Hola!
Friday, October 17th, 2014From Friday Mom – Erin:
Rory’s daycare has started to offer a Spanish enrichment class for the first time this fall. His classroom is the youngest group that is receiving Spanish lessons, and my understanding is that the instructor tailors her lessons based upon the age group. Rory’s daddy and I were pleased to learn of this new offering, and very curious to see how it evolved. They started a little over a month ago, but until now, I was fairly skeptical about whether he was actually going to retain it at all. However, just yesterday, upon arriving home, I was greeted with a big grin and a very happy Hola! Mommy! Hola! Mommy!
This morning, when driving to daycare, I asked if he wanted to count to ten. From the back seat, a very soft uno, dos, tres. . . pause. . . I chimed in and helped him out up to “diez.” He repeated himself a few more times, eventually coming pretty close to counting all the way to ten on his own in Spanish.
I know that kids his age are supposed to be sponges for learning multiple languages, but I still found it fascinating to witness first hand. L Rory has gotten pretty good at counting to ten on his own (usually with a little coaxing and some not entirely-understandable numbers), but I was blown away to hear him do it in another language. Interestingly enough, he skipped the same number in Spanish that he tends to forget when counting in English. (Seven is either hard to remember, or perhaps he is scared of seven because it ate nine). Regardless, I’ll be curious to see how quickly he masters counting in Spanish. Something tells me it may not be long. Guess it may be time to brush up on my own vocabulary, too!
