| Bilingual Kids Club (BKC) |
Address
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Languages
| English | ||||||||
| Type | Playgroup | ||||||||
| Meeting Times |
We meet at Makuhari Shimin Plaza, one Saturday a month from 10am to 12noon is for our official BKC meeting.
The other casual meetings are planned for usually Mondays or Fridays, from 10 to 12noon or 2pm (sometimes lunch is part of the plan) and they take place at local parks or other free meeting places, depending on the person who initiates the plan. | ||||||||
| Status | not-for-profit | ||||||||
| Contact Person | Amanda | ||||||||
| Contact Email | yymm1124@gmail.com | ||||||||
| Who is it for? | Right now, we cater to families with toddlers because all 6 of our kids are right around the same age. But, we are willing to accept kids 0-K.We live in Chiba city, but we accept members from outside of Chiba city as long as they can attend our meetings. | ||||||||
How many?
| We now have 6 kids in the group, but are hoping to get at least 15 as our base membership. | ||||||||
| Partner group/program? | No partner groups at the time, but if someone has another group with older kids, we would of course like to partner up. | ||||||||
| Who started it? | Amanda Yoshida, Mariko Sato, Yoko Jinno & Alya Kumabe are the four original members. I did the initial research and wrote up a proposal and they joined and helped formulate the activities and other policies. | ||||||||
| When did it start? | July 2008 | ||||||||
| How did you start? |
We started because we wanted to expose our kids to English other than our own. We also wanted a playgroup that would have a strict policy about NO JAPANESE during the playgroup. We hoped to get started early with our kids BEFORE they get involved in other “lessons” and BEFORE they start school and begin concentrating on learning kanji.
First, I researched by reading a few books, getting input from people in other cities who had started their own bilingual groups, and reading the Bilingual Handbook, published by AFWJ several years ago. I then asked a Japanese friend who is fluent in English and has a daughter the same age to help start the group. I think that was really important because she is able to handle all the Japanese stuff. Two of these members were also members of a Bilingual Babies Playgroup that I started soon after my daughter was born. This group is still running, but without me. The main difference between the two groups is that for the BB Playgroup, we used both Japanese and English for our activities, and we accepted members whose English is not good but want to improve. For BKC, we only accept people who are fluent in English, and we require a commitment to use some English at home, outside of the BKC activities. We started by meeting 2 or 3 times a month, and by advertising using posters, egroups, and word of mouth. It didn't help much. I thought people would waiting in line to get in our group, but most people were already committed to other types of lessons, or they didn't quite see the necessity. I guess, if you are a stay at home mom, your kid doesn’t need more English, but for me, I was going back to work right at that time, and I needed something. As for activity planning, it was kind of tekitou at first. We would sing songs, do 1 or 2 activities, have some free play, and that was about it. We wanted to meet at a public place from the start, but it didn’t seem worth it since we only had 4 members, so we met at one of our houses each time. When the weather got nicer, we had some meetings in the park. Activities included things like crafts, cooking, baking, etc. We always met on Saturdays and Sundays for the first year because 2 of us were working full time. It seemed to be okay because the fathers would then use that time to sleep in or do their own thing. But, once the kids got a little older, I think some of the dads started complaining about loss of family time. Also, now we have a couple more members and some people preferred to meet during the week. | ||||||||
| How does it work? |
In July, we celebrated our one-year anniversary! Anyway, since our kids are all going on 3 now, we decided to change some of our policies and to also try to recruit more members. Basic decisions we made include one official BKC meeting per month at a public place, where all members must make it a priority to attend. We also share activity planning, so we use a rotation system – members take turns each month to plan the following: vocabulary words, songs, storytime, activity 1, activity 2. One person is in charge of reserving the room and keeping track of the time. Another person is the sub, so if anyone gets cancels at the last minute, she can take over, or she can just help anyone who needs assistance. We also decided to have a theme each month, and we choose words, songs, stories, activities, etc. based around the theme. September was “Nature in Autumn”, and I think October is Halloween.
Also, we will have some of the members take on larger roles for a 6 month period on a rotation basis. These roles include things like forum moderator, membership, materials, secretary, etc. We don't have a treasurer because we have not needed one yet, but that might be an option in the future if the group gets bigger and we start to collect dues. | ||||||||
| How do you keep the group/program going? |
We have a yahoo egroup called bilingual_kids_club . Up until recently, we communicated mainly about when and where our next meetings would be, but now we are encouraging everyone to share their ideas for activities, research about bilingualism & language learning, opinions about our policies, etc. Having people who are really motivated to get the kids together is important, and seeing how much the kids grow to like one another helps too. They miss each other when a few weeks go by and we haven’t had a meeting.
Well, I will say that it is sometimes challenging to have both Japanese parents and foreign parents in the group. It has its benefits though. The good thing is that Japanese moms are usually really hard working, and if they believe in something, they will put a lot of effort into even if their efforts sometimes miss the mark. Foreign moms, on the other hand, tend to be pushy about their own opinions and then in some cases, communication issues arise. I sometimes hear complaints from one side saying, “Don’t you think she is kind of pushy?” but since I’m also a foreigner and have been pushy in the past, think to myself, “Well, yeah, she is pushy, but how else are we gonna move forward?” Another issue that often comes up is when to meet. Some of the moms work, others don’t but plan to in the future, and others (like myself) are on maternity leave. So, you really have to be flexible. Our solution to this was to start having the one monthly mandatory meeting for all member and their kids. We ask people to make this meeting a priority and not schedule anything else for that day (it’s only from 10 to 12 noon anyway!). This meeting always takes place on a weekend day. Then, we encourage people to initiate their own “unofficial” meetings during the week or on other weekends, depending on their own schedules. We used to have a policy that BKC had to have 3 or more participants or the meeting would be canceled, but we stopped that. We also encourage them to do similar types of activities to the official meeting and to use the theme for that month as well. We are hoping to do some field trip as well depending on our monthly themes – a farm park for animal theme, as an example. Now, we also share all documents that we make, including the flash cards, so that members can print them off and practice at home with their kids or when they have “unofficial” meetings. So far, one other member and I have met twice for our Nature theme and we took our girls to a park. It worked out well for us, and we managed to do some interesting activities using our theme and flash cards. As our kids grow, we need to change up our activities about once every six months, so are planning to have 2 PLANNING Meetings a year to discuss in person our policies, activities, etc. In the future, we would, of course, like to add reading and writing to our activities. | ||||||||
| How does it benefit families? |
I think most of us have really shown support for each other in our daily struggles, not just with bilingualism, but with working, mothering, etc. The Japanese moms are getting more and more confident with their English (which was really good to begin with anyway!) and they are so helpful to the foreign moms. We have had some holiday BKC parties, birthday BKC parties as well because outside of her daycare friends, my daughter’s closest friends are her BKC friends. One member started a tradition last year. At every party we have, we toast with glasses of champagne, and we toast to BKC and our friendship. It’s so much fun.
I think that for my daughter, having friends who also can speak English or are at least comfortable with foreigners, hearing English, etc. will be really valuable to her in the future. These BKC friends of hers won’t think her foreign mom is a weirdo or that she is a hafu…they'll just see us normal. I'm glad we started this group when the kids were so young because they won't remember ever NOT being part of the BKC. | ||||||||