We got back from our trip to El Salvador just last week, and it already feels like it was so long ago. Yet, the memories and benefits we gained from this trip are still well alive. Some weeks ago I shared about Camila’s cultural immersion with her familia, and promised I’d be back to tell you more about her experience at a local, Spanish-language preschool.
I made the decision to enroll her to a local preschool for two reasons:
1) Strengthen her Spanish. I had a couple of friends who had done the same thing when they visited their families in Latin America and said their kids benefited from it.
2) Even though we were away “on vacation,” I had to continue working my part-time job from home. So, I needed to have some time alone to work.
My sister helped me find a preschool that was run by two friends of her’s who allowed Camila to come in for only a month. School starts in El Salvador the second week of August, right after a week-long National holiday known as “Las Fiestas Patrias de Agosto.” Camila was able to be there the first day of school, so that eased the transition a bit because the other kids were more welcoming to her being there, and not be singled out as the “new girl.”
It also helped a lot that, at the moment, she speaks mostly Spanish. She still goes back and forth with certain words and phrases she totally prefers in English. Such as her infamous “Wha happen?!” that she can repeat and repeat for any little thing all day!
Camila really didn’t have a hard time adapting to the actual school setting. I think it all happened so fast and so many new things, faces, foods and situations were thrown her way in a span of four weeks that she didn’t have much time to react. She came back home to her abuelita’s every day singing new songs in Spanish, talking more and more in full sentences in one language and mentioning names of new little amigos. The same little amigos created this card for her on her last day. She was so, so proud of it and still smiles when I read out the names on each hand to her.
Do I recommend this full-immersion method in a new school and a new country to all? Depends. It can be a tough transition and a lot to assimilate at once. It’s a method that worked for us because of my daughter’s age (3 YO), the timing (first day of school), the length of the visit (one month), my sister’s help in finding the right place, and Camila’s fluency in Spanish. If you have an adaptable child in the preschool years and a support system in the country you are visiting, then I absolutely recommend it.
During the preschool years children absorb like sponges all the information around them, specifically language. A full immersion experience like this will cement the language foundation you’re already building every day and will make the language even more relevant and special to your child.
Now, I’m facing a new language challenge. We’ve decided it’s time for her to go to a more formal school setting, instead of the fabulous family daycare she’s at right now. At the daycare, she gets a lot of Spanish spoken to her, per my request. There’s a ridiculous lack of dual language preschools in Los Angeles, and mostly in my area, so we have to enroll her at a great little Montessori in our neighborhood.
Now that her Spanish is beautiful, I’m faced with the *fear* of her not being understood at her new preschool! This is when the fun begins in this bilingual journey as the real input of English will start flowing in and she will have to decide whether to continue speaking in Spanish to her mamá and papá or not. We surely won´t stop doing so!
Have you ever formally immersed your children in a language while visiting another country? Do you plan to one day? How?
Good for you!
I think language immersion in a foreign land where the language is dominant is the BEST way to add to one’s multi-cultural, multi-lingual abilities. I think it also helps a child, even one as young as yours to understand the value of being bilingual.
I’ve seen so many bilingual kids (even of fluent parents & with relatives who only speak the 2nd language) lose their language ( except for having some receptive abilities) as it is normal once they are regularly with kids speaking the dominant language to want to go to that one.
Taking trips to places where it is dominant helps a lot.
We have wintered in Spain the last 4 years and have had a fantastic experience with immersing through a local school for a 5 months each year for 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th grade. She has been speaking Spanish from birth, but learning to read and write in Spanish like the Spaniards has been phenomenal. ( We live on just 23 dollars a day per person so not expensive either).
We did not know the village or anyone there and are not fluent, but it went well. It was a small village and I write about our experiences on our blog.
We liked it so much, that now we are going to Asia so that she can immerse deeply in her Mandarin Chinese in a similar way. She just turned 10, so our hard work in keeping up all 3 languages has really paid off.
The other day in Barcelona, she read a complex story to me in Chinese, then translated it into English. A few minutes later a local friend stopped by and she blathered away to her in Spanish and translated some between us as my Spanish is very weak and her friend’s English is weaker. All of it amazing to me as I am a monolingual.
Raising a multilingual child is a long haul endeavor, but very much worth the effort and spending time immersing helps a LOT. BTW, you might want to check out Sunday schools that are in all Spanish, that was something we did in Ca as well as joining an all Spanish playgroup.
