My son is 4.5 years old. I decided to teach him English. I teach young adults at a university. So what did I do? I found a book and tried to make him sit down and work with me. Our first lesson took nearly 10 seconds (maybe a little less). After this huge failure I talked to my friends teaching at K12 and checked out some reference books for young learners (e.g. Projects with Young learners by Philips, Burwood and Dunford). I was told I should think in terms of “fun, running and jumping, singing and games” and TPR (http://www2.vobs.at/ludescher/total_physical_response.htm) . I tried out the following:

Songs

I discovered Baby Karaoke (http://raisingchildren.net.au/baby_karaoke/baby_karaoke_landing.html) and Learn English Kids (http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/) and I was amazed at the rate he learned the songs.

Badges

I made badges and scotch taped them on me, him, his favorite toys and on everyone else at home then. Badges had numbers on them to respond to “how old are you” or simple drawings showing emotions (e.g. sad, happy). Asked: How are you? I am sad (also miming the face on the drawing).

Flashcards

We cut pictures of animals from magazines and newspapers, and glued them on cardboards. I put those on the walls and we moved from one picture to the other, first saying the name of the animal (“This is a lion”) and then roaring (imitating the sound that the animals makes)

Some on-line resources:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html

http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/littlekids/

http://www.dltk-kids.com/