Best way for kids to learn another language?

[JustMe]

I have posted before that our neighborhood school will be going dual immersion next year. This is wonderful in many ways, but also extremely difficult for me as, in many other ways this school does not meet my daughter's social emotional needs...I am looking at another school that I feel would met her needs as a whole person a lot better. This is an extremely difficult decision for me to make. If I do take her out of the dual immersion school, I would like to make my best effort to help her learn Spanish. I know nothing will be the same but, in your experience, what is the most helpful/effective, etc. I am willing to look at things like paying a native speaker a couple of times a week, trying to form a group of kids with a native speaker, going to Guatemala for 2 weeks this summer(that's probably as long as we could go) and would like to hear any suggestions.


I do speak Spanish and we do have Spanish speaking friends, but this has not been an effective way to work with her...she gets annoyed when I try to speak Spanish to her as she would much rather do what is easy and comfortable. She just turned 6 and is in Kindergarten this year.

[jgenie]

I have friends/family with bilingual DCs. They speak only Spanish at home and expect the DCs to do the same. DH is bilingual and I'm working on it. DH only speaks Spanish at home. We're hoping this will help DS to be bilingual as well.

Also, you can get lots of regular programming channels in spanish through your cable provider. We plan to add the spanish programming when DS is old enough to watch TV.

[stefani]

I would say that the best way will be for you to communicate with her only in Spanish. At 6 years old, she may be more resistant to it if you are not doing it already. So maybe try a "Spanish day" or "Spanish hour" where that day / hour you two will speak Spanish as much as possible. Having Spanish class definitely helps as well as travel to the country where she can get full immersion.

Somehow I am finding that other children don't help as much as they tend to be fluent in English, so left alone they all just gravitate towards English. You have to find other children where Spanish is their dominant language.

GL!