Guest Blogger
Julia Pimsleur Levine
Julia Pimsleur Levine is the Founder and CEO of the Little Pim Corporation, which produces and distributes the Little Pim: fun with languages series to introduce young children to a second language. Her background is in filmmaking, having produced award-winning documentary films that were shown on HBO, CinemaxReelife and PBS. Pimsleur Levine was inspired to create Little Pim in part from having grown up in the language teaching business. Her father, Dr. Paul Pimsleur, created one of the most popular and acclaimed audio teaching language methods for adults, The Pimsleur Methodtm. When developing Little Pim’s Entertainment Immersion Methodtm, Pimsleur Levine worked with a leading neuroscientist, drew from her filmmaking and language teaching background, and her own experiences teaching her own young children French.
Little Pim has sold thousands of copies since its launch, is in Barnes and Noble nation-wide, over 600 retail outlets across the country, major e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com, BabiesRUs.com and Target.com and is available in 10 languages. Little Pim has expanded its language teaching materials to include flash cards, CDs and iPhone apps, and is currently working with PBS to create the first foreign language teaching game for its subscription web site, PBS Kids Play.
Pimsleur Levine is a graduate of the French National Film School (MFA), Yale University (BA) and Harvard’s Executive Education Program. She lives in New York City with her husband Darren and their two sons, Emmett (5) and Adrian (2). She speaks fluent French, conversant Italian and a bit of German and Spanish.
www.littlepim.com/
The Disney Controversy: To Watch, or Not to Watch
As most of you who read my blog know, I am the mother of two young boys under the age of five and the creator of Little Pim, an educational DVD series that introduces babies, toddlers and preschoolers to a second language. Although I have mixed feelings about the Disney refund that was reported in [...]
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Media Literacy
Our world is becoming more and more crowded with media. Whether in our living rooms, on our commutes or in our classrooms, every waking moment can be occupied by consuming media. Whether it’s looking up “what causes earthquakes” on Google with my eldest son Emmett and finding a video to explain it, or the news [...]
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Fun with Languages While Traveling
With the arrival of summer you may be planning a family trip by car, plane, train, or in this economy, bicycle! When you have your little ones captive during travel time, it’s a great opportunity to play language games that reinforce their budding skills. And most importantly, it is something fun to do together.
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Your Child’s Foreign Language Future
Last week the New York Times reported on the unfortunate rate at which foreign language education programs in schools in the northeast are being cut to help balance budgets. If you’ve been following my blog, you probably share in my belief that speaking a foreign language is no longer an expendable luxury but an important [...]
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Culture At Home: Meals Around the World
I am always looking for ways to introduce my children to new languages, and also to the idea that we live in a world with many different cultures, traditions, foods and lifestyles.
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Language and Your Child: Introducing Dr. Bialystock
I was pleased to attend a talk at a local Barnes & Noble by Dr. Ellen Bialystok, who was speaking about the cognitive benefits of children being bilingual. She is a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University in Canada. I have been following her work for a long time and have cited her [...]
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Parents Want To Know: Can Learning Two Languages Cause Speech Delays?
I recently spoke to a wonderful group of mothers at a Big City Mom’s lunch on the upper east side in New York. I have been speaking to moms groups in cities across the country, and one of the questions that has come up more than once is whether learning a second language causes speech [...]
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