The immersive element of our program is a key to the successful language acquisition of your child. The amount of time a child is exposed to a language directly correlates to the level of language proficiency they will gain. One of the best ways for a young child to learn a language is to hear others speaking it fluently and to be able to gain context from face to face communication through social interaction. Even children as young as nine months old have shown that through live exposure (not audio or video) to a language they can learn significant speech sounds.
Children will play games, eat snack, make arts and crafts and do science experiments all taught 100% in Spanish. They will learn the language without even thinking about it. While our teachers are fully bi-lingual in Spanish and English, they will primarily be speaking to your child and to other teachers in Spanish allowing the children to consistently hear the tones and sounds of Spanish. Should an emergency arise or should your child become frustrated by not being able to readily communicate with a teacher, they will always be able to revert to English.
Our preschool program utilizes Teaching Strategies – The Creative Curriculum(R) for Preschool, Spanish Edition as a foundational resource. The English version of this curriculum is used by reputable pre-school programs in Lincoln and nationwide. Curriculum used for our older students includes the elementary Spanish curriculum IN-VISION developed by the Nebraska Department of Education.
Language acquisition begins with training your ear to identify the new sounds. Once basic listening proficiency has been established, one can develop speaking skills, followed by reading and finally by writing. For our younger students, we will focus on listening and speaking and with our older students we will introduce reading and writing.
Our program prepares your child to identify letters, numbers, colors, and shapes with lessons focused on the following themes:
- Calendar & Time
- Culture and Celebrations
- Community
- Art, Music & Dance
- Weather
- Patterns
- Observation
- Problem Solving
- Measurement
- Simple Machines
- Living Things
- Senses
- Exercise
- Hygiene and Health
- Cooking and Healthy Eating
Our preschool program mirrors that of a typical English language classroom, just… taught in Spanish. The social skills, daily life skills, science and math concepts taught at Aventuras are universal. Enrollment in language classes is shown to enable children to learn English more easily and you may find that your preschooler requires no additional formal instruction in English at all.
Some families choose to enroll for our program a few days a week and enroll in a traditional pre-school program on the other days. Other families attend a morning program at an English language pre-school and spend afternoons with us. Whatever your situation, we are here to help you create the ideal schedule and learning environment that fits your family and gives your child all the advantages that language learning can offer.