Immersion Programs ...

Deborah - posted on 04/14/2009

Maybe the fact that immersion involves another language she might not be bored so quickly and again ... this is her first experience in school so she might very well be content in the social environment and this is a non-issue. But just in case....

Morag - posted on 04/14/2009

Lil miss is kind of on in an immersion class so to speak, we live in Spain and English nursery schools cost too much, so she goes to a Spanish one. She'll be going to Spanish school anyway so felt it was a good heads up. I know your daughter is a bit older than my youngest, but my eldest was the same age when she started Spanish school. It took her around 3 months to fully digest the language. By which time they are slightly behind academically, but not much and my eldest only had problems catching up because she has dyslexia.

Lil miss though, who really is leap years ahead of, not only her age group, but her sister when her sister was the same age, started saying Spanish words in 2 weeks of her first day and within 6 she was speaking lots of phrases and understood it completely. Now we speak no Spanish at home, neither does her other carers (the grandmas only speak Swedish and English), we don't watch a lot of TV and even then not much in Spanish. Lil miss only goes to nursery half days (Mon, Wed, Fri - 9:30 til 1:30 and Tue,Thurs - 3.30 to 6:30), so her knowledge of Spanish has been impressive considering the time frame. Your LO will probably be the same, especially if you start her in a summer program.

I assume the Spanish school is technically a private school, which means you should be more able to discuss your options as to moving her up the grades, rather than keeping her in a lower grade :) Lil miss' nursery school is private and we have been able to discuss moving her up into the older age group where they teach them counting and colours, which was no problem. We've also been very lucky because the teacher just loves teaching lil miss because she loves learning, and learns so fast.

The only thing I will say is that Spanish has become her preferred language over English, despite her being mostly in an English speaking environment. We have come to the conclusion that this is because she must see Spanish as the language that lil miss sized people speak and therefore the language she thinks she should converse in. Plus everyone but my mum understands Spanish so its not like she's not understood most of the time so probably doesn't even realise that not everyone understands. You might not have that problem, but its something to be aware of.

Rebekah - posted on 04/13/2009

Deborah,

Henry goes to a Spanish enrichment at his Montessori 2x a week. We are doing the Spanish immersion in the fall. Of course, the immersion will be a different environment because it will be a regular classroom rather than the small, guided language class he has now. I can't say for sure how that will go, and I expect they'll still need to find ways to challenge him in that setting, but with what he has been doing so far with language, he doesn't seem to mind going over colors, numbers, letters, days of the week, etc in Spanish and really enjoys having languages as a kind of game for himself. He used to be in the habit of giving a "funny" incorrect answer when people asked him things that he thought were too easy and now he just answers in Spanish or French. It still throws the adults for a loop because they're expecting English, but at least he's not intentionally giving the wrong answer to prove a point.