Spanish Immersion Nursery & Pre-K

Spanish preschool (Nursery / Pre-K) is an original program that teaches not with rote memorization of vocabulary and conjugations, but true Spanish Cultural immersion. Children learn through Literature, Math, Cooking, Art and Music and Movement in an inviting, accessible, and safe environment that not only teaches the Spanish language but a love of Spanish culture.

Why a second language?

Learning a second language is a complex process. It includes phases from pre-production to advanced fluency. In early stages, children first observe and respond with gestures and simple repetition of familiar words only. Over time, the children will progress into speech emergence and then ultimately gain fluency both in second language comprehension and communication. By immersing language - building activities within the natural routines of the day, children from diverse language backgrounds can participate and acquire language through authentic experiences.

Engaging the children and encouraging them to express themselves in the second language throughout the day builds natural connections between real-life and language concepts.

Social-Emotional Development

Social-emotional development is the process by which a child comes to understand the feelings of others, the feelings of self, and acquires a secure emotional foundation on which to build relationships with self and others. In order for children to acquire the basic skills they need, such as cooperation, following directions, demonstrating self-control, and paying attention, they must possess social-emotional skills.

Language & Literacy

Language and literacy skills refer to a child’s ability to communicate and connect with others through listening, speaking, reading and writing.

“the relationship between thought and words is not a thing, but a process, a continual movement back and forth thought to words and from word to thought” (Vygotsky, 1962).

In the literature class students have the opportunity to develop and strengthen the areas of language and pre-writing through the following 8 skills. 

Listening Comprehension: Is a child's ability to hear, understand and act on verbal language. It includes a child’s receptive language skills, as well as interpretation of oral interaction. Listening comprehension is strongly correlated with reading comprehension.

Young children demonstrate listening comprehension by comprehending spoken language and following verbal directions.

• Communication: Is a child’s ability to use language, especially oral, to convey ideas, thoughts and feelings to others. Children learn to speak in sentences as they hear and mimic the speech of others. Through repetition and experimentation, children begin to construct fully formed ideas.

• Vocabulary: it is the number of words a child knows and can use effectively. Building vocabulary enables children to communicate more effectively and precisely. Vocabulary knowledge in early childhood is correlated with better reading comprehension in later school years.

• Phonological Awareness: Is a child’s understanding of the sounds structures of language. It includes the ability to identify and manipulate phonemes, onsets, rimes and syllables.

• Concepts of Print: Are a child’s understanding of the elements and rules of writing language. It includes the understanding of books, letters, words, directionality and punctuation and the understanding that print has meaning.

• Letters and Words Recognition: Is the ability to identify the names of letters and their associated sounds. It includes alphabetic knowledge, decoding and phonic skills. Letter and letter-sound knowledge are two of the strongest predictors of later reading proficiency. 

• Reading Comprehension: Is a child’s ability to understand and interpret written language. Children demonstrate their comprehension of the shared material by retelling, asking and answering questions. Children build comprehension skills when they connect the text to their personal experiences or understanding. 

• Emergent Writing: Is a child’s ability to convey ideas, thoughts and feelings scribble or writing symbols as letters, names or simple words is a predictor of later literacy.

The programs that support the literature class are:

• Estrellita: The Estrellita Accelerated Beginning Spanish Reading Program supports native language instruction by providing early education bilingual teachers with a methodology and concrete strategies for teaching beginning Spanish reading to young children. This foundation in the primary language assists English Language Learners in achieving a successful and smooth transition to English.

Research has repeatedly shown that a child who learns to read in his primary language (L1) first has a greater degree of success in an English curriculum than does the child who does not. A person learns to read only once. The process of acquiring the necessary decoding skills to “break the code” is a learned process. These acquired skills transfer to the second language (L2) and do not have to be “relearned.” 

Breaking the Code

• Estrellita maps "pictures to beginning sounds" to assist children in making the connection from the known (picture) to the unknown (grapheme).

