We are pleased to announce the launch of a new section of our website: KIDS. What to do in Barcelona with children - relevant for locals and visitors alike. Our first story is about the Books+ project. It is an interactive reading session with bilingual children. On a summer Saturday morning, the Amor Barcelona team and little Matilda attended a class in a cosy park on the Montjuïc hill. It was very interesting! We spoke to Katya Zheryagina, co-author of the Books+ project in Barcelona.
How did the project idea come about?
The idea was born literally at our second meeting with Nastya, the co-author of BOOK+. We were talking about our love of books and it turned out that we both love children's literature. We decided that it would be cool to create a book project for children in Barcelona. We wanted to read to children, draw from books, play word games and create dream activities together. By the way, our project is developing rapidly, we have many plans.
Nastya and I are teachers. I am a teacher of drawing and painting. I graduated from Moscow State Pedagogical University and have been working with children for 10 years: we experiment with different techniques, not only with pencils and paints. I am also a book illustrator and theatre artist.
Nastya is a teacher of Russian language and literature with extensive experience of working with bilingual children. She lived in Finland for over 10 years and now lives in Barcelona. She also has two beautiful daughters who are bilingual and love books.
"For me, a book is when you can do everything: read, listen, draw, tell stories, look at pictures, scare, dream, think, play, dance, travel".
How do Book+ classes usually go?
Depending on the book, the mood, the atmosphere and the weather, our classes are slightly different: sometimes we have a class in a park, sometimes in a library, a flower shop or even an ice-cream parlour!
But the essence is always the same. We always read the book aloud and accompany the reading process with a little performance - this is called "interactive reading" (for example, we show a little cardboard play). I draw and cut out characters from the book or make iconic illustrations out of cardboard. Birds fly out of the books, stars and flowers rain down on the children. In this way, the characters in the stories come to life and communicate with the little readers. After reading (and sometimes before or during), we do interesting tasks with the book, work with cards, play word games, laugh, read with different intonations, draw maps, travel through time, sculpt, write letters and doodles, draw, run and jump. There is a creative element to each activity. Children always take a piece of the book home with them: whether it is a character cut out of cardboard, a memory in a beautiful jar or their own reflections on coloured paper.
We spend a long and careful time preparing each lesson so that the children not only listen with their mouths open, but also understand the meaning of what they hear and let the book into their hearts :) The important thing is that we do not teach children to read and write. We have a different task. In class we are set up for an interactive process. When the children do creative tasks in their own way, not the way we show them - we let them do it, we even support them. This is how they express their real feelings. Many parents pick up on our tricks and use them at home. That's great! And another important point. You can come to all the classes. You can come once, then take a few months off and come back. You can do one class at a time. You can do all sorts of things and it's always good.
Our aim is to inspire children to love reading and books. We often hear that children don't like to read or have stopped reading. Nowadays the world is full of information, it is everywhere, it is like a constant background: on the street, at home, on the phone and tablet, in the underground, on TV. Sometimes little attention is paid to books. Sometimes attention is paid to the wrong books that are interesting to the child. So children don't always understand what books really are, they just don't know that books are friends. But we believe that the love of books lives in every child. You just have to show it to them. Interactive reading helps to open the door to the world of adventure and fantasy and, in the case of bilingual children, to the world of the Russian language.
How do you choose books for meetings?
We conditionally divide our classes into two age groups: younger (from 4 to 6 years old) and older (from 7 to 13 years old). There are no strict boundaries. We put children who can't read in one group and those who can in the other. We work with all children who speak (not necessarily a lot) and understand (not necessarily everything) Russian.
Sometimes, for example, children of 4 years old come to the older group. And they are interested too! And sometimes we have a class for children of all ages. Those who can read read, those who can't look at the letters and draw. Everyone takes part! Everyone finds their own interest, their own impression, their own way of expressing their feelings and taking what they need from this class.
We read everything from classics to modern translated books from our favourite publishing houses (Samokat, Pink Giraffe, etc.) We read both comics and non-fiction.
One of this summer's classes, which everyone enjoyed very much, was based on Olga Posukh's book "Microsuperheroes. The Most Survivable." This is a popular science comic about small animals with incredible abilities. The class created a real furore. The children were delighted with the silent walker, which is able to be in space without a protective suit and return to Earth unharmed. By the way, it was one of the most common classes, which are for two age groups at once. And it was interesting for everyone, even parents!
How are bilingual children different?
They are like any other child. They just have two languages in their heads at the same time. They switch languages instantly, jumping around like grasshoppers. Every language is a different world. Not everything can be translated from one to the other. When children are not in a Russian-speaking environment, many words gradually fade into the background. They are replaced by new ones: words of the linguistic environment in which the child is. The Russian language must be preserved. It can be supported with the help of books. That is why we created our project and even a separate page on Facebook and Instagram dedicated to reading with bilingual children.
When reading, bilinguals may not understand the meaning of some words, common expressions, metaphors, simply because they do not always know how to relate words to their meanings. Often children are embarrassed to ask questions or clarify what they don't understand. That is why we ask a lot of questions in class, clarify the meaning of words, read slowly and clearly, laugh a lot, play with intonation, choose books that are close to the children and to us, talk to the children and always listen to them.
Do you have any advice for parents?
A child looks at its parents and not only repeats the intonation and the way they speak, but also unconsciously copies the parents' attitude towards some things. For example, the attitude towards books and reading. It is the parents who can show the baby how to read by their example. Every child is a reader. You can take that away from them, or you can encourage that. It all starts with reading to children. Our advice is to read to children every day, and not to stop once they have learned to read on their own, but to continue as long as they enjoy it. Adults also enjoy being read to. It is comforting.
There is a writer called Daniel Pennac. He has formulated some wonderful rights: the rights of the reader. We agree with them.
The rights of the reader by Daniel Pennac
1. The right not to read.
2. The right to skip.
3. The right not to finish reading.
4. The right to read again.
5. The right to read everything.
6. The right to bovarism.
7. The right to read everything.
8. The right to read aloud.
9. The right to poke around.
10. The right to remain silent about what you have read.
Sometimes I meet adults who find it difficult to communicate with children. They are afraid of them because they have little experience of dealing with babies. We always say that children are just like adults. Only they have fewer years. They have tried fewer things in life, but they know a lot about the world. Our advice is to choose books together with children, to listen to their interests, to talk about everything in the world, to explain the incomprehensible and not to limit ourselves to everyday language. Children understand much more than we sometimes think. Help them to understand and communicate their feelings and emotions. Fill children with the magic colours of your mother tongue.
The BOOKS+ project is actively evolving. Posters and descriptions of future classes will be published on the project pages. For those interested in reading with bilingual children, Katya and Nastya have created separate pages on Facebook and Instagram. There they write about books and films for bilingual children, various useful reading techniques and creative work based on books.
