Help - where can I find resources to help me care for a Polish child

[underpaidandoverworked]

IChild have resources in Spanish and French but I can't find anywhere that has any resources to help me communicate with a Polish mindee who doesnt speak any English. She understands what you say to her, but I thought maybe posters or flashcards would help us along - and would also help other children communicate with her.

Anyone got any ideas

A while back I looked after a little Mongolian girl who also had no english. Dual language resources were non-existant. We made together some photo books of important routine things - eg toilet, water cup, sink for washing hands, her shoes and coat, me and the other children who came to the setting and activities she liked doing eg drawing, computer etc. We added to it as we went on and also made another identical book for me or the other children to use.

We also religiously stuck pictures of what she had done into a photo album every day accompanied by key pictures - eg if we had been doing drawing I would stick in a photo of her drawing, a picture of felt pens and some colours - eg red, yellow and blue. If we went to the duck pond we would stick in a photo of her feeding the ducks, pictures ducks and bread etc. She loved this album and would take it home to share with her Mum and Dad and liked to look at it with me and the other children as it was "her book" which she could understand. Indeed, this was the main source of a lot of her english learning as we looked at it such a lot. She would chat away to me in Mongolian about the pictures in this book but thankfully, she was much better at learning english than I ever was at attempting Mongolian!

Hope this helps. Coral

I am not sure whether this will help and it may only be an occasional remedy when you are just stuck for a single word but there are quite a few free translation websites out there - for example, bab.la has an English to Polish and Polish to English service (en.bab.la/dictionary/english-polish.html.) You punch in the word and it gives you the translation. I use this for another European language all the time but I just punched in "playground" and the Polish word for it is "boisko". It really is completely free, you don't even need a user name.

They also do other languages like Hindi and Japanese but not Mongolian!

I think that you are both very brave to take on children who speak no English - and I think that the children must be very brave, too - imagine being looked after by someone who does not speak your language. It is really great that you want to make the effort to communicate with them! Good luck! (Perhaps you could post to let me know whether the translation site is useful at all in such a situation.)

Have you asked your local early years and childcare department,and also have a look on the makaton website there are some resources you may find helpful. Depending on where you live if there are quite a few polish in the community it might be worth asking the local playgroup,school and childrens centre if you could borrow some resources.

I thought it said resources for a posh child must get some sleep / glasses / coffee

hi i to have polish children how old is yours? mums dont want me to talk polish to them only english, they are so pleased if i read them their school book with the child as at home its hard

all i am saying is if the child understands you dont worry their english will improve overtime and the better it gets the more the child imprves

atwork - , lol

Child is almost 3, mother speaks no english either, dad can make himself understood pretty well.

Thanks all, off to Metrocentre tomorrow to see if WHSmith have anything.

The festival shop has plenty of dual language story books, including lots of familiar stories such as hanadas surprise etc. they have a number of polish/english and currently have a sale on -BUT IT ENDS TODAY!!!

Here you go, Sparklebox

Feenie, I would have thought that such an "outstanding" teacher such as yourself would not have been promoting a website put together by a pedophile....tsk tsk

His convictions weren't common knowledge in October 2009,and he hadn't been sentenced - but of course, you will know that.

I am happy to link to an article - here - in case anyone reading this archived thread doesn't know about it - perhaps you may usefully have done that, if you weren't so set on sarcasm and spite instead?

I fully expect you to run crying to HQ to get this deleted, as usual, but I rather think you may have shot yourself in the foot first, this time.