Literacy-Rich Home Environment – Japanese & English Early Bilingualism

Bilingual Beans emphasizes creating a bilingual, literacy-rich home environment to encourage children’s language use and acquisition in their daily lives. Creating a home environment rich in books and print helps foster ‘consistency‘ in language exposure and learning, while encouraging meaningful family conversations relevant to text. Consistency plays a crucial role in supporting language acquisition, as research highlights the importance of everyday, routine interactions in promoting language development. In this context, offering a literacy-rich environment at home proves to be a powerful tool for enhancing language skills.

How can we create a literacy-rich home? Start by making books and magazines easily accessible to children. Decorate your home with beautiful wall art that includes text related to each season and cultural events, and enjoy discussing them with your children. This will provide consistent language exposure and use through conversations, fostering holistic, implicit, and repetitive language learning at home. Most importantly, you can cultivate a love for language and culture, promoting children’s curiosity and interest. These are all crucial factors that support their language acquisition.

Organizing Books for Easy Access

By organizing books this way, you create an environment that encourages exploration, independent decision-making, and a deeper connection with books, all while focusing on the development of autonomy through the child’s natural learning process.

1 . Open Shelves & Easy Access

Books should be easily accessible, with the covers facing out on open shelves. Place books at the child’s eye level, allowing them to choose and return books independently. This supports the promotion of the child’s autonomy and interest in books.

2 . Organize by Themes, Categories or Types of Books

Grouping books by different themes or categories such as food, emotions, sensory, art or music can help children easily find what interests them and process their independent decision-making. Children can have an immersive learning experience with books based on the current season, cultural days or holidays. Also, categorizing different types of books such as picture books, interactive books, sensory books or chapter books, they will have an easier opportunity to nurture different skills and proficiencies

3. Rotating Books by Seasons, Holidays or Theme

Rotating the books periodically or according to the current seasons, cultural evens or theme are highly important to keep the environment fresh and engaging. This environment will also nurture children’s relevancy and familiarity toward the books.

4. Reading Nook & Small Baskets:

Prepare small baskets for specific themes, categories or cultural celebrations. This will enhance children’s special feelings and curiosity about these books, making it easier to browse them. In addition, create a small reading corner with soft lighting and comfortable seating to encourage reading.

5. Labeled Shelves

After categorizing books, label shelves with texts or pictures that indicates the names of book categories or types. This will reinforce language skills and literacy comprehension.

Wall Decorations

Using wall decorations with texts, you can create literacy-rich home environment and promote children’s implicit or explicit language exposure. The key element of using these materials is to promote joyful conversations with children using the materials. Enjoy these printable wall decorations and see the below parental guide demonstrating how to use these materials.

The cultural content below can be one way to enhance a child’s internalization of the target language and culture through learning cultural products, practices, and perspectives.

All wall decorations have an 8 x 10-inch picture dimension, but when printing, use U.S. letter size paper. After printing, you can easily cut out the pictures to display in a picture frame. Only the below first two materials, My Name Cool & Warm Color, should be printed on 8 x 10-inch paper.

My Little World

Target Learners: Novice low, ages 2 and up, who are learning Hiragana

A little one’s world begins with getting to know themselves through interactions with their caregivers, surrounded by the small nature around them. The first two wall decorations display the initial letters of the child’s name, which will promote their implicit language and literacy learning. These are editable printables that allow you to input your child’s name to create a custom wall decoration.

While looking at these adorable materials, talk to them by calling their names and telling them they are loved very much.