Full Immersion Preschool Program: Helping Them At Home
If you're considering enrolling your child in a full immersion preschool program, building their confidence at home and reinforcing their language acquisition can help them succeed. As such, here are some of the ways that you can support your child when they enroll in a full immersion preschool program.
Verbs and Adjectives Over Nouns
When learning a new language, many parents focus on the quantity of the words their students learn. This approach values learning nouns, which, although helpful, can be learned at the expense of self-expression and syntax.
- Kinesthetic Word Play: Children learn by doing. One of the most effective language acquisition strategies used by many full immersion preschool programs involves blending wordplay into natural playtime. This approach often focuses on helping children learn how to navigate the world using verbs in a new language. For instance, you can encourage your child to use the words such as "run," "climb," "jump," and "walk" in the language they are trying to learn during playtime. As they acquire more verbs, you can also have them learn emotionally expressive adjectives for the feelings they experience during playtime. This form of kinesthetic learning is fun and can help your child connect with their new language in a more natural and fundamental sense.
Code-Switching Story Time
Full immersion preschool programs understand that hearing the syntactical patterns and flow of a new language can make children more comfortable experimenting with it.
- Switching Up Story Time: If your bedtime routine includes storytime, you might consider reading children's books twice a night, one time in English and another in the language your child is learning. For instance, you might read a familiar text in English followed immediately by a second reading of the book in Spanish. Hearing a familiar text in a different language can help your child understand the flow and pattern of the language they're trying to learn. If you don't feel like you can read the text in the language your child is learning, someone at the school may be able to do it for you. You can play the audio recording from your phone.
Food for Thoughts
Language and culture are inextricably linked to food. You can help your child learn a new language by incorporating activities during mealtime.
- Counting, Sorting, Describing: Similar to kinesthetic learning, encouraging your child to process what they do when they eat can be a powerful learning tool. For instance, you can have them count the number of carrots on their plate in a new langue. You can also have them describe taste in a new language.
For more information, contact a company like Lingua Natal.
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