Hi all,
I'm wondering if any of you out there are in bilingual households, particularly those with different systems of writing the language.
My husband is Japanese and we generally practice one-person-one-language. If you're not familiar with the Japanese writing system, the hiragana system is the one that children are first taught. This is a phonetic alphabet. In later years, they move to the kanji, or pictorial characters.
We're homeschooling and I'm wondering how best to proceed with teaching reading. Should I do English and Japanese side-by-side? Focus on one over the other? Initially, I've been focusing on English, since that's my native language and my DS4.5 is stronger in that language. However, the Japanese system is easier to understand. Once you know all the "letters", you can read anything. There's no weird pronunciations like in English. We do have several children's books in Japanese and I'm starting to wonder if learning Japanese first will give DS more confidence.
He already knows the phonics of all the English letters, but hasn't yet grasped blending them together with comprehension. He's gaining a bigger sight word vocabulary, though, and I suspect he's one of the types of kids who will do better with sight words.
Any thoughts? What have you done?
