I was surprised to realize that there are so many elements to an app (audio, sound effects, voices, the background music, graphics, settings, user interface, etc.) When a person plays an app, all of the elements come (or should) come together seamlessly. You may think that your app idea is simple,  but really think through all of the features you need before you start. Will you need background music? Will you need audio? Whose voice will you use? What sort of images do you need? 

Let’s get started…. 

GRAPHICS: What kind of graphics do you need? Do you need a character? Will you need someone to create images, icons or pictures in your app?

READY-MADE GRAPHICS: If you want to save money, buy your ready-made graphics from one of the clipart sites. I like iClipart  because they have the largest quantity of any clipart site with over 7.8 million images. The vast majority of their images are in vector file formats (.EPS & .AI) which are great for apps. 

CUSTOM GRAPHICS: However, if you want to make some specific images — like a funny character in your app — you will need to find a graphic designer. For example, in our Lingo’s Market app,we needed someone to create our character, Lingo, as well as 103 food graphics. At first, I thought that I would be able to find all of the food items from iClipart, but I wanted all of the images to be seamless and look as if they came from the same designer. For example, I could not find an image of salt that had the same sort of look and feel as garbage bags or a bag of flour. 

How do you find a graphic designer? I found a wonderful designer online using one of the many online freelance communities out there. Witmart is the largest community of the bunch and so your chances of finding someone who matches your needs both in talent, availability and price are great on this site. 

MUSIC: Do you want background music in your app? Music moves the app forward and makes people feel as if they have “arrived” in the world that you have created. At first, I did not have music in my app, but when we changed developers (long story to discuss in another post), we decided to add it. I love our happy little tune and the app would not be the same without it! 

CUSTOM TUNE: If you know of a band or a musician, ask them to create a little ditty for you! The whole tune can be just 10-20 seconds long and you can loop it in the app so that it keeps on playing. If you don’t know of someone and want a custom tune, you can always post a request as a “gig” on craigslist or post your request on the freelance website I mentioned earlier, Witmart. 

READY-MADE TUNE: If you want to save a little money, probably the best way to go is to buy a tune that has already been made. Don’t worry that someone else could be using the same tune for their project. There are so many great royalty-free tunes out there that the chances of one of your direct competitors using the exact same tune in their app is small. The site Videoblocks is great because instead of charging by the download, they allow members to download as much as they want–no limits! In order to limit your search, go to the left side navigation drop down arrows under the heading “Select an Audio Category” and pick what sort of theme you want to covey. Do you want something “playful and comedic” or “uplifting and epic”?  

SOUND EFFECTS: What kind of noises do you want the app to make? Do you want some sort of sound effect to happen when a user touches something or moves an object around? Play with some popular apps to see what folks in your space are doing. I was shocked to realize that there are so many sound effects that go into a good app to make the user feel as if he is engaging in the app. For example, sound effects play a major role in the popular children’s app, Toca Tea Party, where children can host a virtual tea party on the iPad. A child is rewarded with some sort of audio component with every single touch on the screen, whether it is the sound of placing a plate on the table or sipping from a cup of hot chocolate. The audio elements drive the game forward and compel the child to continue to play. 

Again, Videoblocks is a great site for searching for all sorts of audio clips from airplane to bathroom sounds. Look on the left navigation and click on the drop down arrow to explore all of the different sound elements available. Have fun with this part of the app creation process! One of my favorite
memories in creating our app is sitting on my deck, glass of wine in hand, listening with my cousin to all of the different kinds of fart sounds for Lingo’s Market. Who knew that there were so many different kinds of farts out there! Did we want “wet fart”? “nervous fart”? “skid marks fart”? I think we ended up with “cute fart” in the end! 

VOICES: What kind of voices will there be in your app? Will you give directions using a child’s voice? How do you find someone who matches the kind of voice you need?

