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Nathan (Offline)
JF Old Timer
 
Posts: 517
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Canada
06-09-2008, 07:36 PM

From my limited experience in teaching toddlers, I've found that flashcards and stories don't seem to help much unless they already have a basic understanding and are starting to be able to recognize characters.

They best thing to do is simply interact with them in the language, and have the pick up on verbal and audio cues.

Maybe your husband remembers some Japanese games he used to play when he was a young tot himself? Some nursery rhymes?

Might be too early to do something like "jan-ken-pon" though (rock-paper-scissors).

Mabe some songs:
http://www.mamalisa.com/world/japan.html

At 2 years your child might not have the motor skills to do a lot of the hand-games, but I could be mistaken.

One thing I found that worked for basic numbers was using your thumb and pinky fingers to count to 5, then have a "blast-off" kind of thing. Make a lot of noise, etc:
-> close your fist and extend your thumb and pinky as far as you can out (for extra silliniess, blow on your thumb and "pop" out your pinky)
-> reverse one hand, and connect thumbs to pinkies of the other hand (right pinky - left thumb, left pinky - right thumb)
-> count up to five as you walk the fingers on the bottom to the top

Silly sounding game, but it does seem to work.

But the most important thing would simply be for you or your husband to interact with your child in the language.
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