Fun Activities for Celebrating the Bilingual Child Month

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We love October for many reasons, but our favorite is that it’s Celebrating the Bilingual Child Month! According to the Migration Policy Institute, more than 11.2 million young children, or 33% of all U.S. children under the age of 9, are dual language learners. So October is a perfect time to celebrate the extraordinary contributions of the many bilingual children in the U.S. and worldwide.

Activities to celebrate bilingual child month | Multicultural Kid Blogs

“To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world”  ~ Chinese Proverb

One way to honor Celebrating the Bilingual Child Month is to foster a classroom based on respect, equality, and diversity using the free lesson plans and activities that Language Lizard has created to accompany many of our books. These lesson plans and activities help children discover and celebrate one another’s uniqueness while highlighting their commonalities. 

(This post contains affiliate links. If you click and purchase from the Amazon site, Multicultural Kid Blogs will receive a small commission that is used to maintain the site.)

Activities to celebrate Bilingual Child Month | Multicultural Kid Blogs
Illustration from Who Are We? by Anneke Forzani and illustrated by Maria Russo

FLAG OF THE WORLD

A great exercise is the Flag of the World activity from Language Lizard’s book Who Are We? — available in numerous languages — and its accompanying lesson plan.

Who Are We? by Anneke Forzani and illustrated by Maria Russo
Illustration from Who Are We? by Anneke Forzani and illustrated by Maria Russo

Using the above illustration depicting flags of the world:

  1. Ask the children to identify the flag(s) they know.
  2. Have the children research a flag of their choice. In addition to describing the flag, children could write the historical underpinnings of the flag and include information about the symbolism of the flag (i.e., what the color(s) and icon(s) represent).
  3. Perfect for older students, they can undertake a research project on the country of the flag they choose. Areas of research could include the location/geographic features of the country, a brief history of key events, the country’s climate, traditional food and drink, culture, and famous people.
  4. For fun, ask the students to create a flag representing something about themselves, their family, or whatever makes them unique. Then, display the flags around the classroom!

Are you looking for more ideas? You can look back at some of Language Lizard’s blog posts for additional ways to celebrate the month, like this one that features games and food from different parts of the world. Also, Language Lizard is extending their bilingual book giveaway; click here to enter!

Have fun Celebrating the Bilingual Child Month!

Related Posts

10 Childhood Benefits of Being Bilingual

Five Easy Hacks for Raising Bilingual Kids

Raising Multi-literate Children: Four Lessons and Five Reminders

 

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Language Lizard

President at Language Lizard, LLC
Anneke Forzani founded Language Lizard (www.LanguageLizard.com) to provide educators, librarians, and parents with resources that develop literacy skills among English Language Learners, build inclusive classrooms, and celebrate cultural diversity. Language Lizard offers bilingual books in over 50 languages, multilingual audio resources, multicultural posters, and free lesson plans to support multicultural classrooms. The company also runs a blog (blog.languagelizard.com) for parents and teachers working with language learners and culturally diverse students. Anneke is the author of Building Bridges with Bilingual Books and Multicultural Resources (a manual to support culturally responsive teaching) and With Flying Colors: Color Idioms (a multicultural idiom book).
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