It's been nice to sit and reflect on the twins' kindergarten year of the dual language program. I always intended on sharing our experience, so I've had lots of little notes on my phone/iPad to look at.
Kinder started off better than I expected. With close to no Spanish being spoken in the house, we told the twins that they are going to a class where they will learn Spanish, and that they may not understand what the teacher is saying, but to pay attention to what she is doing. We were fortunate that they never expressed that they didn't want to be in the class and have never said anything negative about learning Spanish.
The twins learned about letrás, alphabet sounds, phonetics, palabras, numeros and lots more, exactly what any other Kindergartner would learn, just in Spanish. The first point of reference we had was a parent teacher conference, 2 months into the Kinder year, where the kids are tested as a natural Spanish speakers. The results were that they were at the "expected" level at their grade, as a natural Spanish speaker, which is amazing!
It was quite a moment of relief, because 5 year olds can only tell you so much of what they learned during the day. And even if they understand in Spanish, sometimes translating that back to English to explain is not the easiest thing.
As far as their progression, I have boy-girl twins, in the same dual language class, each on seperate learning path. It is the nature/nurture debate, right before our eyes, because all though they have always been in the same preschool and elementary school environment, have the same home environment, same bedtime books read to them, they are different. They learn differently. Their progression is different.
For my daughter, phonetics, putting sílabas together to make words comes a bit easier. She loves writing and has such a desire to figure out how to write something, it helps her when she is sounding out words.
My son thinks differently. He is not to interested in the steps that it takes to get to read, but when it clicks, he is so excited!
But for both, months into starting school, I can remember them telling me that sometimes her brain is in Spanish, and would proudly tell their cousins that they knew Spanish and were in a Spanish class.
As a family, we expanded our cultura! We started new traditions and began celebrating Día de Los Muertos and los Reyes Magos.
The year ended on a great note! The twins met all the objectives necessary to move onto the First Grade! With the help of other parents, we formed a parent group to be a resource for each other, and we were on our way!
Then came the summer. They stayed home with my spouse, and attended some camps, but as that first day of First grade came, I had a few shoulda-woulda-couldas, know what I mean?
I'm going to share that in the next post, along with what I hope to do next summer.
Hope you enjoyed reading about our year. Please share any questions you may have in the comments!
