Teaching Babies ESL
Teaching Tiny Ones
Teaching babies ESL is a very difficult task indeed. They barely speak their native language yet, so it will be very hard to get them to speak a foreign language!
As hard as it is, this is a great age to start kids in a foreign language. It's much easier to acquire language skills when we are very young and these children will pick things up fast.
When teaching ESL to babies, you'll hopefully also have their mothers in the lesson with you. Generally, their mothers won't really expect that their baby will come out of the lesson speaking perfect English. More likely, they just want to expose them to hearing another language, and be able to recognize a few words in that language.
The baby lesson plan shows the basic structure that I use when teaching babies. My baby lessons are 45 minutes long which I happen to think is the perfect amount of time for a lesson for a baby. It's long enough that you can have a good mix of teaching, playing, and singing time, but short enough that you don't seriously lose the baby's attention (if you can even get it in the first place.).
You also face the job of teaching the mothers how to play with their babies in English. Sometimes, the mothers won't speak any English at all, so you have to teach them some simple words so that they can communicate with their children at home as well. My list of essential ESL vocabulary for mothers will help you to suss out which words mothers actually need to know. And once they know the vocabulary, they'll also want to know some simple phrases that they can use.
The good news is that expectations are fairly low at this level. You are mostly there to play with the babies and speak English around them. This can be quite easy to do (assuming you like babies).
Later I will offer more tips on what you can do when teaching babies ESL.
Love,
Shannon Sensei
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