Continue with french for 3.5 year old ??

[sparkle1977]

What are your opinions please.

I have a 3.5 year old son who has been having french lessons as part of his day at nursery for a few months now. He seems to be getting on fine and likes it as far as we can tell. The french lessons are paid for seperately over and above the nursery fees and are paid for termly.

However I have recently looked at the school website for the primary school that I hope to get my son into for Sept 2011 and discovered that he will learn Spanish there and not french.

I am wondering whether I continue french at the nursery up until Sept 2011 when he leaves and start school or just stop in, say, Sept 2010. Just leaving it until he starts school and does the other language there ?

Or do you think that just by having this experience of learning this new language will be doing him good in itself ??

I am leaning towards the latter ?

I'd keep going with it, if he enjoys it.

Any learning experience is good whether it's French, Spanish, Tennis or Violin. If he enjoys it let him continue, Spanish is related to French anyway so he will see common themes next year. He's not learning the language in order to speak it, is he - unless he is going to be exposed to French speakers regularly. Once a week learning has no impact on fluency anyway.

I think I would continue with French and let him also learn about another country and culture at school. I think its wonder that he enjoys it as an extra activity in fact its inspired me to look for local classes for my own dc.

What company do you use is it nationwide or is it a private tutor?

It wont make a difference at this age. The similarities between french and spanish are so great that he will pick up spanish really quickly and his english will benefit by adapting to learning a third language as he is building a nice language system in his brain by separating out all the new languages.
IMO He is a bit little for extra-curricula just yet, I would go with spanish, unless you have a need for french, e.g. Granny only speaks french or Dad is french or you are moving to france.

does the tutor also run out of school classes for primary? you could keep both languages going. My 3 year old dd sat down today for lunch and said 'je mange' {proud mummy emoticon}. language learning is great at any age and any language

My 3 year old calls my 1 year old "une machine a prout" [slightly less proud mummy emoticon] thanks to her Papa.

From what I remember about language acquisition the fact that he is learning a different language is what is important. This will give him the structures in his brain which make it easier to continue to learn languages as he gets older.

I'm not sure I'd have him learning two at the same time - it may be a bit confusing and put him off which would be a shame.

curvey - Its a lady that comes into the nursery that DS attends on a Wednesday. She does about 45 min sessions I believe. Its a company called La Jolie Ronde.

Turtleann & Al1son - He only learns french now whilst at nursery. Then he will do Spanish when he starts primary school in Sept 2011. Only one language at a time.

I would definitely stick to the French for as long as it is available, their minds are so absorbent at this age, thus their capacity to learn new languages (yes, plural) is much greater that an adults (says I who is married to a Brazilian and is USELESS at Portuguese).