Contact
Contact
Lahtelin Pia
Early childhood education language and culture teacher
Education and welfare
Language and culture-aware early childhood education
The language and culture teacher at Riihimäki Early Childhood Education works in the early childhood special education team and in close collaboration with the staff.
The language and culture teacher supports early childhood education staff by providing consultation and training in language, culture and attitudes. He or she participates in the planning, monitoring and evaluation of Finnish language teaching for multilingual children and works in multidisciplinary collaboration. Parents always have the opportunity to discuss with the teacher.
Early childhood education Finnish as a second language (S2) teaching is goal-oriented and regular, and it is integrated into everyday interaction and learning situations. Language learning is supported in a variety of ways, for example with pictures, drawings, gestures and sign language. The importance of the home in the development of a child's own mother tongue or home languages is central. Strong proficiency in the home language also creates a foundation for learning Finnish.
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The mother tongue is the central language of human emotions, thinking and identity. Everyone living in Finland has the right to maintain and develop their own language and culture. The mother tongue is usually the first language learned, but a child can have more than one mother tongue. Valuing one's own language supports the learning of other languages, and good knowledge of the mother tongue also promotes learning at school.
- The importance of one's mother tongue – brochures (link to the City of Turku website) The website languages are Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Dari, English, Chinese, Kurdish, Pashto, Persian, German, Somali, Russian, Vietnamese and Estonian.
- MyLanguage.ca – Resources The site languages are Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Farsi, Filipino, French, Gujarati, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Tigrinya, Turkish, Ukrainian and Urdu.
- How to raise a bilingual child? EU project Resources for Parents (bilingualfamily.eu)
- A course for parents to support their child's multilingualism Multilingualism and speech development (hyvakysymys.fi)
- A child learns: Language and interaction - short videos to support multilingual families / Finnish Population Association (youtube.com)
You can develop your child's native language skills by watching and reading picture books and children's programs. You can tell your child stories, sing, play and interact in their own language.
- Read for children.fi The website languages are Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian, Estonian, Arabic, Sorani, Somali, Spanish, Albanian, Farsi, French, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese.
- Multilingual library (kirjastot.fi)
- Stories in different languages (storybookscanada.ca) The website languages are English, French, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, German, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu.
- Ideas on how to support children's linguistic development and inspire them to the world of children's literature: Iki-Taru – Jump into stories booklet (sites.utu.fi). The website languages are Finnish, English, Russian, Arabic, Sorani and Swedish.
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Multilingualism is a wealth for a child. Different languages together form a language pool that is used according to the situation. However, language acquisition may be slower, and the child may mix languages or switch them in the middle of a sentence. These are normal phenomena that do not require concern.
Finnish-language programs, games and songs:
- Yle – Little Second (yle,fi)
- Little Kakkonen's Fairy Tales (yle.fi)
- Learning Finnish through the power of play! Moka Mera (youtube.com)
- Songs in Finnish: Tongue button (youtube.com)
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