Mom bloggers using Popplet get double the opportunities to use our visual thinking and idea management app. At home, Popplet can be used by families as part of language games with kids, while at the home office desk, Popplet can help organize blog ideas and manage content plans.
Maria Grundtvig is one of our many international Popplet users. Her blog “My cousin Maria” – in Danish, Min Kusine Maria – shares her skills and knowledge as both a mom and as a trained speech and language pathologist.
For mom bloggers around the world just starting out, Maria shares her experiences in our Popplet People interview. She talks about using Popplet in language games with kids, organizing her blog ideas with Popplet and building an international blog audience.
Q: Your family-oriented blog looks to be about how parents and teachers can create fun activities that encourage language acquisition amongst Danish toddlers. How did the idea for the blog come about and what has been the reaction to it?
I actually started the blog to get an outlet for my everyday ideas and also to create a kind of archive with activities for children. I kept getting ideas that would be a shame to forget.
As a trained speech and language pathologist, it is impossible not think about the language potential in all activities, especially the everyday ones.
People often ask me for advice about their children and especially their children’s language learning: How do I speak with my kids? What kind of language games can we play at home? And especially: Do you have any ideas for children with language difficulties? I found myself repeating the same advice to many different people, which made me think that it would be a lot easier if I had somewhere I could direct these people to read, preferably a place where I could tell them exactly what to look for, where they could see what to do and where they could get the information in their own time (instead of over the supermarket food aisle or standing at the kindergarten room door). I started researching and found a lot of English speaking mom bloggers doing similar things, but no one in Danish.
Q:Who reads your blog, Min Kusine Maria?
My main readers are moms and people who work with children professionally: speech and language pathologists, and nursery, kindergarten and primary school teachers.
The vast majority of my readers are Danes, but there are also quite a few readers in Sweden and Iceland. Thanks to Google Translate, I believe, I also get visits from readers in the rest of Europe, Australia, US and Asia!
Q: You have used Popplet in your blog work to add a mind map visual to go with your story on cloth diapers. Have you used Popplet in any other ways to manage your blog work?
I have also used Popplet to arrange my thoughts for a blog post that I have not published yet. It has been hard for me to pinpoint what should go where in this post, so I tried using Popplet as a work tool as well. I usually write the blog posts over several weeks, whenever my schedule allows and my brain works very visually. So it has been a great way for me to see content’s connections and quickly get back into what I was thinking, without having to start all over in my head.
Q: What tips/ideas would you give to other mom bloggers who might be wanting to use Popplet in their creative work?
Remember to use the different color options. Colors can be used both to differentiate or gather the information in a popplet in a visual, intuitive and immediate way.
Q: How do you think families can use Popplet with their kids to make language learning fun and playful?
I think families can use Popplet as a visual reminder. Popplet helps convey systems, connections and relationships between things that would otherwise be harder for a child to grasp or remember.
Because it is visual, it is a lot easier for kids (and adults) to understand and remember the information. Because you can make changes as you go, an adult can make a Popplet together with a child to gain more engagement from the child in the activity and to more easily incorporate the child’s input.
The popplet map that arises lends itself very much to working with vocabulary as it resembles the mental map we use to arrange, understand and store words in our brain.
Q: Any other comments?
I really like that there is a free version, so that you can try it out before you get hooked and buy.
A language learning game for kids idea
Maria shares this tip: “Children and adults could think of words and arrange them into correct semantic categories (like actions, locations, objects) using Popplet. While organizing the word into categories, parents and kids can talk about the word definitions, why words belong to a particular category, and how some words belong in several categories. This all strengthens and actually draws on the connections that make up our vocabulary. (Hey! That sounds like a great idea for a blog post – I better go make that now!)”
Thanks to Maria for sharing her insights. You can read her blog (with the help of Google Translate if necessary!) at Min Kusine Maria.
We are looking to feature Maria’s work alongside other mom bloggers who use Popplet in a feature article for another website. If you are a mom blogger or use Popplet in language learning games with kids, please contact us at mark@popplet.com.