Creating a multilingual environment is a challenge, and one interesting way of doing it is creating a family newspaper. Such a newspaper can be a weekly or a monthly publication with family news and events. You can put in family pictures and descriptions of family trips, holidays, achievements. Of course, you should write the paper in your family language or languages. Since the text will mostly be about the kids, they will be interested to know what it says.
In addition to being minority language writing about a highly engaging topic, a family newspaper is useful for other reasons:
- It is a diary about your family life; something that will become invaluable as years pass. You can create a folder with the newspaper issues for each child to keep.
- It is an opportunity to talk about your culture or cultures, holidays and traditions.
- It is a way to keep your children’s artwork. Having the kids illustrate the newspaper is especially engaging for them.
Here are some tips for creating your family newspaper:
- Write it in your minority language(s). This will keep kids coming back to reading in the languages you are trying to keep in your family.
- Have your kids write or illustrate portions or all of the newspaper. This is a great exercise in your minority language.
- Write about significant events in your family: birthdays, holidays, trips, major accomplishments.
- Include pictures, both taken by camera and drawn by your kids.
- Use humor! Funny stories are more engaging.
- Use funny fictional stories for fun or to teach a point.
- Name your newspaper and write on it “published since XX XX XXXX”. Make it look official.
- Use newspaper publishing traditions that are found in your country and them tell your kids about them.
I am sure that many of you will tell me that you don’t have time for a family newspaper. Our latest issue took me about 30 minutes to create. If you are not familiar with technology and how to go about doing it, ask your kids for help! They have mastered the online document creation well and can teach you.
I’d love to hear about your ideas for keeping up the minority language in your family. Let me know in the comments!