For Lingo’s Market, we needed four children between the ages of 6-9 who spoke either English, Spanish, French or Mandarin. I put out a request on my local online mother’s groups for recommendations for well-behaved, patient children with clear pronunciation in these languages. We then called all of the names that we received to get an idea of the child’s voice. We wanted to find four “happy sounding” kids with crisp voices. I then recorded the children individually in my clothes-lined closet (see, there is a reason why I have yet to clean out my closet of my college outfits – they make great sound proofing!) with a Yeti Blue Microphone. This inexpensive microphone worked great for me — my audio sounds professional and I did not have to spend money to rent out a recording studio. I have used the microphone many times to make all sorts of voice recordings! 

If you can’t find someone in your network, try using craigslist to help you find someone in your area or posting a job on Witmart.  

Good luck! Post any questions below! I’d love to hear from you! 

The other day. I received a question from one of our readers, “We are thinking of enrolling our daughter in a bilingual preschool. Neither my husband nor I can speak the second language. I am concerned that the other parents will be fluent in the language and I wonder if we may feel left out of the community?” 

Great question! 

My husband and I asked ourselves the same question when we first moved to the Bay Area. I did not know anyone here and I wanted to make friends!  I was apprehensive of enrolling my son (3 at the time) in a Chinese immersion preschool, not just because I feared that he would not be accepted with his blue eyes and blond hair, but I wanted to make friends as well!   Certainly, if I had enrolled him in a parent nursery school or one of the popular preschools in the area, I would have a built-in friendship network. But for us, learning a second language was extremely important and I wanted a jump start in Mandarin immersion from a school environment. 

While it is true that many of the parents did not speak English very well at our preschool, there were a bunch who did and I remain good friends with them today (my son is now 8). I never felt left out. In fact, most of the Chinese parents were impressed and honored that we had chosen their language, Mandarin, as our second language.

I have a confession to make. My kids don’t speak French. Not that they should, since we don’t live in France (“Hello, Captain Obvious”, as my daughter would say). However, I had assumed that we would have made more progress in French by now, since it is a goal of mine to have multilingual children. And my kids really want to learn French. And I speak French myself. And, and, and…

Apparently, just wishing it were true does not a multilingual family make. And my efforts so far have not been very rigorous. We work hard on the Greek, since that is my husband’s native language, but the French lessons have been few and far between. So, I am issuing a challenge to myself, and to any of you out there that have been thinking, “Gee, I really want my kid to speak French” (or Chinese, or whatever language you choose): let just get started!  I’ll share what I am doing, and we’d love to hear what you are up to.

I’ll document for you (and myself) the steps I take with them, and share what works, and what doesn’t. The one overriding principal will be “Keep it fun!”.  This isn’t about lesson plans, but ways of introducing them to French and French culture (or which ever language you choose) so that they think it’s a game. I am going to try something new each week, whether it’s a theme, or a book, or a website.  So, without further ado, here we go! 

Snack Time!

Since I love to eat, and my kids love to eat, I decided food would be a great place for us to begin. I recently read this wonderful book called “French Kids Eat Everything“, which documents how a Canadian mother, married to a Frenchman, was able to transform her picky, snack-obsessed children into fabuous eaters. Sign me up! In a nutshell, the book describes how French kids are trained from a young age to eat very well during their meals (lunch and dinner are usually 4 courses), and they are only allowed one snack a day, called the gouter (pronounced goo-TAY), which is generally served to them around 4:30. While they only get one snack a day (so as to not spoil their appetites), it is an awesome snack. Think pain au chocolate, croissants, or other yummy pastries. At all other times, they are served what the adults are eating, with the theory that if they are hungry, they will eat it. I’m going to write more about this book at a later date, because there are lots of other ideas in it I want to share, but for now, I’ll just say that so far, it really does seem to be working.

