Friday, January 23, 2009

My little grammarian :)

We've only been in school this week. Missed about 2 weeks of school & activities following the Christmas break. The main reason is Benedict's persistent cough over the holidays and the more than a week of flash floods/bad weather which followed.

Anyway, when Benedict went back to school, the first thing his teachers noticed is his growing vocabulary and his eagerness to talk. Teacher Christie even told me "Ma'am I dont know what you did over the holidays but Benedict seems to be talking a mile a minute now." hahaha :D

Oh well, after our Dev. Ped visit, we took pain in ensuring that we (albeit me & his Daddy) are talking really slow...mostly syllabicating our words so the little boy can follow our conversation. And I guess it is working.

And I also notice that Benedict seems to get the rules of adding plurals. I recall our having this conversation over the holidays...

Benedict: "Mom, what's this?" (touching the lighted series lightbulbs in the form of the snowmen)

me: "Oh, that's a christmas decor babe...it's a snowman." (pointing to one)

Benedict: "I like the...Many snowmans mom?" (pure innocent expression, which freeze the tiny smile on my face)

Me: "Hmmm, snowMEN"

Benedict: "Ah! many snowmens Mom?" hahaha!

Me: "No sweetheart. Snowman if there's only 1...snowmen if there are 2 or more"

Another instance...

His Ko-Tiu gave him a die-cast jeep in the morning and added 2 more die-cast toys later in the night. Benedict was proudly showing his new toys to his Ah Ko. I overheard him saying...

Benedict: "Look Ah Ko!! Tu-tu (Ko Tiu) give E-Sim (engsim) many carsES"

Me: "Come here babe...it's car if there's only one (holding his toy) and carS if there are 2 (counting 1, 2 cars) and even more (adding 3,4 & 5 cars)."

...there goes a funny lesson on pluralization!

I am amazed that a 2 y/o can actually sense the grammatical rules. I mean, how old were we when these were given to us as formal lessons in school? 7-8? But then again, I guess my Benedict is really comfortable with the English language too. He tries so hard (it sounds cute) to communicate in English. That's why I am really making the effort to spend every waking moment with him. I just couldn't run the risk of him copying Yaya's wrong pronounciation or grammatical errors...que horror! Not that I meant that to belittle the nanny, but it's such a shame to let the window of opportunity go to waste, just bec. I was delegating my responsibility to the yaya.

And I am also showing him new Mandarin videos which I got from my Shobe. Actually he just started taking interest in them last week. And I am happy to hear him pronounce the chinese names of the characters correctly na. His Daddy is also now being greeted with "ni hao" in the morning instead of his "g'morning Daddy!" before. hahaha :D

I think he also got his expressions of "hmmm (with matching thinking expression)...i know" and "i think so" from that same mandarin/english show. :)

It's definitely looking up for our little grammarian!

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