A Simple Music Tip for Busy Parents
Kids need lots of exposure to a foreign language in order to gain and maintain fluency, and music is a super fun, easy, and effective way to add more language into your life! You can sing songs with your child, go to concerts, listen to albums, or put on a YouTube playlist of kid’s songs. Songs, poems, nursery rhymes, or really any things that rhyme are great to expose your kids to in their minority language. Rhymes make words memorable and sticky in your mind. Plus, clapping along with and singing along with nursery rhymes or songs is fun and motivating for kids.
However, it’s not always easy to find time to serenade our kids with heritage language lullabies. For a quick and easy way to put on some background music, you can use a YouTube playlist of kid’s songs in your desired language. (To reduce screen time for kids, be sure to play the songs so that the audio can be heard but the video can't be seen.) If you want to put your chosen playlist on “set it and forget it” mode so that you don't have to keep an eye whether that playlist is almost done or not: you can use an outside website that shuffles YouTube playlists (such as http://youtube-playlist-randomizer.valami.info/) and keep your chosen song list playing in random order indefinitely.
I’ve included links to youtube playlists in a number of languages here for your convenience. If you can’t find your language listed here, simply search [Your language] kid’s songs on Youtube and be sure to filter by playlist, or if you want to shuffle a chosen playlist, go to http://youtube-playlist-randomizer.valami.info/ and follow the directions from there. Now go forth and play some beautiful music!
Spanish:
Russian:
French:
Chinese:
Polish:
Korean:
Japanese:
German:
Italian:
Hebrew:
Swedish:
Czech:
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For more tips on raising bilingual children, check out Polyglot Parenting's online course, How to Raise A Bilingual Child.
Or, for individualized advice, families raising bilingual/multilingual children may find it useful to create a custom Family Language Plan with the help of a bilingual professional. If having a guide to help you navigate the ins and outs of implementing effective and realistic bilingual methods and strategies sounds helpful to your family, contact me for a 60 minute initial consultation via Skype.
