Discover multilingual literacy activities you can do at home.

Today, I've brought you a variety of language development literacy activities you can try at home, a first for a while. As I've mentioned in other posts, children who grow up in multilingual environments naturally develop the linguistic flexibility to understand and communicate in both languages.

In particular, the period from infancy to early elementary school is a crucial period for laying the foundation for a child's literacy and language development.

In this article, we will examine in detail which activities are effective for each developmental stage, from infants and toddlers to early elementary school students, based on the core strategies suggested in the study.

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👶 Toddlers (1–3 years): A time to develop a sense of language.

Children at this age learn the structure and rules of language through the language they hear around them.
Your parents' speech, repetitive words, and emotional expressions will soon become your language textbook!

1) Increase conversations in everyday life

Example: "This is an apple. Red apple! It looks delicious~"

👉 Try using the languages you use at home together. Your child will naturally form connections between the two languages. The shorter and more repetitive the expressions, the more effective they are.

2) Viewing picture books without text together

Picture books without text are also a great tool for children at this age. Try creating a story around the pictures that your child is interested in.

Example: “The rabbit is jumping! Where do you think he’ll go? I think he wants to go under the table.”

👉 Parents, please lead the conversation around the picture your child is looking at, using a language that's more comfortable for you. It's important to focus on the picture your child is interested in, not the language you want to teach them.

3) Sing along to the song and rhyme

Sing songs in the languages you use most often. It's also a good idea to alternate between singing the same song in both languages.

👉 Repetitive and rhythmic language input is known to have a positive effect on the development of phonological awareness (Harper, 2011).

4) Practice conversation through gestures and responses

When your child uses gestures or eye contact to express something, try to connect the meaning with words.

Example: When a child points to a cup, say, “Do you want some water? Here is your water!”

👉 If you mix the languages you use at home, your child will naturally learn that both languages mean the same thing. But there's no need to force it. The most important thing is to interact in the language you're comfortable with .

🧒 Preschool to early elementary school (ages 4–8): A time to establish the structure of literacy.

Children at this age rapidly develop an understanding of sounds, letters, and story structures.
The process of learning by comparing the structures of two languages expands your thinking skills and becomes the foundation for reading and writing.

📘 Recommended Activities:

1) Dialogic Reading

After you've chosen the language you'd like to practice more with your child, read the book as if you were having a conversation, asking questions like, "Why do you think that happened?" and "What do you think will happen next?"

Encouraging children to summarize or reconstruct content helps develop their storytelling and expressive skills ( Bittetti & Hammer, 2016)

2) Sound play & rhyme game

Example) “Car–typewriter–train! Which words end in ‘car’?” or “I spy with my little eye, something that ends with T ” (cat–bat–hat)

These activities develop phonological awareness and help connect sounds and letters , the foundation of reading.

3) Using board games to create stories

I also recommend trying story-making games using board games and the like.

There are many different storytelling board games, so you can choose the one you like, but the important thing is to look at the cards and have your child create a story in a language they are comfortable with first, and then have them say the same sentences in another language.

Example) English: “Mom is eating at the house.”

“Mom is eating at home.”
➡ You can naturally compare not only words but also word order differences .

Through this type of play, children can positively experience 'code-switching', where they freely speak across languages .

5) Collaborative writing activities

It's also good for parents to write down what their child says and read it together, or for the child to draw and write simple sentences and then the parent to write those sentences in another language.

👉 This will naturally strengthen your writing, sentence structure, and interlingual transfer skills .

 

🏡 This kind of environment is even better!

Creating a routine that incorporates reading and writing into your daily life
Example) Bedtime reading time / Saying the names of ingredients while shopping / Reading and following recipes, etc.

Configuring an environment where both languages coexist
Example) Labeling household items in English and native language / Shelving English and native language books together

Cultural experience and connection
Explaining words and telling stories to your child during family events, holidays, and traditional cooking times.
👉 Children can develop a positive identity about their own culture through language.

 

There is no need for separate 'special study time' for your child's bilingual/multilingual development.
Reading books, talking together, and talking while playing – all of these are ‘learning’ for children.

We support your child's language and emotional development. We'll be back with more great information next time.🌱

 

Reference:

Bitetti, D., & Hammer, C. S. (2016). The Home Literacy Environment and the English Narrative Development of Spanish-English Bilingual Children. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research: JSLHR , 59 (5), 1159–1171. https://doi.org/10.1044/2016_JSLHR-L-15-0064

English, Y. L. (2017). Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English: Promising Futures.

Harper, L. J. (2011). Nursery rhyme knowledge and phonological awareness in preschool
children. The Journal of Language and Literacy Education [Online], 7(1), 65-78.