7 Fun Home Ideas How To Celebrate Linggo ng Wika

How can we celebrate Linggo ng Wika when we’re just stuck at home?

Although it falls on the tail end of NCR Plus’ ECQ, that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate Linggo ng Wika at home! During our old school days, each student would bring at least one (1) Filipino dish from bilaos filled with Palabok to paper bags filled with Puto or Kutsinta. Or, we would play all sorts of Filipino games and dance to some of their folk songs. But since schools can’t do grand celebrations because of the pandemic, we can try these fun ideas at home.

1. Watch Filipino movies

Filipino movies are more than just crying and love triangles. There are some cool Filipino movies like Heneral Luna or Goyo that tell the history of the Philippines while making learning about our heroes more fun than just reading them out of a textbook. Filipinos also have a vast collection of comedy movies too so what better way for your kids to learn Filipino during Linggo ng Wika than via watching movies? If not there, we can check it out on Youtube.

2. Cook authentic Filipino dishes

Filipinos love food especially for big celebrations like Linggo ng Wika. Time to break out lola‘s old cookbook and check out what recipes we can whip out to make a good home-cooked Filipino fiesta! If there’s anything Filipino moms are proud of, it’s that they have an old recipe for Filipino dishes that’s always been a crowd-pleaser from lumpia, adobo, or even kare-kare. We can even ask some help from the kids to cook it so they know the story behind the recipe.

3. Read a Filipino book or two

Filipinos have such a rich culture that it’s impossible for anyone not to find a book about the Philippines. Some books even offer Tagalog translations which are one way to improve your kid’s ability to speak Tagalog and find more things to love about the language. There are legends, fables, and even parables that are written in Tagalog so reading it does help. It even keeps them off the screen for awhile.

4. Enjoy some Filipino snacks

No Linggo ng Wika home celebration will be complete without having an assortment of snacks or what we like to call kakanin. Kakanin are the little snacks that are usually made from rice so, puto, kutsinta, maja blanca, and bibingkang malagkit fall under that group. Some places even specialize in it like Via Mare has delicious Puto Bumbong and Salted Egg Bibingka. Or, for Puto, there’s Nathaniels, Dolors Kakanin or, House of PutoBao for your local delicacies.

5. Tagalog Day!

The best way to learn how to speak a language is to constantly use it at home. For one day, have you and your kids constantly speak Tagalog to one another to teach them. We can even gamify it! If one of them speaks English instead of Tagalog, they’ll have to do some chores or they’ll have to do something you want them to do. The same rule applies to us too if we do the same.

6. Build Intramuros in Minecraft

Since kids are into Minecraft nowadays, why not have them build famous Philippine architectures to celebrate Linggo ng Wika at home? Since Minecraft is a sandbox game, you can build all sorts of things from Fort Santiago, Manila Cathedral, the famous walled city itself, and even small coastal villages. It will also give you a chance to teach your child other subjects such as the science behind agriculture and how that industry has kept the Philippines alive all these years.

7. Listen to lolo’s and lola‘s stories

One of the greatest virtues of any Filipino is filial piety or love for family. While you can’t really visit lolo and lola physically, setting up a Zoom or Google Meet call with them to talk with them about how the Philippines was like will definitely brighten up their day. Linggo ng Wika is not just knowing the language and how to use it but also seeing the history behind the language and how it has changed over time.

Linggo ng Wika at home can be interesting

Learning about the different Philippine languages, drinking different kinds of coffee from different parts of the Philippines, understanding your rights to vote — there are so many ways to celebrate Linggo ng Wika at home even during the pandemic. While it does need us to squeeze out all our creative juices to make it a fun and interactive one, it’ll be something that we can learn and enjoy together as a family. It’s time we show kids that learning Filipino doesn’t always have to be boring and stressful especially during this homeschool year.

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