I explained to my kids that in the spirit of learning French, they were going to start eating like French kids. We were going to be making the table fancy for every meal, including using a….wait for it…tablecloth (gasps from the kids…looks of puzzlement as they try to figure out the purpose of the strange blanket I am putting on the table). They would be having no snacks, except for the gouter, but I would let them pick the gouter, and they could help me make it every Sunday. For all other meals in the house, they would have to eat exactly what I made for myself and my husband.  I had expected a full-scale revolt, but much to my surprise, they are 100% on board. And I think it is due to the gouter. Above is a picture of the first gouter we have made, Chocolate Yogurt Snack Cakes, from one of my favorite food blogs, The Smitten Kitchen.

Shameless Self-Promotion

While we were sitting at the table on Monday evening, all civilized with our table cloth, glass cups and fancy plates, my son asked me how to say “Please pass the milk” in French.  And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the French word for milk. I told him to wait a second, and I would look it up on google on my phone. To which he responded, “Why don’t you just look it up on Lingo’s Market?”.  Oh.  Right.  The grocery shopping app that has 100 food items in French, Spanish, English and Chinese that we spent 2 years of our lives making. 

My kids often play with the app- sometimes to mess around in one of the languages, but frequently just to watch him burp or fart (to those of you who have bought the app, you are welcome!) I hadn’t yet purposely used it for language-learning…and not to toot our own horn, but it totally works!  As we were sitting at the table, whenever there was a food item they wanted to know, they would use the app as a dictionary, and scroll through the store to find the word. Or to watch Lingo eat garbage bags, which is apparently hysterical. So this is now part of our evening routine, if only for a few minutes at the beginning of dinner.

Sight Words

The last thing I am adding this week is actually one of the first things we put up on this website a few years ago…sight words for around the house. These are a series of images that describe things in different parts of the house, written in French, Spanish, English and Chinese. You print them out, and tape them to the item they describe, so kids can easily absorb the word. We have them for the kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom so far, and they are free! Just download here, print, and tape up! For this week, I am only putting up the kitchen words, but you could do all of them at one time if you want.

So that’s what we are doing this week. It was actually pretty easy and took minimal time to set up. We’d love to hear from you guys- any tips to share? Post it on our facebook page, leave it in a comment below, or drop us an email at learn@thelanguageplayground.com.

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Why do you want to make an app?

You need to have passion for your idea because you will spend more time than you ever imagined on it. The enthusiasm for the idea needs to be there for you to continue throughout the bumps in the road (and there will be bumps… and potholes and cliffs… I promise you!) 

For me, I was inspired one day while I was out shopping with my daughter who was 3 at the time. As we rolled through the aisles in a grocery store, she started yelling out all of the names of the food items that she saw along the way in Chinese.  She had just done a lesson at preschool on different fruits and vegetables and was thrilled to see them “in person”. I asked her the name for cucumber and pepper which she did not know (and neither did I) and the idea dawned on me. Why not create an app that is ABOUT shopping!

A quick search on iTunes proved that there were no apps out there at the time that were geared towards entertaining kids while they sit in the grocery cart — and yet every mother deals with the task of shopping with kids at least once a week! Voila! A product that provides a solution for a problem! 

How do you get started? 

1. PLAY: Play with a BUNCH of apps that are similar to yours before you get started laying out the design for yours.

2. SCREEN SHOTS: Take screen shots of pages within apps that you like. How do you take a screen shot of a page that you like? On an iphone you hold down the Home and Sleep buttons at the same time. On 2.0, the screen will flash white, while with 2.1, you’ll also get the camera shutter sound, and your screen will be captured in your photos on your phone. Keep all of those images in one place so that you can easily access them and send them to your developer with specific instructions about what elements you would like to mimic. Refer to these images often while you layout your app so that you don’t forget any elements. Here is a quick video to show you how to take screen shots from your phone. 

3. MAP IT OUT: You need to map out your idea down to the very last detail! I can’t stress this point enough. Everything you change or add after you have already sent it to your developer wastes time and money. Think through it ALL now in the design phase before you send it off to a developer. 

