Schools and learning a language

Good morning! Wow, I didn't know that blogging was so addictive!!

The Princess (my daughter) and the Pilot (my son) love going to school - they are still in nursery - and this term at their school they are doing a kind of immersion programme. It's in it's infancy stage, so I am not sure if this will work better than what was used last year and which is used by pratically all the day care/pre-schools in Singapore. What is usually the case here is that every other day they will alternate between English and a second language (in my kids case, Mandarin), but this year the school has decided to do a week's worth of one language instead, calling it an immersion programme. According to me, this method has both pros and cons. I like it for the reason that spending 5 days using just one language will boost the language skills, especially since they are learning Mandarin as the second language and we are not ethnic Chinese, but in the process what I worry is that by the time they get back to the teacher, they have spent some 10 days away from her and may not remember what they learnt in the first place. I should talk to the teachers asking for course work and work at home with them reinforcing what they learn in school.