You are invited to click on the left or right, to put the baby on the left or the right.
How to play :
After the game has loaded, click on the big red button in the middle of the screen to start playing, or click anywhere on the game screen with the mouse.
The child on the screen asks you to put the breastfeeding baby on the left or the right.
Clicking on the Mother on the left or right side will put that baby on that side.
Clicking anywhere or hitting a keyboard key or doing nothing will make the correct answer occur - the baby will be put on the side asked for.
The French words are displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen, as is the English translation.
You can hide the French and English by clicking on the text “click to hide words” above it. Then you can guess what the words are in French without seeing the answer.
To see the French and English text again, click on the text “click to show words” in the bottom right corner.
Ages :
from 9 months - 5 years
Download time :
Game size is 492 KB.
On a high-speed internet connection the download seems instantaneous. Download takes about 1 minute on a 56K modem the first time you play this game. Every time after that the game will normally open immediately.
Play ideas :
If your child curiously asks what the baby is doing, you can explain breastfeeding to your child.
After the child on the screen speaks in French, you can repeat it in English. Your child will think that she understands what was said in French, and before you know it, she is understanding French.
If she feels like it, let her repeat the words in French in her own way.
We experience children becoming bilingual this way in Montréal, Canada.
Early childhood development benefits :
Learning about left and right, and practising which is left and which is right, is a useful lesson even for older preschoolers.
Paraphenalia and images about babies usually involves bottles, diaper pins and pacifiers for sucking. However, the most natural and healthy image that we can present to our children about babies is the image of the intimate act of life-sustaining, development-stimulating breastfeeding.
Children of all ages will be soaking up words and sentences of a new language - French - as will you too.
Research by Ellen Bialystok has shown that knowing a second language can really help a child comprehend written language faster. It seems that bilingual preschoolers can read sooner than monolingual children.
Further literature by Ellen Bialystok shows how learning another language is a very positive thing for you too.
One of the benefits of exposing your baby to a foreign language is that it will facilitate foreign language learning later on in life. The book “What’s Going On In There?” by Lise Eliot, pages 368-369, explains how this works:
“Babies are thus «citizens of the world» when it comes to phoneme perception. But this remarkable facility doesn’t last long. Infants’ ability to discriminate foreign speech sounds begins to wane as early as six months of age. By this age, English-learning babies have already lost some of their ability, still present at four months, to discriminate certain German or Swedish vowels. Foreign vowels are the first sort of phoneme to go. Then, by ten or twelve months, out goes the ability to discriminate foreign consonants, like /r/’s and /l/’s for Japanese babies or Hindi consonants for English-learning infants... Phoneme perception is thus another example of «use it or lose it» in the developing brain... This very early shaping of phoneme perception has important implicatons for foreign language learning. Obviously, the better you can hear the sounds of a foreign language, the easier time you will have learning it.”
Research carried out at McGill University in the bilingual Canadian city of Montréal has exploded myths about babies learning more than one language, and has come to the following conclusions:
Bilingual children do NOT have delayed language acquisition.
Learning more than one language at a time is NOT difficult for small children.
Bilingual children DO master both languages just as well as one.
Lovely books :
The following lovely books and products have similarities with this game. You may like to check them out.
This game can be played on all Windows, Macintosh and Linux computers with Flash Player 5 or higher.
Most computers come with the standard free Flash player so you probably already have it.
If you’re not sure, then click here. If it brings you to the baby games list, then you have Flash Player 5 or higher. If not, then you can download the Flash Player here.
For those of you who are curious about Linux, the Sams book or the Dummies book get you up and running in no time.
Both books include Linux on a cdrom, tell you how to install it on the same machine as your Windows machine, and are written for people who don't have much experience with computers.
Encouraging adult: allows time, focuses on child's thinking, defers judgement, stresses independence, optimistic about outcomes, actively listens, shows real interest, assumes it can be done, shares the risk, challenges child to try out ideas, is available, accepts child's decisions, follows child's interests, speculates along with, deals as an equal, available for help, sees learning in mistakes, uses open-ended questions, encourages play, values creative ideas.
quoted from "Head Start: How to Develop Your Child's Mind" by Robert Fisher, page 21
Small children should be supervised by a caregiver when at a computer,
to ensure no accidents occur that could hurt the child and that no equipment gets broken.
