Hadn’t been writing his snippets for sometime. Many language explosions and actions lately…He’s progressing really quickly. Each day, he could have many new things springing up. Some things written below even happened all in one day, today!

1) Numbers: He has suddenly developed a liking for numbers. His favourite word to utter now is “four“. He could keep saying it for many times in a row. He would muster up energy and pronounce the fffff sound and say, “ffff….four”. We love to hear his “four”. Very cute and very accurate now.

He also like to say, “Sssss” for 6 and “Seh….”for 7 after saying four. He tries to say “five” but he only ended up with “ffff….”. He would skip eight too and jump straight to nine. He is able to say 10 now. But he says it like “te…te..r“.

All these words, he would either say on his own, then held out a number block to me to show me. He would also try to point to ’4′ in books, or ’4′ on his eating bowl and tell me, “Four Four”, like ‘showing off’ his knowledge  (then we had to go like, yar yar… yes, it’s four.., many times a day).

He would also say it for us to write the number out on the magnetic doodle board for him. It’s very fun to ‘test’ him and ask him what the number is. He doesn’t just recite the numbers from 1 to 10. He only reads it when he sees it, and that’s what amazed me… that he actually recognises them and knows the sequence.

We also always say the numbers for him while we wait for the lift and when we are in the lift. We say it as the number changes on the display.

Looking up at the display panel

Though I’m teaching ’1′ and ’2′ for these two weeks, he still does not know how to say them. However, he understands that 2 comes after 1. And he will jump straight to 4 as he can’t pronounce 3 yet. We also taught him the Mandarin form and for this, he had been saying, “一，二 （yi, er), 四” for sometime but I only started teaching him and associating the numbers with these sounds now. He started saying, “五 (wu)” after me. That’s the only new Chinese number he knows recently.

Video of how he says Numbers:

2) Animal Sounds. He knows that a cow Moos but he only knows how to say “Ooo…”. A cat Meows and he goes, “mmmm”.

Today when I was feeding him cereal, he started saying, “Owl“. I was surprised but quickly wanted to continue with the hoo hoos sounds of owls. At the same time, he immediately said, “Hoo… hooo“. This is something we always say and read on the Mr Brown book and iPod application. He likes the “Hoo hoo” sound a lot and always chuckles at them.

Then, he surprised me yet again when he said, “AHHHHH!!! (the way he says the phonetic sound of A in high-pitched scream)…. A…pple“.He pronounced apple quite accurately and the surprise was because he had been sounding the word like ‘Ah…ber’. Furthermore, this time he took initiative to say all these to me instead of always waiting for me to say it first.

Video of how he says Animal Sounds of Cow and Cat:

3) For Alphabets, he doesn’t say S anymore (probably sick of it). He would go, “ssss” instead.

He recognised and said recently:

• B: He is finally able to say the phonics for B but he says it like, “Buh…Bur”, “Ah..Ber…” with that Ah in front most of the time. He doesn’t say Bee.
• C: When reading ‘The Alphabet Book’ today, I actually heard him say a tiny C under his breath. “xi…..” But he doesn’t want to say it again when I prompted him. Then, he took the Grass flashcard to me and when I ask him what it was, he went, “Xi…..” because I had told him earlier while playing that it is “Cao” （草). Interesting that he associated with the words. Afternoon (at this moment I’m typing), he stood in front of the board that shows the picture of the car and said, “C….” (the name of C) followed by “R…”. Yes! He finally said the letter C!
• U: He said “U” for sometime after I placed the alphabet on the fridge but now he doesn’t seem to be able to say it while reading ‘The Alphabet Book’… Maybe he had forgotten it?
• X: He said, “kr…sss” to me today all of a sudden while reading ‘The Alphabet Book’. I have been placing the letters W, X, Y, Z for him on the fridge door. But it was still difficult for him so I’m surprised he could pronounce this.
• L: He says this as “all…” because of the way LeapFrog pronounced.

4) Words

Monday, he was holding the ‘Quack Quack’ book which had a number of animals making sounds and he was saying something like, “Cor…Cor”. He only said the phonetic sound of C sometimes but this time it was clear. “Cccc….or…cccc.or”. I thought he was finally saying, “Car” because that was the theme we are studying this week. But I realised then that he was actually saying, ‘The blackbird says, “Caw Caw‘ that “caw caw” from the storybook which I always read to him. Was disappointed but still pleased that he remembered the “Caw Caw”.

Then, when I brought him out for a walk, I pointed to cars zooming by and said, “Cccc…ar. Ccccc…ar”. He repeated it immediately with that phonetic C sound and said “Car” many times. He said it in a low ‘old man’ voice though. ^_^ Since then, he has been saying the word, “Car” from either looking at real cars or toy cars and today, he said it in a normal voice quite accurately. Haven’t tested him on whether he could read just the word without any pictures.

Chinese Flashcards

I took out the Chinese Flashcards and showed him a Flower card and told him, “花 Hua!”. He said, “Wu..wah“. After some time, he played around with the cards and he said, “Wu…wah” when he held the flower card. He has been saying this pretty often when I sing “Mo Li Hua” as he would sing with me, “Wu..wah.. wu..wah” but this is the first time he showed me he knows that is a “hua”. He also took the car picture and told me, “Car”, then took the horse picture and said, “Hah..hah…sssss” (he associates H sound with Horse).

