Post by Laura L. on Sept 3, 2017 12:05:32 GMT 9
Any homeschooling families whose children are far from fluent in the community language? This may get long, but it's a somewhat unique situation.
Our first was born when we still lived overseas. When we moved to USA (Florida) we decided to keep speaking our native language, Spanish, to her ("one language first" strategy), hoping to eventually switch to MLaH so she'd have a decent base...and they'd just perfect English once they started school. Fast forward a few years: we later discerned that we'd be homeschooling. In hindsight, I deeply regret not choosing a different language strategy back then.
So, our oldest is now almost 5yo, and while she can understand basic instructions and her vocabulary has been growing, she has a long way to go. I can't even read a picture book without having to translate a significant part of it, and chapter books have to be in Spanish. I plan to do most of our HS in English, other than LA (I'm doing both languages to an extent) and maybe a particular subject (or more) down the road. While I could wait and wait until she naturally absorbs some of it, it's terribly unpractical, among other things.
Her fluency in Spanish is quite guaranteed given her exposure with a local family (who speak limited English), so ironically what I need is to expose her more to the community language. We've tried different attempts of language blocks, but that's not working too well, so I need something different. (Too well = it was insanity!) I've come to the conclusion that if she's in an environment where nobody speaks Spanish, she'll have a breakthrough!!, but with us or any Spanish speaker being around she knows she can just say it in Spanish and get by. I've worked a lot on her mindset, though, so she's now excited and willing to learn English, and she actually thinks she knows a lot of English.
Over the past couple of years I've enrolled her in PE, gymnastics and ballet, and taken her to Story Time (parents waiting outside) and it hasn't helped much if at all, although some of the instructors spoke Spanish to her. We did a weekly coop last year, too, which helped to an extent. We recently moved to another city in NE Florida and I'm trying to think what kind of coops or classes would be a better fit for these kind it interactions.
PE class, for instance, was tricky because she couldn't understand the instructions for the different new-to-her games and then was pretty much clueless as to what she was supposed to be doing. Oh, I also have a 2.5yo boy (and a newborn) in a similar boat, although he's been more exposed.
What in the world do I do? I've thought of maybe a mother's helper to come play with them at my house, a drop-in class... I'm enrolling her in gymnastics here (which she loves) and now that we moved to this city our active social life happens almost exclusively in English (other than my in-laws), and that's helping a bit. What else can I do? My kids don't have any screen time and I wouldn't want to change that.
Once we get them to a stronger base with English, we can go back to an official language strategy which will likely be MLaH and maybe also language blocks, but for now we had to choose parenting and sanity first and take a break from the official strategy, because it was getting really bad.
If you read all this, wow!, thank you!
Our first was born when we still lived overseas. When we moved to USA (Florida) we decided to keep speaking our native language, Spanish, to her ("one language first" strategy), hoping to eventually switch to MLaH so she'd have a decent base...and they'd just perfect English once they started school. Fast forward a few years: we later discerned that we'd be homeschooling. In hindsight, I deeply regret not choosing a different language strategy back then.
So, our oldest is now almost 5yo, and while she can understand basic instructions and her vocabulary has been growing, she has a long way to go. I can't even read a picture book without having to translate a significant part of it, and chapter books have to be in Spanish. I plan to do most of our HS in English, other than LA (I'm doing both languages to an extent) and maybe a particular subject (or more) down the road. While I could wait and wait until she naturally absorbs some of it, it's terribly unpractical, among other things.
Her fluency in Spanish is quite guaranteed given her exposure with a local family (who speak limited English), so ironically what I need is to expose her more to the community language. We've tried different attempts of language blocks, but that's not working too well, so I need something different. (Too well = it was insanity!) I've come to the conclusion that if she's in an environment where nobody speaks Spanish, she'll have a breakthrough!!, but with us or any Spanish speaker being around she knows she can just say it in Spanish and get by. I've worked a lot on her mindset, though, so she's now excited and willing to learn English, and she actually thinks she knows a lot of English.
Over the past couple of years I've enrolled her in PE, gymnastics and ballet, and taken her to Story Time (parents waiting outside) and it hasn't helped much if at all, although some of the instructors spoke Spanish to her. We did a weekly coop last year, too, which helped to an extent. We recently moved to another city in NE Florida and I'm trying to think what kind of coops or classes would be a better fit for these kind it interactions.
PE class, for instance, was tricky because she couldn't understand the instructions for the different new-to-her games and then was pretty much clueless as to what she was supposed to be doing. Oh, I also have a 2.5yo boy (and a newborn) in a similar boat, although he's been more exposed.
What in the world do I do? I've thought of maybe a mother's helper to come play with them at my house, a drop-in class... I'm enrolling her in gymnastics here (which she loves) and now that we moved to this city our active social life happens almost exclusively in English (other than my in-laws), and that's helping a bit. What else can I do? My kids don't have any screen time and I wouldn't want to change that.
Once we get them to a stronger base with English, we can go back to an official language strategy which will likely be MLaH and maybe also language blocks, but for now we had to choose parenting and sanity first and take a break from the official strategy, because it was getting really bad.
If you read all this, wow!, thank you!