While software programs are great for laying out your ideas and sending it off to your developer, first try just writing it out with pencil and paper. Here is a simple PDF to layout your ideas: Blank Templates for App Design. Print out a bunch of these and draw out your ideas. Use the one with just one screen in the middle if the page requires a lot of detail and explanations and use the one with four screens if you simply want to show where things would go on a page without a lot of details. 

In creating this post, I could not find my initial designs for Lingo’s Market — probably because once it was launched I wanted to forget about how long it took me to get a finished product! Instead, I have included the drawings that I made for an app that we have since scrapped. It was a Mandarin phrase app. The first page shows you how I created a main map of how the app would work (Map of App). I numbered each page of the application on this main map and it correlates to a single numbered page detailing how that specific screen would work. Here I show details about how number 3 on the map of the app would work: layout of app page.

4. DIGITIZE YOUR IDEAS: In order to make it easily understood by a developer and to ensure that there are no communication issues between what you want and what the developer perceives that you want, I suggest mocking it up using one of the many free website wireframe software sites out there.

Wireframe? That sounds scary! It’s not! Wireframing is basically just the layout of the website or app. Where do users go when they click on this button? What happens when users click on that one? I personally like mockingbird and moqups the best. I was able to just jump right on on both platforms and start designing without having to watch any tutorials or spend a lot of time learning the software. Both of them run very much like Pages or Word.

A new free app called POP allows you to turn your paper and pencil drawings into a storyboard that you can actually test out on your phone to ensure that it “works” and make sure that your users don’t get stuck anywhere. You take pictures using your phone of your paper and pencil designs and then create links between the different pages that you have created. The result gets turned into an actual “app” using your drawings. It is pretty cool. 

 5. INVITE FRIENDS TO PLAY: Have friends “play” and with your app and watch where they get stuck. Ask your testers to “click” throughout the app and see where it takes them — even if right now it is just on paper. You would be surprised that some of the most basic elements of the app you may forget because you think it is intuitive, but when you send it to a developer they will probably just create exactly what you have indicated. It is a lot easier to change it on paper than to rearrage the coding later. Ask as many of your friends as possible to test out the “app” on paper and watch them while they do it.

• Do they get stuck somewhere and they don’t know where to go next? 
• Do they pause too long on one page? 
• Do they not go to where you want them to go? 
• Do they know what to do first?
• Do they understand the point of the app? Don’t tell them anything about it beforehand and see if they “get it” based on your design. 

Good luck! 

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If you are teaching your children a second language, have them earn their cookie by brainstorming words in that target language. If you are working on literacy skills with your children, have them come up with words in your native language to earn it. 

How do I do this activity? 

 1. Pick up some alphabet letter cookies. I was surprised to realize how difficult it was to get these at my regular shops. I ended up buying a bunch online and saving myself the hassle of searching each store for them.  I also bought alphabet cookie cutters so in case I run out of cookies in the box, I can just make my own! Here are some yummy options:  

2. Put the cookie letter on the top of a page and write out a numbered list of how many words you want your child to brainstorm. For my daughter who is 5, I only put down 5 words and we brainstormed the list together as she is an emergent reader. She ended up coming up with a lot more once she got the hang of it, but we started off small. For my son who is 7, I put down 5 words in Chinese for him to brainstorm and 10 words in English. 

3. You can do this activity either in your target second language (i.e. brainstorm 10 words in Spanish that start with this letter to earn the cookie) or in your native language (i.e. for our family, brainstorm 10 words in English that start with this letter)

4. Once your child comes up with the list, he/she gets to eat up that cookie! My son loved the activity so much he ended up at 10 cookies before mom put the kaibosh on it until the next day!

Happy Learning! 

