Moved to Spain - putting DS in Spanish nursery. Will he cope?

[skydancer1]

Hi all, I moved from London to Valencia six months ago and enrolled my nearly two year old for morning nursery starting September. I went through agonies about whether I should put him in a bilingual nursery or somewhere where at least one staff member speaks English but in the end went for total immersion as many people advised me that at two children can cope/make sure their needs are met and besides learn the new language very quickly (he'll soon be laughing at my Spanish then!).

I am a still a bit worried about it though! I thought I'd make sure he can communicate really basic stuff ("want milk/juice/water, done a poo, hungry") before he goes. Another consideration in choosing the nursery I eventually went for is that it is only ten minutes walk from my house whereas the bilingual nurseries are one hour bus rides away. Also - crucially - I thought the atmosphere friendly and respectful to children. Any thoughts from anyone who is or will be in a similar position?

NEIN was his favourite word for the first weeks (yes shouted!) After that guten morgan, tchuss, wo ist and was. They communicate reasonably quickly and don't always need many words-many 2/3 year olds don't speak much anyway even in their native language!

Thanks SSSandy

oh that's right, remember now that NEIN!! made an appearance very early on. Long long time before JA! Obviously made a strong impression on her. First thing she picked up on was "manu!" as an expression of discontent generally said with an impressive matching frown on her face. Took me a while to realise she was speaking German when she said it though, since I'd never heard that one before. Sort of like "hey!" said in a complaining voice.

Not long after that we made contact with "you can't do this" and "you can't do that".

Just a thought.

one thing we have always done is to 'label' the languages for him according to who he hears speaking them iyswim - how mami says it, how dadi says it, how friend-X-in-school says it - and encouraged him to work out that he has different ways of saying the same thing. We made it like a game - how does dadi say xxx? and how does friend-X say it? etc etc - sometimes with one of those picture dictionaries too.

LOL - yes, DS was quick to learn and use "you can't do this" and "you can't do that" too

trokodile In danger of sounding like an insufferable show off mum here but my almost 23 month old ds has loads of English language - full sentences already -so I think that however confident he is in himself he may get a shock at first at being unable to use it meaningfully. He can say stuff like "No, I'm all right, thank you" (e.g if I ask "Are you hungry? Or "Do you need your nappy changed") He says "I'm going out now/driving my bikey/getting dressed" "What's that funny noise? Oh it's only the neighbours". He mixes up his personal pronouns so he will for example say "Your do it" when he means "I'll do it" or "Give me my telephone" (means give me your telephone!). Anyhow - if you're right and the kids hardly have any language anyway it'll be an easy transition as Mr Chatterbox can probably just teach them all English . Seriously though I am really pleased to hear all these good outcomes with kids doing well in kindergarden in a different language. One small contributing factor may have been due to the fact that German nursery staff probably have 70% better English than Spanish nursery staff here have as generally the Germans learn English at school from an early age.

your DS sounds just like my nephew

You can ask that the staff only speak to your DS in Spanish. None of DS' teachers have used English with him since they don't speak enough of it. His little friends do like trying out their English with him though! And we get a chorus of "Helowwwwwwww!" from them when we pick him up! So cute.

I don't think English ability amongst the kindergarten staff was very developped or widespread skydancer. Kindergarten staff are not university trained, they probably have the lowest school leaving qualification and have then attended a kind of vocational school. Plenty of them speak no or next to no English. They spoke German to the dc anyway and honestly they do pick the target language up that way.

Long-winded but the point I wanted to make was that non-existant or minimal English ability amongst the nursery staff wouldn't play much of a role I don't think. In fact better if they just model good Spanish than bad English IYSWIM!

Ds will learn Spanish in context from early on and kindergarten here , presumably nursery in Spain, will have a structured day/week so he will encounter the same language in the same situations day for day and will soon click that in such and such a situation, you say this or that. They build it up like that with little stepping stones and become more and more proficient very much faster than an adult would.

I think he will be fine. The main thing will be whether you and he like the carers I think.

SSSandy -That's interesting and sensible stuff about nursery staff and the merits of them not having English - hadn't thought of modelling bad English etc.{wink] I'm just really glad I posted on here about it as everyone's experience helpful in different ways and none of my mum friends back in Blighty have been through this one. I'll have to let you all know how we get on come September! Just have to do it now really and see...

Hi all I just thought I'd update as was DS's first day in Spanish nursery today. He cried oh lord how he cried when I left him with someone new at the door (parents not even allowed to go in with them - is that normal? ) - but apparently he was ok after an hour or so. I only left him there for three hours, then home for lunch and back for a couple of hours in the afternoon...too much running around for me but didn't want to blast him with a whole day. The funny thing was when I took him to the park playground briefly after the end of nursery he shouted to another child "Hasta luego baby!" as she left. So he's already picking up some Spanish. I left a list of translated key words/phrases for his keyworker.