I owe you an explanation, I know… What’s up with me? Lot’s actually…

Now as most of you know, to be true to my mission to bilingualism I run two blogs, Bilingual for Fun, in EN, and Bilingue per Gioco, in Italian. Well I realised I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of either and decided to invest time and energy to bring at least on of the two blogs to the next level, to make something really impactful out of it. I chose Bilingue per Gioco because I felt that’s where I could make the most difference. There are great bloggers on bilingualism in English, but it’s a virtually unknown subject in Italy.

I think I can now say the efforts where well worth it! Please have a look and judge yourself: www.bilinguepergioco.com. Have a look even if you don’t speak/read italian, just to see what it’s like, please! I promise I’ll soon put the same work into Bilingual for Fun too, just give me the time to recover…

I am also starting a couple of projects in Italy, making playgroups a reality, and that takes a tremendous amount of work and passion and a vision. And quite a bit of stupidity too one might say, at least that’s what I say when I feel overwhelmed. I do happen to feel overwhelmed a lot lately, so you get the drift…

And I have written an E-Book!!! Yes I did! It’s in Italian though… I’d love to get it translated. It went out yesterday and I’m checking emails and stuff like crazy. The title is In che lingua giochiamo? Which in English would read something like Which language shall we play in? In other words it’s one those things that really don’t translate well. I’d have to find a decent English title, ideas welcome… Anyway as you can imagine it’s a book on bilingualism, specifically on all the incredible tool we have (but rarely use) to give children exposure to the minority language in a fun and natural way. It’s 66 pages, including Cover, Index, and Bibliography, granted, but still…!

I am giving away the Ebook for free to those who are registered in Bilingue per Gioco’s newsletter as a way to say Thank-you-for-sharing-the-journey-with-me, but I know that also among Bilingual for Fun’s readers there are quite a few people who read Italian, so I’ll give away a copy here too. To get the copy just comment on this post or on FB and share the link to this page In che lingua giochiamo? with your contacts on FB, Twitter, blogs, anything by Sunday next week, Jan 31st. Which happens to be my birthday too… Go figure! I’ll then do the usual thing of picking a lucky winner!

What else… I’ve been missing my fellow bloggers a lot. I’ve been missing the Carnivals and all the really interesting interactions I used to have with the broad bloggers community. I’m back, and looking forward to this new year!

Thanks for everything, I hope you are all well!

Related posts:

1. Summer vacation options for Italian-English bilingual children
2. English, French, German (etc.) Playgroups for Bilingual Children in Italy
3. Learning a second language is good childhood mind medicine, studies find

If you don’t know what a blogging carnival is you have two ways to learn about it:

1. Go read it, here at Mummydothat! This is the recommended option, you’ll find some really useful posts about bilingualism!
2. Read the theory about Blogging carnivals here. Only recommended if you do research on theoretical physics or dreally don’t like to learn by doing.

If you are a blogger and would like to join the carnival you can sign up here.

Just to give you a previews on todays carnival you’ll read about bilingual families from all over the place, facing problems that range from school choice, non native speaker parents, living in a foreign country, grasping some theory behind bilingualism, etc etc.

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 There are few good news for you, and I’m very happy to share them.

1. Bilingual For Fun just opened its Amazon Store: Bilingual For Fun Bookstore. There you can find books, CD and DVD for children, plus of course books on bilingualism for parents. Everything you’ll see there has been selected by me, not by a random search engine, and then if you want to buy something different you can add anything else on your basket.
2. Right now at Amazon there are some really interesting sales, particularly for DVD, which can go from more than £12 to less than £4, books are discounted too, although not as much. I don’t know how long these prices wil last, so if you’re planning to buy some stuff you might want to do it now.
3. Buying through our store is an inexpensive way to support the blog, so if you like it and would like to give something back, that’ s a nice way to do it. Every time to buy at Amazon you can just enter through Bilingual For Fun Bookstore and then go ahead and buy whatever you want, even if it has nothing to do with bilingualism.

In case you want to buy French or German books, La Librairie e Die Buchhandlung will be ready soon too. In fact I wanted to show you the three of them at once, but then I saw the sales and thought I’d better let you know about it.

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There is a lot of debate on the pros and cons of TV, particularly for young children, and also quite a bit of debate on how useful are videos in enhancing preschoolers’ language skills. We’ll come back on this separately in depth, but for the time being we can probably say that a very moderate exposure to good content in the minority language, supported by parental supervision and sharing, probably won’t do much harm and might actually help learning the second language, or at least associating it with fun (which is a very important thing as MOTIVATION is key!).

The good news is that good quality videos are readly available for free. Ok the news wouldn’t quite make it to the headlines, most people know about YouTube, but may be not everybody realised how much good material for kids there’s on Youtube. Really excellent stuff, some of which you might not even hear of otherwise!

For months now we have used YouTube to watch In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle, which we love! But I now discovered amazing stuf there, like cartoons from Eric Carle (The Hungry Caterpillar’s author) among which my favourite is Papa, please get the moon for me (I bet every single father will love this one, particularly if they have a baby girl). And then there’s great stuff in French, German and Italian, too. And certainly much more yet to be discovered, by me at least…

Have a look here for Biligual For Fun’s Playlists in different languages.

By the way, you can watch Youtube videos on your PC, or download them with a free software Youtube Downloader and watch them however you prefer, iPod, TV, etc…

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