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Foreign Languages 101

Of course, the article was much less sensational than the title suggested (isn’t that always the case). It covered many of the basics that I have read a lot about recently (the earlier you start your kids on a second language, the better; the links between learning a foreign language and higher scores on all levels of testing, improved cognitive skills, etc…) And rather than placing some sort of ranking on which languages children should learn, it actually provides some ideas on how to choose a foreign language for your child, which can be difficult decision if you don’t have a cultural or family reason for choosing a second (or third) language. For example, they suggest starting kids on a language that the parent themselves have already learned, even if you only took high school Spanish; being able to learn alongside a parent, even if the parent isn’t fluent, can greatly enhance a child’s interest and speed in learning a language.

How to Choose

Here are some of the more concrete tips the article mentioned for choosing a language (these are from an American perspective, so it would be different if you are coming at this concept from a non-US perspective):

-If you are looking for a language that might help your child’s future career the most, the article suggests Spanish (the second most common language in the US), Chinese (given its huge population and growing economy), or German (a bit of a surprise, but it is the world’s fourth largest economy).  

-If you are looking for the languages that might be easiest to learn, they suggest Spanish, French or Italian, since so many parents have already been exposed to one of these languages, and they are, like English, Romance languages (based on Latin), so there will be many similarities.

-They also recommend French as the language of choice for the arts, or travel, since there are so many French-speaking countries that are also fun travel destinations.  

-A final suggestion is American Sign Language (ASL); while not technically a foreign language, it is a much needed skill, that can either have future career applications, or just be useful in medical emergencies or disasters.

Lisa Sarafidis’s Story – Guest Blogger 

Of course, at the end of the day, it is a very personal choice, and there is no “wrong” language. In our house, we do Greek because of my husband, and French. Why French? Well, I had originally started out teaching them Spanish, because that was my major in college, and they are getting a bit of Spanish in their school.  But about a year ago, I asked them if they could choose, what language would they pick? Surprisingly, both my 7 and 5 year old chose French. My daughter was born in Paris (she only lived there the first 8 weeks of her life, but she believes she is half American, half Greek and half French…we are working on the math), and so it is something that really inspires her…and what better reason is there to learn another language…inspiration.  And if I can get a field trip to Paris out of it someday….bonus!

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What is a Love Tree? 

It is a little tree that sits on our dining room table where we hang hearts (love leaves) describing the people we love and why we love them.

When can you start this tradition with children?

We started the tradition when my son was just 2. Over dinner, we would talk about each person that we loved and make a little heart for him/her. I have saved the hearts from each year and it is great to look over last year’s love leaves and see how much his handwriting and written expression have improved over the year. 

How can I utilize my target second language with this activity? 

Depending on your child’s fluency and written level in your target language, you can incorporate as many elements as you want! 

For younger children, you may want him/her to just write one word in your target language or just one phrase, “I love you” each time on the leaf at the bottom or at the top and the rest in English. Or perhaps you have your child list off why he loves each person and then incorporate words from your second target language into that list. 

For my family, since we are learning Chinese, my children write the love notes to the Chinese-speaking people we love in Chinese characters. For example, my son wrote  你是我的好朋友  (You are my good friend) for his Chinese tutor and 我愛你  (I love you)  for his Chinese babysitter who both play big roles in his life.

How can I make this activity educational ?

Easy! The activity itself enables children to put feelings and emotions to paper. The love tree gives children a sense of print motivation — they get great pride in realizing that their words are going to be celebrated and enjoyed by the whole family. Words matter! This activity checks off each of the Six Early Literacy Skills detailed in this article. 

Considerations: 

1. It is easy for younger children to want to put everyone down. At first my son wanted to put down “the kid with the brown hair in school who wears the green shirt” as one of his love leaves. This activity is a great opportunity to talk about the people who are important to them and why they deserve a leaf on our tree. 

2. If you have a tutor or babysitter who speaks your second language of choice, ask him/her to help you teach your child a few of these love phrases. Brainstorm with your child what kinds of thoughts he wants to say. Perhaps your child wants to say “I love you because you play soccer with me” and currently he does not know how to write that yet — what a great opportunity to learn! 

