Teachers: “Raising Kids to be Bilingual – Myths, Facts, and Tips from Current Research”
Where: Springfield Public Library, Library Meeting Room
When: 6:30-7:30, February 1st, 2011
How much: Free!
What: This interactive workshop was for parents who are interested in raising their children to be bilingual and for teachers who help young children whose first language is not English. For more past workshops, please go to our Workshops page.

Further Reading for Families

Online Articles

Books

  • The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language. King, Kendall & Mackey, Alison.
    This is our favorite – easy and fun to read! Deals with topics such
    as benefits and misconceptions, individual differences that affect
    language learning, tips, and challenges. Many personal stories make this book
    very relatable. The book deals with families that speak English only as well as multilingual families. Highly recommended! Eugene Public Library has 1 copy.
  • A Parents’ & Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism: Third Edition. Baker, Colin.
    Very easy to read, partially thanks to their FAQ format. You can just pick a section that interests you the most. FAQ include “I’m a
    one-parent family. How can I raise my child bilingually?” “What should our language strategy be with our adopted child?”,     “How should two languages be distributed in a classroom?” and “Should older children be placed in bilingual education?”.
  • The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parent. Harding-Esch, Edith and Riley, Philip.
    Published from Cambridge University Press, it does feel a bit more
    ‘stiff’ compared to the two books above. However, it does offer great resources – from how children learn language/s and what they use them for, different views on bilingualism, to many case-studies. If you are feeling like you would like to know more about the subject after reading the books above, this would make a great addition to your bookshelf.
  • Multilingual Living: Explorations of Language and Subjectivity. Burck, C.
    The topics the author looks at include identity construction and
    languages, power relationship and language etc. Very nice insight into history of bilingual/multilingual research and social trends. Very technical, but highly recommended!
  • Bilingual First Language Acquisition. De Houwer, A.
    This book is also very technical, but  easy to read. They look at bilingualism from a viewpoint of Bilingual First Language Acquisition. Sections include Bilingual children’s language development, research methods, socializing environments, sounds, words, sentences in BFLA (bilingual first language acquisition).

Online bookstores with multilingual books/resources or books in foreign languages

  • Powell’s Books http://www.powells.com/section/childrens-foreign-language/, one of the biggest used/new bookstores in the world, has a great section with books for kids under $7 (used) and books categorized by languages. Gotta love Powell’s!
  • Culture for Kids http://www.cultureforkids.com/ has books and resources in Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Farsi, Filipino, Hmong, Ilokano, Khmer, Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog, Hindi, Somali and Serbo-Croation and more
  • Amazon.com www.amazon.com You can enter words like “Children books in Japanese” and they do have quite a bit

Fee-based Newsletters

We’ll be adding more, and we’d LOVE to learn about your favorites too!
Please email us at Maiko*japanlanguagesolutions.com (please change * to @)