We taught our kids to speak english first before we introduced Tagalog words.

I personally never thought one language was more important than the other but I knew that Tagalog, being our mother tongue will be easily learned by my kids because that's how I learned growing up and It was a breeze for me.

Prior to September, where we're set to venture into the world of Homeschooling, I've been doing a lot of research on parent teaching methods.

One thing my husband feels I'm so obsessive with is correcting my kids' choice of words.

I tell him that more than being the "Grammar Police", I want my kids to accept that being corrected is okay because its going to make them better at what they do. I'm not by any means perfect when it come to the proper use of language. I learn too as we go along and I need to constantly review and recheck myself as well. So really, HATS OFF TO ALL TEACHERS! :)

My eldest loves to read. She reads different Almanacs, Books, Googles things she doesn't understand and has learned to use the dictionary at seven.

My little boy however, does not have as much patience as his sister so I teach him more directly.

He LOVES making up words! It starts out cute but when I think about the time when he grows up and uses those words, it's really going to be a turn-off! LOL.

His common words that I correct on a regular basis are mostly in past tense:

1. EAT becomes "EATED" instead of ATE

2. BRING becomes "BRINGED" instead of BROUGHT

3. FIGHT becomes "FIGHTED" instead of FOUGHT

and mostly other words that aren't supposed to have "ED" in the end. hehe

It's most likely because most past tense words generally end with "ED". 

Since he really doesn't have more than 3 minutes of patience to learn a bunch of words at the same time, we do it on a practical and regular application.

My first step is to keep correcting him and be patient with correcting him. 

I also ask him to say the sentence again then place a POSITIVE reinforcement of "Good Job!" or "That's great!" and he loves it so he remembers most of it the next time he uses the word.

I'd love to know how other moms and dads teach their kids the right way to use words.

It's actually a very fun challenge.

Cheers!