Wednesday, July 1, 2009

daycare on the horizon

we had a meeting with a potential day-care a couple of days ago. the place is in Hyde Park, just a few minutes from work - so we can drop her off before going to work and pick her up on the way home, and also come and visit her if we feel like during the day.

the care-taker seemed like a warm, child-loving person. she has 6-8 kids that she looks after with her assistant. besides the usual activities (nap times, snack times, playing, books, music...) they take them out to the park, and the older kids get to go to the museums, aquarium, zoo...
we're still trying to decide when to start daycare. for now we take turn watching over the little munchkin, each of us trying to allow the other at least a few effective hours of work each day. we'll probably start gradually, 1-2 times a week at first, and then gradually work up to full time.

one issue that i had was that the person who is the main care-taker of the little ones (like Ella) speaks only spanish, and i was worried that hearing three languages on a daily basis will be too confusing for her.
i asked some parents of bilingual kids, and almost everybody says that a third language shouldn't be confusing, because infants learn language through an entirely different process than adults. she will learn that "Mayim" "aqua" and "water" are just three ways of describing the same thing, much like "pretty" and "beautiful" are two different words with similar meaning.
what do you think?

5 comments:

dalia said...

Spanish is very nice language.It will be nice to have a spanish speaker in the family.And you,Keren,will be able to talk to Ella Spanish when you want that no one will understand.

Sandy K. said...

Lucky little girl. She'll be trilingual. I'm not worried about her getting confused. She's got the genetic material to handle lots of knowledge. ;)

dikla said...

I don't think it makes a difference much.

She will most likely start to speak late (most bi-linguas do), and if you don't plan on leaving her with a Spanish speaking caretaker until past the age of two, she probably won't remember the Spanish

RonSha said...

If you are planning on making her a quad-lingual, i can try and teach her Gibberish...

bk said...

I'm worried that Keren and Ella will be speaking two languages behind my back ;).