Ca va, mais....

Now that we have our new laptop it's time to start blogging again, so there should be a few entries on their way.

Last week we had our first parent teacher conference with Reuben's new teacher. She said he's doing alright but, ...

On Saturday we had a glimpse of the 'doing alright'. I decided to do some activities with him from an activity book like the ones he uses at School. I read out to him the instructions in French. He had to draw three bubbles by each big fish and one bubble by each small fish. I told him the word for bubbles. He went ahead and followed the instructions. We were gobsmacked, as we'd not realised that in half a term his French has come on so much.

We found it hilarious (although understandable) that his teacher isn't particularly impressed. After all, in her experience bilingual children are the norm. Almost everyone here speaks a local language and a European language (at least). Children picking up an extra language is an everyday miracle. It was particularly striking for us because we missed the transition from when he understood bits and pieces to when he could talk quite freely in his play and 'work'. We had no idea he could do that.

His teacher's 'but' was that he tends to speak English rather than French in class. However, this weekend he spoke French loads (as well as lots of English). My favourite bit of French was when he waved a pencil at me and told me that he was colouring me in. I protested that I didn't want to be coloured in, and he told me that it was fine, I'd be black like all the others!

Children are just amazing.