My son is just starting to make a few words, and enjoys songs a lot. I feel that teaching him the letters in hindi/kannada (which we speak at home along with english ) will help him learn the sounds more easily, as the phonics are more orderly than in english. does anyone know and rhymes in either language (like a-b-c-d) to help teach him this ?
Also, and thoughts on my idea are welcome!
From 0 to now, your baby has been listening to the sounds of the language. Quantity is more important than quality-- that seems to be the consensus for the writers of the English, Tagalog and Russian nursery rhyme authors that we read to our baby. Sometimes I go through the alphabet or a list of words and just put them in any sentence that comes to mind first. Buying books abroad or sometimes even finding them online is harder than I thought it would be-- so I have to just generate my own content & that would be my advice to you. (And if you really want authentic Kannada nursery rhymes, you might track down a mailing list or forum where most of the audience speaks Kannada)
In 4 months (at about 18 months) is the time you really want to be ready-- this is the beginning of the so-called fast mapping, where children appear to learn words after hearing it just once. From adult second language learning studies, the biggest factor in language learning success is shear vocabulary-- its is more important than any other subskill, during the fast mapping months, you will want to introduce as many words as possible, preferably in a way where the child can infer what it means by environmental clues-- they can see what you are looking at & see what thing or action you are talking about.
Oh, and if the question is really about how to introduce pre-reading skills (you are asking about the alphabet, which is a tool of reading-- one can learn a language quite fine as a total illiterate-- It's pretty much universal). I've read various advice on reading books to children-- point out the words as you read-- it's a major advance for kinds to realize that the text is something that can be read. Some kids by observation alone learn what is text (but can't read), and more rarely learn to read a few words by sight (i.e. not phonetically, that's harder). And watching parents turn pages, hold books open, how to orient a book, etc, establishes it as a normal activity. Another thing that turns out to be difficult for babies initially is interpreting the 2 dimensional pictures as things-- clearly everyone eventually grasps the idea, but its a skill that needs to be learned.
thank you for the suggestions! following some of the advice, i changed the words i was using to search for these songs, and found this lovely piece at : http://akshara.niketana.com/
It uses a simple tune to go through a aa e ee all the way through the vyanjanas (consonants) also !
Which was exactly what I was looking for. it has no images, but the song nails it :) .
Also, found this video for those interested in Hindi : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjwAI-QvXRw
