Compliments of the Season

We are leaving for Hawaii tomorrow. I am not sure how many blogging opportunities I will get, but I just wanted to congratulate everyone on their holidays. Whether it's Christmas, or Hannukah, or Al Eidha, or Kwanza, or New Years, or Russian Christmas, or Russian Old New Years - I am celebrating with you! The great thing about winter is that everyone has something to celebrate.


To me, one thing that really sums up my holiday spirit is a tangerine: bright, sweet, with a tangy surprise that you need to unwrap. When I was growing up in Soviet Union, we didn't have that many fruits in winter, as there are available now. For New Year's - our only winter holiday - we used to get подарок (literally - a gift), a bag filled with goodies: 1 apple, 1 orange, 3-5 tangerines, suckers, Lemon Drops, fudge, some chocolates, and walnuts. This was a classic present that every Soviet child received throughout their kindergarten and grade school years. Of course, our parents bought us other gifts, but this was a highlight of celebration, because the entire class would chip in on those goodies, and parents would sort them in individual bags. 


Every year, I would get a photograph of myself in a carnival costume holding my podarok, with tangerines in it. Knowing that this would be one of the few opportunities to eat them, I would prioritize all the stuff in my goodie bag to ensure the continuity of my tangerine indulgence. The last thing in the bag would be a tangerine.


Then, the year when my aunt left the Soviet Union, my parents traveled to Moscow and to Lithuania for her stuff and brought home ... a huge case of tangerines! Right in time for New Year's! They spread them on a blanket in the corner of our living room in order to prevent rotting, and for the first time we could eat all the tangerines we wanted. The continuity of indulgence was guaranteed by a pile remaining on the blanket. I was sick that winter and had to be quarantined (or maybe it was just an excuse for more tangerines?). I remember picking out just 3 to 5 tangerines at a time, placing them on a brass tray and eating them slowly, enjoying every segment. I don't think I ever got to the point where I couldn't eat them anymore. I just kept going back to the pile with my brass tray, until only bad ones were left...


A couple of years ago, here in Denver, I was walking home from work. It was just a couple of days before Christmas, lots of snow, and pretty chilly. On the 14th & Grant, a homeless man asked me if I had any change to spare. I didn't. "But", I said. "I have some tangerines. Would you like some?" He enthusiastically replied yes. I reached in my purse and pulled out 3 bright tangerines and placed them in his hands which he held like a bowl. "Thank you", he said, and from his voice I could really tell that he would enjoy them. I don't remember his face or what he was wearing. Just those tangerines in his bowl shaped hands. Bright orange surrounded by white, cold snow.

What strikes me is that we really enjoy things if we don't have that many of them. In other words, we cherish things when they aren't overly abundant. We remember those moments of abundance as happy moments, if the abundance is not all the time. I am not saying that we should all become homeless, but I probably wouldn't appreciate tangerines today as much as I do, if I had them year around growing up. Maybe the key to happiness is to find a tangerine moment in everything we do.


Happy Holidays!

Tune in

So, here is a new idea for exposing your child to even more foreign language media - online radio stations for kids. It took me literally 5 seconds to find a Russian radio station, which streams directly from Moscow (there is a down part about this - the shows run on Moscow time, ceasing all children programming around 9 pm) and offers variety of shows for children and parents, including story times, music hour, educational shows and shows on parenting and pediatrics for parents - all in Russian! Obviously, Sasha is a little bit too young to follow what they say on the radio, but this will be a great tool to promote more Russian around the house.

Another great thing about those radio stations is that their websites usually have archives of previous shows, as well as games, resource links, and coloring pages. A couple of quick searches - and I found a some stations in other languages, too. Here are all my finds:

Russian - www.deti.fm

German - www.radioteddy.de

Italian - www.laradiolina.it

French - www.radiojunior.com

I couldn't find anything in Spanish, tough. Maybe Google translator messed up my translation of "online radio for children" into Spanish?

In my opinion, listening to online radio is better than listening to audio classes in the same language, because a bilingual kid does not need a language instruction, he just needs more exposure to various media and people who speak that language. Of course, it wouldn't be right to just stick your child in front of the computer (since this is internet radio) and walk away. Parents should be listening, too, and singing along, playing along, and following up after a story or a show to make sure that the child understood what was going on. It helps to read the programming schedule and show description in advance, so that you are prepared to guide your child through the new information he will be getting from the radio.

Funny words

Sasha finds шпатель (Russian for spatula) funny. I don't know why, but every time he pulls out the spatula out of his treasure basket and I name it, he giggles or at least smiles. He also tries to repeat the word. There must be something about how this word sounds that makes him giggle, I suppose.

He also really enjoys when I mimic cats, tigers, and lions. Cats purr and meow, and Sasha loves my meow sounds and tries to repeat. And tigers and lions roar, which in Russian is just a rolled R, and that makes Sasha very eager about rolling his Rs, although he has been unsuccessful in that, as of yet.

And, of course, Sasha himself says some stuff that make me giggle: bookabooka, takalaka, gheegaleega, and many more. I am pretty sure that bookabooka is just another way to say book, or it might be even a combination if English word and Russian grammar (Russian word for book - книга - ends with a which marks feminine gender of the word).

As for the other funny words, it's hard to say what he means. In one situation recently, he said a very long undecipherable sequence while looking at me, like he was trying to communicate something to me, and when I asked him: "What did you say?", he giggled and said yet another long sequence that did not sound anything like the first one. This might be just another form of mature babble, where he just uses a lot of syllables without naming a specific object. (Maybe he wanted me to play him cartoons on DVD. Who knows... Recently, he has been showing a lot of interest in that DVD player.)

But as we know, no verbal utterance is just utter. If a child communicates, he does it for reason.

A friend of mine shared with me recently that she knows a mother that does not really "trust" my friend's opinion on communicating with young children. Basically, my friend was asked what was the point of talking to a 10 month old, if they just babble senselessly. A recent study from Cornell University showed that the way mothers respond to babble utterances impacts how fast infants learn all sounds of their language. So,  definitely, talking to a small child - even if you don't understand the word he says - makes a difference in their language acquisition. Of course, you cannot strike a conversation with your infant about the scandalous WikiLeaks publications or tell him a hilarious joke by Jon Stewart, but it makes all the difference if you just narrate their daily life and their moves through their environment, so that some day he can tell you about a bookabooka by Malcolm Gladwell that he recently read.

A new school with Russian immersion program

As I was writing previously, Global Village Academy was applying for a new charter school north of Denver. The school would feature four dual language immersion programs, including Russian-English. So, the great news that I received a couple of days ago is that their application has been approved. Here is the full email from them:

Global Village Academy Announcement

We are pleased to announce that the Adams 12 Five Star School Board unanimously approved the Global Village Academy charter!  GVA will open for the 2011-2012 school year. We are in final negotiations for a building in the Northglenn area and a final decision will be made by the end of January.  We know that many of you are anxious to start with volunteer work and more information on that will be coming by the end of the week.  Where you can help the most is with student recruitment.  Tell all your friends and neighbors about GVA! Thank you for your enthusiasm and support during this process.  This could not have happened without you.  We look forward to working with you in the coming months. Sincerely - Christina Burton Executive Principal John Kaufman Vice Principal Charmaine Nicolau Communications Coordinator

This is especially thrilling because there is a total of 2 or 3 other Russian immersion programs in the US. So, our options for Sasha's dual immersion education were very limited, but now there is this new school in  Denver Metro Area. Well, by 2015, we have to move to the suburbia in order for Sasha to attend that school. He is already on the waiting list with them for that year. I will let you know further details, as I get more messages from them.