Lessons with Lydia

This weekend I started doing English lessons with my daughter, Lydia. I have been a bit wary of doing this up till now as she only started her Greek school last year. I thought that if she started lessons in both languages at the same time she'd get confused. However, a year later and it seems that she has no problem reading and writing in Greek, also she has picked up a lot of stuff on her own as far as reading in English is concerned. So, it seems its time to help her with her written English.

We started with the Chatterbox books, which, while not aimed at bilinguals is fun and full of songs and other interesting activities. Also, as Lydia is not a balanced bilingual (her Greek far outstrips her English) I thought the book would help correct some problems with grammar and enrich her vocabulary.

The first lesson went fine and we both really enjoyed ourselves, I think she loves being the centre of attention and is keen to show me how much she knows. During the second lesson I had a brainstorm and decided that it would be a good idea to create our own version of the comic strip in the book using our digital camera and then adding speech balloons using Open Office (of course, you could also use Word for Windows). Actually, Ewan MacIntosh planted the seeds of the idea when he posted a comment on a recent post. Much fun was had finding props to use and posing for the photos and then we had to muddle through the process of adding captions etc. Still, as learning exercises go, it was great.

The best part was when Lydia said,

"Why don't we use video?"

Out of the mouths of babes. So we videoed the comic strip I (I got great reviews as Pluto, the dog) and played it back on the computer.