3. Save your hearts each year in an envelope with the year printed on it. It is fun to bring them out after you have finished this activity to see how much your child’s literacy has improved. A word of advice: DON’T bring out the hearts until AFTER you have done the activity. I find that my children just repeat the same love messages as last year because it is fresh in their minds. 

How To Do The Activity: 

1. Cut out hearts. For younger children, trace the heart for your child to cut out. 

2. Paste the hearts onto a different colored paper 

3. Cut around the hearts

4. Brainstorm the people who are important in your child’s life and why you love them. Write love leaves for each person. 

5. Use a hole puncher at the top of the heart and tie a string around it. (This is Lucas’ note from last year to Daddy) 

6. Hang up your hearts 

7. Take out hearts from previous years and enjoy discovering how much your child has improved in vocabulary, expression and handwriting. Your child will love making comparisons about his/her writing as well! 

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Love, Literacy and Language Learning all go together this Valentine’s Day!

One of our family traditions is to write “love notes” to our family members and tuck them underneath the chocolate morsels found in the traditional heart-shaped boxes. This year, my son Lucas has started to learn Chinese characters so we jumped at the chance to incorporate his new words into our Valentine’s ritual this year! In addition to the love notes written in English to promote his literacy skills, we added one or two Chinese ones to the mix! You can do this activity in any language! 

Though this activity, my children realize that what they are learning at school (both in their Chinese class and in elementary school) have real-life implications. What they learn matters! 

What is this tradition? 

1. Pick up small heart-shaped boxes to distribute to family, friends, and/or teachers. Don’t get ones that have too many spots for chocolate as your child might get bored of the activity if there are too many spots to fill. I like to pick up the small ones that only have 5 spots for the chocolate – which means 5 love notes per person. One thing to be aware of, some of the cheaper boxes do not have actual slots for the chocolate and instead just have a jumble of candy inside. Beware of those as this activity does not work for those kind of boxes. 

2. Cut up paper into 1/2 inch strips — big enough for your child to write on them but small enough to be folded and hidden under each chocolate piece. 

3. Brainstorm with your child what you love about the person who will receive the Valentine’s box. My first grader tends to prefer a set statement to work with for this activity, “I love you because..” Whereas my 5 year old daughter prefers to have me write out the phrase that she wants to say on a separate piece of paper and copy it herself on the slivers of paper. 

4. My son wanted to have a mixture of Chinese characters and English words for this year’s love notes. We gave each person one love note in Chinese and four notes in English. 

5. Fold up the love notes and place them under each chocolate in the Valentine’s box. 

6. Send your love notes off with a kiss! 

Love Phrases in Chinese: 

I love you. ~ Wo ai ni ~ 我愛你 

I think of you everyday ~ Wo mei tian xiang nian ni ~ 我每天想念你 

You are my good friend. ~ Ni shi wo de hao peng you. ~ 你是我的好朋友 

Love Phrases in Spanish: 

I like you (very much / a lot) = Me gustas (mucho)

I love you = Te quiero or Te amo

I miss you = Te extraño

You’re sweet = Eres dulce

You’re cute = Eres lindo

Sweetheart = Mi amor

Love Phrases in French: 

I love you. ~  Je t’aime.

You are beautiful (male) ~ Tu es beau.

You are beautiful (female) ~ Tu es belle.

You are handsome (male) ~ Tu es élégant.

You are handsome (female)~ Tu es élégante.

You make me happy (male)~ Tu me rends heureux.

You make me happy (female) ~Te me rends heureuse.

I miss you ~ Tu me manques.

I like you ~ Je t’aime bien.

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I pick up shaving cream at the dollar store and we go to town on the walls in the tub. My son Lucas has just started learning characters at his Chinese school and loves showing me how the simple characters can built upon to make new words.  It is not messy either — the kids love cleaning up the leftover cream on the wall with a little sponge! 

