How can international families find books in their home languages while living abroad? One way is our community Book Swap! What’s that?
Book Swap Party 2024 – NEW DATE!
Who for: Families who are expecting a baby or have a child aged 0-10 years old.
When: Wednesday 12th June 1-4pm.
Where: In a brand new beautiful park in Bernex – details of exactly where to find us will be sent to you after registration along with public transport/parking tips.
What to expect: Please bring a maximum of 3 books in good condition, in any language, to offer at the swap.
You’re also welcome to come with no books! The purpose of the party is to connect with other families raising a multilingual child.
I’ll organise afternoon snacks for you and your little one.
We’ll have a chance to get to know each other, eat snacks together and there’ll be plenty of room and time for the children to play. We’ll also have a storytime session and I’ll tell you all about our courses at the English Voice Academy.
How much: 10chf per family – registration deadline Monday 10th June.
Note: This event is free for our students and their families – please send us a message on ClassDojo confirming that you’re coming by Monday 10th June.
Registration is necessary: Tap the button to register and the day before the swap we’ll send you ALL the info that you need to make this event a great success for your family and the English Voice Academy community.
What’s the story behind our book swap event?
I’ve been thinking about how to find good books a lot over the years and have developed strategies to find them in our family languages. When I was preparing for our international move to Switzerland I tried to reduce our belongings before we left. We had lot of books in Italian, Dutch and English and couldn’t possibly take them all. I knew that many families local to me, living in the Netherlands, struggled to find books for their children.
This led to an amazing idea: The English Voice Academy Book Swap!
So I organised the book swap event and invited my local school community. We all met in a beautiful Delft park. In total we were 11 families and could count at least 11 languages between us:
- English
- Dutch
- Italian
- Indonesian
- French
- Chinese
- Hungarian
- Lithuanian
- Tunisian
- Japanese
- Russian
It was such a pleasure to see everyone, play with the children and hear all those languages in use! Everyone took new (to them) books home and the few books that were left over went to our local second hand shop.
More about reading:
We have lots of posts about reading for pleasure on the blog because it’s so important when it comes to learning a language. Check out these posts:
- How to help children to learn to read in multiple languages
- How can I help my child who is struggling with reading?
- 5 tips to help your child love reading
