Judah attends a home-based Spanish immersion preschool two days a week, for those of you that didn’t know. As a result, she has replaced several of her English words with Spanish and now will ONLY use the Spanish version of each word. If I forget and use the English word, I am immediately reprimanded. The list is:
agua
leche
gracias/no, gracias
de nada
por favor
uno
dos
tres
cuatro
cinco
diez
dame besos
dame abrazos
zapatos is a so-so
Her preschool also uses a lot of songs as a teaching and transition method. They have a song they sing when they pick up things to put a space back together, when they transition from indoors to out and vice versa, when they wash their hands, and lot of other songs as well. She is constantly singing in Spanish. Half the time, I have no idea what she is singing - she is learning the way she learned English - by repeating the words she does know, mixed with making up words for the words she can’t remember.
Luckily, I know enough Spanish to be able to converse with her and give her commands and instructions and talk and read to her. And she pretty much knows what I’m saying - lots of pointing and exaggerated displays of motioning helps, too.
Joshua, however… not so much. We’ve purchased Spanish and bilingual books through Scholastic Book Clubs for her and she loves to have us read them to her. It’s always a hoot (yes, i just said “a hoot”) to listen to my husband attempt to read to her in Spanish. He stumbles through each sentence, reading Spanish with a French accent. Which, you know, go figure. I speak what little German I know with a Spanish accent, and I’m sure I’ll do that with my French I’m going to learn, so hey.
Her preschool resumes from Christmas Break, starting tomorrow. That’s the only way I got her to go to bed with no fuss tonight. So if you speak Spanish, and would like to conduct a Spanish-only relationship with her, that’s fine by me. The more reinforcement, the better.
Hasta manana!
Good for you all. I started French in High School and dream of finishing it fluently.
oh my god, she’s in school……it has begun.