• Estrellita introduces vowels before consonants. The program also provides a built-in review process to ensure that students retain previously learned sounds.

• Estrellita is based on the core structure of the Spanish language and is not a direct translation.

• Estrellita writing component is aligned with and occurs concurrently with the reading process.

• Estrellita's philosophy and methodology have always been to teach the letter sounds first and to prolong the teaching of letter names until children have "broken the code."

• Estrellita utilizes a syllabic approach to blending and segmentation which systematically builds upon itself.

Handwriting without Tears: 

Writing is one of the most fundamental skills that lead students toward automatic word recognition.

By forming letters, students consolidate the alphabetic principle.

Being able to recognize the symbol (the letter) with the sound automatically.

In HWT, students learn to write their names and to write letters beyond their   names.

Emergent literacy skills lead to reading and as they develop this skill as their working memory is freed up to focus on the sounds and meanings of words. 

Resulting in preparing students to be readers and writers.

Mathematics

Skills include a child’s ability to count, understand number sense, manipulate objects in space, create patterns, sort, compare and measure. Validates the importance of early experiences in mathematics for lasting positive outcomes. When children develop their ability to reason mathematically, they become increasingly sophisticated in their ability to recognize and analyze the mathematics inherent in the world around them. Children’s early mathematical experiences play a significant role in the development of their understanding of mathematics and serve as a foundation for their cognitive development. The mathematics class is focused on training children in the preschool stage and favoring the processes of mathematical thinking in different situations of everyday life that allow them to incorporate these concepts in their daily lives.

Cooking

"Children don't just need to eat. Their desire to move, which no one can repress, must be understood as a sign of many needs. More than containing their activity, we have to give them the means to develop it" Maria Montessori.

The cooking class is focused so that we can have a different and extensive look at the little ones who are in the process of development on a daily basis.

Montessori pedagogy is a methodology that provides a great opportunity to create a special space for children in their nature of freedom to develop and explore their full potential. It is a look under respect for their own real nature since their development is done through sensory exploration. Children learn by exploring with their senses of sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. Cooking is ideal because it allows them to manipulate and sensorially discover flavors, colors, sounds, and textures. 

In the same way, recipes are the opportunity to get to know different ingredients in their colors, flavors, and textures, as well as the different kitchen utensils that we will use in each preparation. Did you know that the more involved our children are in the kitchen, the greater their interest in knowing the origin of food and the healthier it is for their growth?  When we involve children in the kitchen, we invite them to perform skills that favor their psychomotor development through very simple actions such as pouring, cutting some fruit, chopping a vegetable, mixing liquid or solid ingredients, spreading butter, kneading, etc., are simple activities in the kitchen but are great challenges for them.

• Art

• Art is a language that will make the child express him/herself through different elements and it will be creativity and imagination that will play the most important role in this process. 

Create in the child the possibility of giving tangible form to the intangible. As for example, what he feels, what he thinks and imagines and even what he fears, since when painting, modeling or drawing, ideas, feelings and images emerge, which help children to build their own creativity.

Science

Science gives children a broader picture of how things work. They provide them with information about the world around them, from the human body to the mechanics of a car to the solar system. That knowledge will become the basis for assimilating new concepts, finding the interrelationships between phenomena and developing a more complete perspective on their reality.

Science activities provide children with opportunities to develop and practice different skills and qualities that will be key to their future lives. They teach them to stay focused on a task and encourage them to make informed decisions and draw their own conclusions based on their observations and experiments.

Music and Movement

Music and movement seeks through dance and / or choreography to learn musical language (in a corporal way), to acquire the rhythmic sense of the body, to perceive and express the qualities of sound, to perform active listening, to develop aspects of their own psychomotor development.

The importance of music and musical activities are of utmost relevance for the cognitive and integral development of the child, enhancing their creative capacity and capacity for expression. Enjoying body movement and music works memory, concentration and stimulates the child's learning capacity.