Back to Preschool

We are now in our second week of formal language study, and we have had a lot of fun so far. I think this is as close as we’re going to get to being back in preschool! We have learned the names of colours, animals, body parts etc. and can (usually!) follow a series of two or three simple instructions. One day we even played “Simon Says”! And we have a break and “snack time” in the middle of our session… Seriously, all that’s missing is nap time. :-)

The main activity in yesterday’s session was a “grand review” of everything we had learned so far – we now know over 200 Tagalog words! This picture doesn’t show everything we have learned, but I think it includes all the items that could be gathered together on the table.

We have also learned the names of various pieces of furniture and parts of the house (which couldn’t be put on the table for obvious reasons).

Of course, these are only the nouns we have learned. We have also learned a number of verbs and prepositions, which are what really makes our sessions interesting and fun. For example…

Some of my favourite moments so far:

1) Scattering “body parts” (flash cards that point to different body parts) around the room (“Put the arm behind the door…”). We were so focused on comprehending the instructions that it took a while to realize how weird this was…

2) Throwing “animals” around the room (because when else, except in language study, can you throw a cow at the ceiling?!!)

3) Our teacher telling Hannah (after we’d just learned the verbs “hold” and “look at”): “Hold the knife. Look at Rachael”. Not creepy at all! Haha.