This post was published August 15th, 2015 through a former blog site on edu blogs. I was able to gain access to this writing and wanted to share it here. It was nice to revisit former writings and reflect on prior experiences.

 "Be careful!", “Attenzione!”, “Hasta Luego!”, "Au revoir ” and “Komm her!” While sitting in a playground in Lloret de Mar, Spain I listened. I really listened! Five languages existed in one space and the uniting factor was the playground! Oh the richness of the languages heard on this playground! In this post, I want to take a moment to share two lessons learned from observing the interactions of multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual children. The first lesson is that a “Playground” has its own language children can connect with easily and the children communicate in a way that is comprehensible even across different languages!

     “Playground” has it’s own language that children can understand across cultural backgrounds! The open space, slide, swing, monkey bars, and free reign (in one sense) are standard. Children essentially have a "third space" or area they can connect with easily. As I walked around the playground, my eyes and ears were opened to the language diversity around me. I could hear a young girl giving directions to a group of friends in Spanish, a mother telling her son to go down the slide in French, and a father tirelessly directing his son to pay careful attention while climbing the ropes in Italian. The words, expressions, and self-talk amongst the children was amazing to hear. Yet, there was one moment when all the children were in the same area and a special bond was formed. They were attempting to climb up and go down a slide. The children in one way or another found a way to communicate while enjoying the adventure of climbing and sliding down the slide. There was something about their interactions with one another in which the language of “playground” shined through!

     Though I have been educated on how to teach children the building blocks of literacy and language, I found that children have some of these skills naturally instilled into them. Specifically, these children have the skills to make language comprehensible in the playground atmosphere. This could be due to the fact that the playground atmosphere is open and free for exploration and even mistakes, which could create an environment where cooperative learning thrives. On the playground, my daughter skinned her knee while coming down a tunnel slide. A group of girls who were with her came over to explain what happened in Spanish. What was so amazing about this interaction their patience, and ability to break the situation down into comprehensible bits (comprehensible input) for me to understand! As adults we tend to expect children to understand what we say the first time. Yet, these young girls instinctually knew how to explain a scenario that is understandable to a person that speaks another language.

     My time on the playground was brief in order to formally capture child-child, adult-child, and child-adult interactions. If ever given other opportunities, I would love to capture these interactions and conversations in depth! I believe there would be powerful lessons that could have implications on language acquisition and the importance of the playground in multi- lingual and multi-ethnic communities! If you are a parent or teacher and have a few moments, listen and write down what you hear on the playground amongst children. Soak it up. I mean really SOAK it up  and see the lessons that can be learned!