Back From Michigan!

The Smith family just got back from a well-deserved vacation in Mackinaw City with some side trips to Mackinac Island and the UP. Yes that spelling change is correct.  As with all bad things, the French did it.

Given that we were as far from the Spanish speaking countries as you can get while remaning in the United States, it was shocking that this was a great opportunity for both Leilani and little Quinn to practice their Spanish.  Even their older brothers were able to get into the act, because their grandparents came along.  Quinny is finally saying things more like sentences and is using both Spanish and English.  Meanwhile little Leili was not only speaking Spanish to her grandparents, but doing so with an accent!  Naturally she said "Yo quiero" a lot, and since the grandparents were there she got what she wanted more than she didn't.  Especially fudge.  There's fudge there, in case you hadn't heard.

So here I am mentioning practice again, and I realize that I spend a lot of time talking about what Leilani does outside of Language Stars, which is a little strange since this blog is supposed to be about her time there.  First and foremost I don't go to her class anymore, so I don't really have a lot of commentary on what she does in class other than to say she loves her teacher and it gets her moving on a Saturday morning.  More importantly I believe that the time spent outside of class is vital to her learning inside of class, and without it she cannot have a successful bilingual education.

Therefore you might be thinking that Language Stars hasn't been necessary for her to learn Spanish, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Like many little ones in mixed-language families Leilani had started rejecting Spanish.  My wife and I speak English, my in-laws try to speak English to accomodate me, and of course day care is all English.  That means that after a time English became Leilani's "cool" language, and her vocabulary in English is still far ahead of her Spanish.  Without the constant reinforcement of classes, including peers speaking in the language, I don't believe she'd be growing up bi-lingual.

To sum up:  practice, take classes, and since my French readers are temperamental, let me clarify that I do not believe all bad things are done by the French.  It's likely well under 80% of them.