Bed Time Story

Bed Time Story
Originally uploaded by mr_caffeine74.

There is nothing like being read to by your parents before bedtime. Noelle loves to have us read to her. Most of the time she just wants to look at the books and the pictures. But as we read the same books to her again and again, she begins to remember the contents of the books. She remembers what comes next and she starts saying the words with us. She does this in English and Japanese. It wasn't until just recently that she has started listening quietly through the whole book.
This book you see here is the first book that she has listened to without wanting to turn the pages herself or stop halfway through to get another book. We always let her choose which book she wants to read. We also make suggestions but never force a book on her.
Reading books to her has contributed a lot to her vocabulary and knowledge of things. I'm glad we do it. It also gives me ideas for my Story Time project.

For Peaches

One of my students who I call "Peaches" was complaining that I haven't been updating my blogs so this one is for you Peaches.
Recently I have been thinking a lot about how Noelle is going to learn English. She is learning English from being with me. However, since I leave for work in the morning and come home at night, she doesn't get to be with me very much. She gets some other limited English input from TV, music and books but not much. I doubt that a child can really learn how to speak English from TV, songs and what not. The child really needs to interact, to communicate with another person. She was learning well I thought but now the balance is tipped to far over to the Japanese side. She interacts with her mother, her grandmother, her grandfather and everyone else here in the community using Japanese. So where before, she would accept both English and Japanese for things, now she insists on Japanese. She has learned from countless intractions with many people that Japanese works. So when she comes to me, she tries to correct me and won't accept me speaking English. But of course this is not a all or nothing phenomenon. She doesn't totally understand the difference between English and Japanese. So she still uses some English. Mostly for the names of things. She also says "Okay" and "Hello". She used to say "morning" but I haven't been able to get her to say it recently. I need some help. I'm so scared she's not going to be able to learn English well.
By the way, the picture in this post is of Noelle trying to pick up her grandmother's cat Saemon. She loves playing with the cat and chases it all over, pets it, throws things at it, gives it things, picks it up and carries it, runs away from it and even feeds it. The cat often reaches out a paw and scratches or hits her . She always has little scratches on her hands arms and face from Saemon but she still loves it.