It's a Carnival: Raising Your Child Bilingually

Welcome to It's a Carnival: Raising your child bilingually, a monthly get-together for all interested in bilingualism and in raising bilingual children and an opportunity to share experiences, info and best practices.

Every month the Carnival is hosted at a different blog. You can check the schedule and book your turn for hosting (next available slot seems to be March, so if you’re interested you should let us know as soon as possible). If you’d like to be updated about future issues, know when and how to submit your posts to the carnival, or just make sure you won’t miss any, please sign up to the newsletter, which will be used only for the bare minimum of communication needed to get the Carnival going, normally 2 emails per month, nothing else.

So, in no particular order, here are the articles for this month:

- Clo at "Multi Tongue Kids" shares how she and her family might come across as crazy in everyday situation, simply because they are using so many languages and nobody else understands them.

- Deanna at "Bilingual Readers" looks at whether watching TV might have a positive effect on learning more languages.

- Stefanie at "Mummy Do That" tells the story of her daughter's first Laternenumzug (lantern procession) and evokes an aspect of bilingual life: multi-culturalism.

- Tanja at "Intrepidly Bilingual" is also reporting on culture and how by actively following the traditions of all cultures, she motivates her children to speak the minority language.

- Maria at "Fab Mums" writes about the same subject, cultural exposure. Her example fits nicely into the time of year: christmas songs.

- From "Blogging on Bilingualism" comes a very interesting question: do we, the parents, have to make some sacrifices?

- Solnushka at "Verbosity" discusses Stephen Krashen and the silent period. She also explains why learning from TV won't work.

- My own post from Babelkid is on OPOMLAH and why I think that's a good constellation.

- Last but not least I would like to point out two articles that were not submitted but somehow touched a nerve. Suzanne at "Notes from the OPOL family" gets help from her cat and Reb at "Uh Oh Spaghettios" deals with the perception others have when they think she is not a native speaker.

I hope you enjoyed our carnival this month! Please do not hesitate to pass on the message! Tweet it, share it on Facebook, invite people to read and participate! We are still a tiny minority on the network, but I can't see why that wouldn't change...

The next carnival will be held at Bilingual Readers on January 20th. So sign up to the newsletter, check out the schedule and most importantly: keep sharing those great bilingual and multilingual stories!

Thanks a lot,
Souad & Jan at BabelKid