I'm a new aunt to two beautiful Siberian children, ages 4 and 7, adopted by my brother-in-law. I did Pimsleur's Russian 1 to learn basics, but everything in that course was designed to address people formally. I can't read Cyrillic (yet) so I can't make much of verb conjugations written out in Cyrillic and not transliterated.

I've picked up on a few things to say to them, but mostly they're commands, like "be careful," "sit down," "don't do that," "come here." I don't know how to ask many questions, because I don't know the "informal you" tense of any verbs. Does anyone have any recommendations about where I can find resources on speaking to children? For instance, I'd like to be able to ask things like, "how are you?," "how is school going?," "do you like (food, sports, games, television shows, music, etc)?," "do you have?," "do you know?" I would like to know how to pronounce the "informal you, I, he/she, we, and they" tenses of verbs, particularly to be, to know, to have, to want, to do, to go, to eat, to sleep, and reading it in Cyrillic doesn't help me at all. All I learned with Pimsleur were the "formal you" tense for a handful of verbs and the "I" tense for fewer than that.

I know the kids will be picking up English, but not quickly enough that they'll understand conversations right away. Thank you to anyone who can help me! Oh, and does anyone happen to know what the names "Lyubov" and "Alexey" translate to in English? Just curious!