Julia stared a Mandarin dual immersion program at school this year, which will continue in some form or another pretty much until she graduates high school (the format changes in middle school and again in high school). For half of the day she has an English teacher that teaches them in English and for half of the day she has a Mandarin Chinese teacher that teaches only in Mandarin. The kids are never supposed to hear their Chinese teacher speak in English and the kids are only allowed to speak in Chinese when they are in Chinese class.
For this semester's parent/teacher conference Julia needed to have a conversation with the teacher to show us what she has learned. She was pretty nervous since everyone in the room (just her two teachers and our family, but still nervous) was staring at her. She talked very quietly so turn up the volume. The teacher asks her about her family, then about colors, then about food she likes to eat. Julia told me later that when he asked her what color the Chinese flag is she wasn't sure what to say because it looked Orangish redish, so she didn't know if she should say orange or red. She ended by singing a song about numbers.
This week for Chinese New Year the school put on a performance and all the dual immersion kids sang a couple songs. Here are the first graders singing. Julia is on the front row on the far side, almost even with me so sometimes it's hard to see her. All the performances were so cute and I love hearing their Chinese intonations as they sing in Chinese.
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