Thank you for sharing your story! Every time I read one of your blog post or the comments you leave here I am in awe of your journey and the amazing life your daughter is living.
Do you find it challenging to “help” her out when it comes to learning Chinese and Spanish when you don’t speak it?
Your daughter is so fortunate that you’re able to do this for her. What amazing experiences she is having! The card from her classmates is adorable… I wish we were able to do something like this with our boys. If we had the money I’d bring them back to El Salvador every summer. As it is now, only the oldest has been and he was only a year old and doesn’t remember it. Every year we say we’re going to go but as you know, it isn’t cheap… hopefully next year. In the meantime, we keep speaking Spanish at home. You gotta work with what you’ve got.
Don’t you hate it that money has to be an obstacle to immersing your children in their heritage? You are doing such an amazing job teaching your kids Spanish that there’s no doubt they will bilingual. There are so many paths to achieve the same result. Love your Tips to Raising Bilingual kids videos!
Ana Lilian–
I loved your story. We also arrived not long ago from our immersion trip in Colombia. Ian is now 5 and we are still taking him every year for a month to a private school where he does full immersion. It is a regular school, and like you I had a lot of help from my sister.
The school my son attended was the same one his cousin Camila goes to, although she is 15.. Many schools are willing to take him for only a month because they understand the situation we are in.
In addition we had the chance to continue with horse back riding lessons and karate lessons where he made a friend! That was very helpful in making him talk in Spanish only. After a week he was talking like a parrot in Spanish of course.
Immersion is the best way for us to keep Ian’s Spanish going, and even though we live in an area where Spanish is spoken (NYC) he prefers to reply and speak in English. Now that we returned not long ago he still speaks to me in Spanish and I make it a daily task to read in Spanish every single day.
I am soooo happy many other parents like you are doing this!
HI Marcela,
Great to read that your son had the same experience! I didn’t do any more extra-curricular activities, but will throw that in the mix next time since she’ll be older and more receptive.
Thanks for sharing this story!
Growing up, I spent every summer in Lima at school with my cousins. Even though my parents required Spanish at home, I know it’s entirely because of those summers in Lima (and the “gringa” taunting that came with poor language skills) that I can speak Spanish fluently today.
My (future) children will definitely spend summers in school in Latin America if at all possible… school is fun for kids anyways!! I got to eat Peruvian candy at recess, make lifelong friends, and of course I did really well in the English class!
What you were able to do is sooo great! Hopefully we will be able to do that if not once a year maybe once every 2 years and I think that helps them sooo much. The little booklet is very cute! Para el recuerdo!
I am always afraid of that situation of not controlling the Spanish anymore at school but I trust that he will still have it in him no matter what. I’ll keep talking to him in Spanish, reading, singing and so on even though his school might be only English. But you know that in the end when they grow up they’ll have it because we are here to help them have it NO MATTER WHAT (LOL!) and they’ll love it.
I grew up spending all my summers in Colombia. I was raised in the U.S. by a single mother whose entire family lived back home in Colombia. I had no idea that I was sent over b/c she couldn’t afford summer camp for me. All I knew was that from the day after school go to out for the summer and until the day before school got back in, I was shipped off to Colombia and I loved it! I had a ton of cousins who were my age who I lived with for about 3 months every year. And living with them meant going to school with them too since they have their short break during the summer. I had so much fun going to school. Now interestingly one of my cousins went to an “American” school meaning that everything was taught in English, so at that school, I was the cool kid who spoke perfect English! Those summers in Colombia solidified my Spanish and gave me the Pisa accent that even now as an adult is recognized wherever I go (like yesterday when the Colombian waitress at Disney World immediately asked if I was from Medellin). I hope to one day send my kids to visit thier primitos and hope that they get to go to school to.
I did also take gymnastics and dance with my cousins while I was there.
Hola mamasitas!!
I’m so happy to read all these great stories about your bilingual lives and how you continue to pass this gift on to your children. Although I moved here from MExico at the ripe age of 1, I was only allowed to speak spanish at home and often spent summers as well as the Christmas holidays in Mexico. So I will always be thankful to that since my spanish is quite fluent. Because of it, I have been able to work on and off camera in may tv commercials. I now have a 3 year old of my own and have not been as adamant with my spanish as my parents were and feel guilty she only understands it. SO I have been on a hunt to find a bilingual pre-k and have found NO success!! I currently live in Los Feliz and am willing to move if I find a school. Does anyone know of any bilingual pre ks????????????