Dual Immersion update

I have sssoooo many other things I want to address, but find myself unable to focus my thoughts or sit at the computer long enough to sort them, so here is the first of the promised updates on Keilana's progress in dual immersion.

First of all, several people were apparently under the impression that this was our only option here in Lindsay, but that's not the case. You can choose dual immersion or regular kindergarten for your child, so this is something we opted into--I would feel very differently about it if it were required.

Keilana is absolutely loving it, and picking up Spanish vocabulary much faster than I anticipated. She frequently corrects my gringo accent on simple words like "gracias" or "viente". Each morning she starts the day with an hour and forty minutes of solid instruction entirely in English (she's in a classroom with a different teacher for this part of the day) and then returns to Senora Samaniago's class for the rest of the day en Espanol.

Most of the vocabulary she has picked up is exactly what you'd expect from a Kindergartener--family members (she got out a piece of paper the other day and drew a picture, then wrote "Mi Familia" at the top and labeled the whole thing "mi papa" "mi mama" "mi hermano" "mi hermanita" "mi perro"--she asked me for a little help with spelling, but did it primarily on her own), some foods, commands (she's frequently heard yelling, "Bada!" at her brother), and classroom objects like backpack, desks, pencils, crayons, etc. She actually uses the Spanish word for such things as often if not more than English at home. She seems to be making great progress at contextual vocabulary (figuring out what a word means by how and where it is used). Each night she has to read me 2-3 books in Spanish and 2-3 books in English (her English reading is at about mid-year 1st grader right now, her Spanish is early Kindergarten. She still mixes up vowel sounds when sounding things out because of all the Spanish and, let's face it, all of English's bizarre rules for written language).

She is enjoying it immensely and I think will actually be a big asset for her slower-learning mom and dad in about a year. We'll see how Dylan does when he hits kindergarten--while he knew all his ABC's by 2 1/2 and is starting to sound things out now, his verbal skills have always been much farther behind than Keilana's. But, on the bright side, his natural syntax seems to veer Latin (ex., "I want the car blue"). ;)

Overall its been a fantastic first trimester--parent teacher conferences next week!