A Sunday with Julia

By DW

We usually spend our Sunday afternoons lazing at home or sometimes window shopping with the kids. This weekend was slightly different as we spent the afternoon at Julia Gabriel (Forum) with none other than Julia Gabriel herself. The topic was “Empowering Your Child with Speech and Language”, a topic that was of interest as we have 2 little ones.

Not knowing what to expect for activities for the kids, except that there was going to be story telling, we brought Jill and left Jen at home. Little did we know, that they had toys and art & craft activities (& not forgetting FOOD!!) all laid out for the young ones, poor didi got left out of the fun again. But Jill sure had a fun time. Thanks to Fiona & her team of enthusiastic teachers!

Ms Fiona Walker, Principal Director at Julia Gabriel Centre for Learning, working with Jill on her story of how the caterpillar grows into a butterfly.

Making her caterpillar, based on Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar

all time kids' favourite - story telling session!

 After settling all the kids down, the session started. A lot of the information was shared but a main point which we learnt was that it was imperative for us to create that environment for our children as they learn best if we immerse them in it. English wise, I don’t think it will be too much of an issue; Mandarin on the other hand is something that I am a little more concerned as Mandarin is not exactly my strong point.

We were also told that associations worked well too, an eg would be to have a situation where one parent speaks to the child in English and one parent in Mandarin or perhaps have designated "Mandarin speaking days". We did consider that but knowing that our Mandarin is what would be deemed as "pasar Mandarin", we have decided that it was best we outsourced this. However, we do have DVDs with Mandarin Songs which we play. Music never fails to ignite the life in children and it's one of the best ways to let them enjoy the language. Nevertheless Jill is starting to love Mandarin and if at any point she does initiate a conversation with us in Mandarin, we always very gladly reply to her in Mandarin as well.

A way to encourage our children to use it more, is to use cards that are labelled appropriately in Mandarin for Television, Bed, Cupboard, Refrigerator etc and use these cards to play games with them by labelling the item with the correct card, we can take it even further by doing it in both languages. Julia has very kindly offered to help us to get the right terminology in Mandarin for each object.

Us with Julia (right) & Fiona!

We would definitely need to make a greater effort to start learning with our children, also a suggestion that was made during the session. By doing that, I myself can refresh what I have learnt previously and at the same time encourage the kids to learn as well. Who knows that they may even start teaching us or better yet, we can even get Jill to teach Jen!

The group of parents (& kids) who participated in this session. Thanks to all for sharing your tips & ideas!