Then, late afternoon, he took the picture of Horse again and when I told him, it’s “马”. He repeated after me and also uttered the word as he played with the cards by himself.

He knows the Letter I and while reading the Peter and Jane book, everytime we reach a sentence, “I like Peter. I like Jane”. He would shout, “I!” loudly, then I will complete the “…like Peter” for him. He says Peter with just “ter…ter…”. He doesn’t know how to say the name of P yet, only the phonetic sound, “pppp”.

“爱 你” (Ai Ni) – He kept saying this these few days. He had said this before in my first Darius’ Snippet’s post but stopped. Today he even said, “Ma Ma…Ma Ma, (pause for a while) Ai Ni…Aiiii…ni”. Ha. Because I say this to him sometimes and recently, he picked it up and started saying. I will always repeat it back to him and that made him say it often. He say this with a lot of gusto, shouting it out. Sometimes, even just “AIIIII!!!! as if he really understood my question. Ha.

“不要” – He has been saying this for quite sometime but always just “mmm….yao”. Now he finally knows how to sound B, he said it more accurately but a bit like a continuous chant.

“Bi yao, Byao, Byao, Byao” always four times. Then he goes again, another four times. He says this for no reason sometimes too, just chanting away where I’d ask him what it was that he did not want?

Words with B:

Blue -Yesterday, while out at the playground, he stepped onto a blue part and said, “Blue“, not accurately but sounds like “B..uuuu”. Wow! Though he does know Blue Colour but I had not heard him say it before when he spots a blue object.

Maybe because we are doing the Letter B this week and he has been hearing me say the phonetic sound of B very often so he started applying this B sound to other words starting with B too. He started reciting, “Buh…buh…” all the time when he goes into the study room and spotted Letter B on the board.

Then, he tore my small b when he tried to pluck the letter off the sticky board. I was reading newspaper in the living room and he came to me and said, “bur buh..”. I didn’t notice anything amiss until I went into the room and found the letter b tore into half on the floor. Arghh, I had to paste it back with scrotch tape. But well, I’m happy that he knows both Capital B and small b is “buh buh”. So my point is, the lesson works! (refer to Tot School posts) haha.

Ball – He has been saying this more confidently now after he first said it while we were reading the Peter and Jane book. Because this is the B week, he has been saying this to himself quite often too, sometimes when he spot a rounded object, sometimes for no apparent reason.

6) Music & Movement

He likes to walk & turn round and round now til he goes dizzy. When I happened to blow a toy trumpet, he immediately turned round and round, laughing away. Not sure why he would do this exact action for this trumpet because he does not do it much otherwise.

I started singing “If you are happy when you know it, clap your hands” and he clapped his hands! Then, he touched his ears and after that, tapped on the table according to the lyrics while I sang it (original was tap on his knees but he was on the high chair). Was very surprised because he has never taken the initiative to do that and always had to be held by me to do it. I also hadn’t sang it for sometime. We used to sing it when we were doing the lessons from I believe it was because he watched, “Your Baby Can Read” DVD and finally understood why he have to do that action for  ‘Clap’. He’s like me, everything he does must have a reason.

He started singing after me when I sing the Chinese children’s songs for him during mealtimes. Besides the Ni Wa Wa which I recorded in snippets before, he started singing, “Wu…a…hua…” when I sing “Mo Li Hua”. He would make a ‘shout’ like “aye!” for “抓泥鳅” during the gaps between the sentences, singing a ‘beat’. Just a few days before, he would make a shout of “Ooo!” at the end of the song, “1,2, I love you” which always had us breaking in laughter. This was because I always say, “Oh!” after the end of the song, like a shout, then start counting 1 to 10. He imitates with his version instead.

Video of his version of “Oh!” in 1,2, I Love you song (You can hear his nine and six. This was the song where he first said Nine after me when I sang):

In conclusion,  we are really enjoying all these interactions with him now and hope he will soon start saying and expressing his needs so we have less frustrations. I keep saying, “I’m surprised, I’m astonised” when he says certain things because I only say those words when we are reading a storybook, singing a song, or during the Theme of The Week Lesson. Other than that, we speak to Darius in Mandarin so he never get to hear much English words from us. The rest of what he knew was all self-learnt from the Learning Toys around him or DVD. It’s again proven that English is easier to pick up than Mandarin when it was not even the main language in our house. As long as we read books together often, sing English songs and let him explore learning toys, he could pick it up.

So I’m on the way to proving to my mum that both of us do not NEED to speak to Darius in English for him to pick up English. I get nagged about this all the time. Hopefully, this learning would continue exponentially. The headache now is, “How do I get him to speak more Mandarin to us?” cos I’ve only been reading some chinese books and showing him Chinese DVD stories, plus speaking daily to him. It’s taking much longer for him to pick up. Except for, “Drink Milk, No, Love you” (in Mandarin) He doesn’t say anything else that is constant.

I find it interesting that though he is spoken to in Mandarin all the time, he has pronounced more English words than Chinese.

No related posts.