Wednesday 15 February 2012

Billingual Nursery or not, that would be the question & Babeltots

Luckily, I haven´t had to send Chloe to nursery so far as I only work part-time in the afternoons so I look after her in the mornings and speak to her in English and her daddy looks after her in the afternoons and speaks to her in Spanish as his job is quite flexible. However, we are considering sending her to nursery school next year so she can mix with other children and in preparation for starting school.Also, it means that her daddy will be able to do more research and work.

I´d have loved to send her to a bilingual nursery school but am pretty sure there aren´t any where we live! Hmmm, a possible new business for me to open although I´m not sure if it would be my cup of tea!! I have seen that there are a few nursery schools that offer English but I´m not sure how good they will actually be and whether the "teacher" will actually have a decent level of English and English pronunciation.Maybe they will only teach the colours and not much else so I don´t know whether it will be worth it. Then, on the other hand when she is with her Daddy, she only hears Spanish so there´s not much difference as she´ll still be hearing English from me.I´d like her to know though that it´s not just Mummy,Granny and Grandad and a couple of Mummy´s friends that speak another language though and any extra minority language input would be great,right?We also want to send her to nursery in the afternoons as I want to spend my mornings with her and it seems that it might be more difficult to send your child to a nursery school only in the afternoons. I suppose, I´m just going to have to do more research so watch this space,I´ll be updating you on our search for a nursery school. I´d also love to hear about your experiences, opinions or thoughts about bilingual nursery schools or nursery schools in general!

I´ve noticed when I´ve been looking at some websites about Bilingualism etc that 1) they either no longer exist 2) have not been updated for a very long time or 3) have maybe moved address.I am only going totry and only include resources that are up-to-date and useful. This brings me to the next resource which some of you might find very handy. I´m very lucky as it is fairly easy to find English or bilingual Spanish/English toys and books but for those of you who might struggle more,particuarly depending on the language(s) you speak: I´ve heard about the following UK-based company Babeltots on the Multilingual/International Parents group on Babycentre so thought I´d check it out (Click on the link for more information). They sell a number of bilingual toys and books for various languages from Finnish & Dutch to Swedish. Unfortunately the down side is that currently they only ship to the UK and they don´t sell any toys or books for languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

7 comments:

  1. We're not yet sending Aleksander to nursery school. Although I think he's the only one of his friends who isn't going. We might think about it for the fall when he's almost 2. But then, we don't need to, since I stay home with him. Good luck on your search, though! I don't know of any German preschools here. But I will also start thinking about Saturday school for him....
    So jealous of the Babeltots site! Wish they shipped to the US, too! I just broke down and placed an order for books & DVDs from Amazon.de. The shipping is flat-rate, so my friend and I went in on it together. But once you add games and other items, it doubles!! Ugh. Still, the alphabet puzzle actually arrived today, and I'm super excited :) I know Aleksander will love it!

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  2. My daughter is in Japanese daycare and my son is in Japanese kindergarten, and I am sure that is why their Japanese is stronger than English. But they love it. I dread the day they have to start taking English in school and have a teacher who teacher "dis isu a pen." Hopefully they will let me plan other activities for him during that time.

    Would you be interested in submitting one of your recent posts about bilingualism to this month's Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism? I'm the host this month, so all you have to do is choose a post (okay, that's the hard part!), send me a link by the 23rd, and then check back to my site and reap the glory! My email is perogies.gyoza at gmail.com and I'd love to have you!

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  3. Kate, I´d rather that Chloe didn´t have to go to nursery but needs must,unfortunately!Maybe someone will start up a similar site in the US. Do they not do the Super Saver Delivery to the US then?

    Medea, I know,I have the same worries! I´d love to take part in the Blogging Carnival and am so pleased that you´d like me to participate. I´ll let you know asap when I´ve chosen a post!

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  4. I have looked to international kindergarten for my boys but it is just too expensive for us. I only work part-time now and they stay with their grandparents during that time but we will need to make a decision about yochien {kindy} soon.

    Noah is eligible to start next April but I might wait an extra year and start Noah & Shion at the same time a year apart. This means Noah would be 4 and 4 months and Shion would be 3 & 3 months when they start. I would hope by that point they have an English speaking relationship with each other and of course we can still do long trips home.

    Hard to find a good balance hey?!

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  5. Lula, yeah I know what you mean! When do they start school where you are? Here they start at 3(well, it´s not obligatory but it´s free so most people send their kids at 3!)!!!!So, I want to get her used to a "school" environment asap!

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  6. Both my children are in French only daycare. My daughter, who is now 5 1/2, actually had better English than French when she began school despite having French 4 days a week for the first 3 years of her life. Once she started school, her English got better (much to my surpise) while her French did. My point is that kids figure it all out somehow.

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  7. Thanks,Reb! Yes, I´m sure you´re right! Am just being a worrywart that my daughter´s English (the minority language) won´t be as good as her majority language (Spanish) especially as they don´t seem to learn English very well at school(from what I´ve seen anyway as I teach English in a private language academy!)

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