So Nice To Meet You!
I am Maria, a playful learning and education expert, Montessori homeschooler and a busy mom of 3 tri-lingual children.
I support families around the globe to raise happy and creative kids in more than one language. With Montessori-based playful learning methods. Simple, fun and effective.
You would like your children to naturally become fluent in more than one language – either because you speak several languages in your family, you live abroad, or your child goes to a bilingual school?
As a mom of 3 multilingual children between the age of 0 and 9 years old, and living since more than ten years in different African and Asian countries, I know exactly how challenging it can be to raise your child in more than one language and to access high quality educational offers.
Let me take you on our playful learning and language journey. With a lot of play, some perseverance and lots of funny memories, my kids are by now fluent in three languages and the oldest ones have started reading and writing in English, French and German.
You thought it would be easy, but now you are feeling overwhelmed and unclear how to best raise your child with multiple languages and cultures?
You would like your child to be able to read and write in your (home) language(s), but you are not sure how to do that without putting additional pressure on your child.
Would you like your child to learn with fun and ease? To be motivated and not pressured and to spend more quality time as a family?
I am here to guide, support and inspire you.
Learning does not have to be a struggle.
Children naturally learn when it is interesting and relevant.
Imagine your child wanting to learn with curiosity and enthusiasm.
Imagine, being able to support your child´s language development as you wish despite your doubts, your busy schedule and with limited resources.
How do I know how it can work? Because I was exactly where you are – being a busy parent living in Africa and Asia and wanting to create an environment for my children where they could grow up with different languages and still have a lot of time for play without getting stuck in power struggles and spending a fortune on private lessons.
As we started our journey of Montessori homeschooling with Covid19 lockdowns, I developed a Montessori-based curriculum for my children that allows them to learn in 3 languages through playful learning prompts, arts and crafts and music.
With three children and very limited time to prepare, I only use what we have around our house, mostly recycled and natural materials.
I truly believe that learning and play are mutually reinforcing each other.
Let me show you how you can make learning in more than one language easy and fun – without lots of materials and time.
There is not one learning strategy that works for everyone.
When my first son was born, we used to live in Benin and I was asking myself how we could manage French and German at home. I read several books and still felt unsecure. 10 months later we moved to Ethiopia, and suddenly we had four languages with English at school and Amharic in the community. Things got much more complex.
Today, French is still our family language, my husband speaks French to the kids and I speak German. English is their ‘school’- language and now Vietnamese is the community language.
There is not one strategy that works for everyone.
Growing up with different languages is such a gift.
But let’s be honest – it can be a very bumpy road.
We had to think and rethink over and over again how we best transmit our languages. There were moments when we felt one of the languages was getting left behind. There are moments when my husband feels left out when we are having discussions in German. There are moments when writing in French feels like an impossible endeavor.
But then, there are the moments, when your toddler starts speaking in one language to you, then turns the head to his dead and continues in the other language; when the children are writing birthday invitation cards to their friends in three different languages; when they are doing a circus show in German because their grandmother participates over WhatsApp.
My mission is to support you to spend memorable moments with your children, to see them naturally growing up with several languages and to become confident, creative and happy global citizens.
This is what we can achieve together
You learn how to
easily bring play and creativity into your home with limited time and resources.
We develop a strategy
so you can support your child to naturally speak, read and write in more than one language with confidence and without stress and pressure
You discover
how you can create simple, yet effective language learning opportunities for different ages and learning levels throughout your everyday family life.
I show you
how to create simple and powerful Montessori-inspired learning activities that foster creativity, vocabulary development and literacy, but most importantly fill children with fun and a wish to learn more.
We work together to
make learning fun and interesting, as part of a child´s natural development process and not something abstract and constraining.
I am happy to share my proven strategies, tips and Montessori-based activities so that your children become happy multilingual learners and curious global citizens.
We’ll take it step-by-step wherever you currently are.
The best time to start with playful learning is at birth.
The second-best time is now.
Let´s hop on a 30min free orientation call
and see how I can best support you
But there is more to Abracadabra Creative Learning ….
The idea for Abracadabra Creative Learning was born when we stayed in a small village near Lalibela in Northern Ethiopia. My vision is for children to have access to playful learning opportunities independently of their background, to make learning more fun and effective and to prepare them for a better future in an ever more complex world.
This is why my team and myself also offer teacher trainings and Nanny Training Courses in Creative Play and Learning in various developing and emerging countries, such as Ethiopia, Mali, DR Kongo, Senegal, Uganda, Tanzania, Thailand, Vietnam, etc..
10 Fun Facts about me
- I love being in nature and walking in the forest is one of the things I miss most since living abroad.
- As a child I used to learn Russian `just out of fun´ before leaving for school.
- Our kids have never seen snow, although they lived and travelled to more than 10 different countries.
- I love the idea of simple life and to make things by myself rather than buying them. There always is a big box with recycled materials in our kitchen.
- Music is an important part of my life and I have been singing in different choirs in each of our different locations.
- People would probably say I am very structured and will always find ways to make things more efficient.
- We are a no-screen family and my kids spend a lot of time playing with leaves, sticks and stones. A big exception is the `Sendung mit der Maus´, a German educative TV show, I already watched as a child and still enjoy watching with the kids today.
- Meditation is one of the things that help me to keep my focus and sanity in all our daily chaos.
- I love learning languages and have learnt (or tried at least to learn) besides English and French, also Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Amharic and Vietnamese.
- My dream has always been to travel the world – now we are five and still enjoying very much to discover different cultures, ways of thinking, ways of eating, and ways of playing.
