Welcome to Multilingual Living

From the Editors' Desks

Autumn is here! At this time of year, many of us are surrounded by trees with leaves of red and gold and orange. Autumn brings with it a sense of new beginnings and is a time of year with its own set of rituals. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, as the temperature goes down, we close up our homes, turn on our heaters and get ready to snuggle on our sofas with books and mugs of coffee, tea and hot chocolate. Autumn is the beginning of the season of introspection and slowing down. Many of us can still describe in detail the atmosphere of a new country in which we were living during this time of year. Our acute awareness of being in a new country forever imprints those autumnal smells, sounds and feelings in our hearts and minds.

This time of year can also bring feelings of stress and anxiety. Multicultural and multilingual families have the extra burden (and fun) of figuring out how to combine traditions, while at the same time including family members from both sides. Lucky for us at Multilingual Living Magazine, we have a team of experts who know just how to help! You won’t want to miss the Stay Informed! articles in this issue to get you ready for your holiday gatherings. Keep your household running smoothly by preparing right now BEFORE family arrives and holiday preparations are in full swing!

We are delighted to be able to bring you some very special Learning At Home lessons in this issue which you can share with your children. The two lessons we have included will teach you and your family about holidays and traditions around the world. They are adaptations of classroom lessons from Judy Haynes, an ESL teacher from New Jersey in the USA. These lessons are packed with information, ideas and much, much more. Hope you have fun with them!

As always, we have brought you a fabulous line-up of articles. Colin Baker shares with us a very special piece about Bilingualism and Dyslexia. If you have ever wondered if bilingualism contributes to dyslexia, here is your chance to find out. Does your bilingual child have Dyslexia? Then you will want to learn about how best to support your child’s reading needs BEFORE she starts the process.

This month’s questions for Harriet and Grace are sure to resonate with questions that arise in your household. Don’t miss the reassuring answers and tips on how to move forward with multilingualism. There must be many of you out there with burning questions, so make sure to send them in to us and we will have Harriet and/or Grace answer them for you! If you have questions on your mind, then there are bound to be others with the same, so benefit everyone and send them in!

Do you like to cook and bake? Then make sure to check out our Global Recipes section. Celebrate with flavors and smells from around the world! Don’t miss our recipe for Colada Morada and Guagas de Pan! And what would a holiday season be without Sugar Cookies? Don’t have any cookie cutters at home? No worries, use a jar lid or cut out shapes freehand with a knife! Either way, these recipes will help fill your home with sweet holiday smells and tastes!

We hope you will enjoy our Holiday Activities! We have included interactive games and crafts to keep your family moving, talking, creating and sharing. Do these activities together with your children and encourage them to use your native language. When they see how much fun you are having, your children can’t help but join in!

We are extremely delighted and honored to have six sponsors for this holiday issue: We Love Spanish, Language Land, Petite Librairie, ABC Kinderladen, Language Lizard and Alphabet Garten! If you are looking for fabulous products for your family and friends this year, our sponsors have provided their favorite tips and recommendations for your shopping needs. And don’t miss their colorful ads throughout the magazine - you are sure to find what you are looking for in their online shops. A big thank you to all of our sponsors for helping to keep Multilingual Living Magazine going strong!
You will notice that starting with this issue of Multlingual Living Magazine, we have embedded hyperlinks into our PDF pages! This means, when you see a website address listed in the magazine, you can click on it to go to that webpage (a web browser will be opened). Sometimes we have also embedded hyperlinks into sections of pages where it makes sense. For example, if you click on the website address, www.biculturalfamily.org, in this page you should see that your mouse indicator changes and the Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network homepage opens in a web browser.

Many of you have asked what it would take to get our magazine into print. Please know that this would be a dream come true for us and we are always looking for ways to make this happen. The catch is how to finance such a venture. The printing costs would come to a few thousand dollars (if not tens of thousands) per issue and then there are postal costs to ship it out to everyone. Our sponsors are helping us make the first step in the direction of our goal but we need many more sponsors before we will have enough to pay for printing costs - or one main sponsor to cover our printing costs! And to get more sponsors, we need more subscribers. So, spread the word about Multilingual Living Magazine! Let’s double, triple, quadruple our subscriptions, find some more sponsors, and get this magazine into print! Help us share this magazine with every multilingual family in the world! If you have ideas for us on how we can realize our dreams of a printed Multilingual Living Magzine, write me (corey@biculturalfamily.org) or Alice (editor@biculturalfamily.org) and share them with us! Or perhaps you want to help us get the word out? Then contact us, we’d appreciate any and all ideas and help.

We hope you enjoy this holiday issue of Multilingual Living Magazine and that your holidays go smoothly. May you find your way through your cultural, linguistic and traditional blending. And remember that the greatest gift we can give our family this year is the gift of our language and culture.