This activity is a perfect example of multi-sensory learning that works well with my children. My son would not enjoy simply writing characters on a piece of paper — that would seem too much like school. However, writing them with shaving cream in the tub — now that is fun! 

Studies have shown that children learn better when they engage with learning materials using multiple senses. Multi-sensory learning occurs when more than one sense is used to acquire and retain information. Combining auditory (learning by listening and talking), visual (learning by seeing and writing things down) and kinesthetic (learning by touching) gives your child three means by which to understand and remember information.

HOW TO DO IT? 

1. Rub shaving cream on the wall

2. I use one of my many books and flashcard sets on Chinese characters to show my children how to write the characters. I grab a few sturdy flashcards like Tuttle Chinese Flashcards for Kids that could handle a few accidental drops from the tub and draw the characters  on the wall in the shaving cream. 

3. My child traces over the character I just made on the wall. 

4. My child then writes the same character in another shaving cream spot. 

5. We erase both characters and he writes it again on his own. 

6. Cleanup is super easy — the kids love washing the walls with their very own sponges after we are done! 

7. VOILA! Chinese characters are indelibly imprinted in his mind but quickly erased from the bathroom walls! 

Happy Educational Tubbing! 

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“Cheerios or seaweed?” I asked her.

“Seaweed,” she responded. 

While the preference for seaweed is very normal for our family, my girlfriend thought it was hysterical that my daughter would choose seaweed over the American staple of Cheerios.

When living in Japan from 2004 – 2007, we did not have a choice. We could either buy Cheerios for 40 bucks a box at the expat market or learn how to incorporate Japanese staples into our lives. In order to not bankrupt us on Cheerios, I chose to explore Japanese grocery stores and try out new food items every day. Of course, there were moments where the discovery was less than desirable — like when we tried to feed my one year old son squid and he spit it out dribbling a river of black ink all over himself and our white carpet. But most of the time, we loved learning about Japanese culture through food. 

When we moved back to California in 2007 and chose to teach our children Chinese and what better way to introduce our kids to the culture of China than through food! Every week we pop over to one of the many markets in the Bay Area and pick up our snacks. From a language learning perspective, the children love talking with the grocery staff, asking them all sorts of questions, like when Dragon Fruit will come back in season. Usually, we try to pick up one unusual snack item each time, but our staples are: 

• gyoza/potstickers: 锅贴 
• dumplings: 饺子
• shrimp chips: 虾芯片
• almond cookies: 杏仁饼干
• yakult: 養樂多
• fish cake: 甜不辣
• rice crackers:米果

SOME IDEAS TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR LANGUAGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE AT THE GROCERY STORE: 

1. Visit a grocery store where the predominant language spoken there is the language that you are teaching your children.

2. Download our wonderful app called Lingo’s Market and watch your child delight in feeding Lingo the Dragon over 103 different food items in English, Mandarin, Spanish and/or French. 

3. Put a free ad up in the grocery store or on craigslist in search of someone who could teach you about the food items in the grocery store or maybe even teach you how to cook foods from this culture. In Japan, I did a language exchange with a native woman where we would take turns each week going to a traditional Japanese market and then the expat market filled with American products. We both learned more about each other’s cultures, food items and improved our Japanese and English at the same time!  

4. Give your children a scavenger hunt for them to find different food items in the grocery store. For example, ask them to find the word for “apple” written in the language in that store. In the Chinese markets, the words for all of the food items are written both in English and Mandarin. 

5. Have your children test out their language skills by asking staff members at the grocery store for a specific item. My children love to show off their language skills whenever we visit a Chinese market and it is exciting for my children to realize that the language they are learning has an application in the real world. 

6. Explore cooking meals from different cultures at home with your children. Many of these illustrated, kid-focused cookbooks include not only traditional recipes from different cultures but also neat little facts about the dishes shown. 

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