Preparation for emigrating to the USA for 2 kids from Zierikzee.

Today a certain family leaves Zierikzee for their new home-work destination: Washington!

A great adventure that they have carefully prepared step by step with their family. One of the steps they took was the following:

It was at the end of July that I received a message from the father: Good morning Winny, our daughter Sara has already had English lessons from you at school in the past. Now, on October 31, 2022, we are going to the USA for 4 years. Sara is now almost 9 and would like to have some English lessons to gain confidence for her new start. Can she receive a couple of lessons from you once a week and during the holidays from 1 August to the last week of October?

This was the start of a fairly intensive process of English lessons, in which Sara sometimes took English lessons for 4 hours a week. Her brother Silvijn followed with 2/3 hours a week.

What did I start the lessons with?

By looking very closely at the personal interests of the child!

By joining this you already have a conversation topic very easily.

(I apply this method at any desired level, from young to old, and is always effective.)

I look for games and assignments, we watch videos about it and learn English songs. I also have 2 whiteboards on which Sara wrote down words or wrote sentences in English using word cards. I co-wrote them on mine and then she checked them afterwards and corrected them where necessary.Silvijn (5) has a great interest in all kinds of wild animals and especially dinosaurs and Sara loves ponies.So I took my eldest son's wild animals collection from Schleich and I asked Silvijn all kinds of questions about it: Which one is the smallest creature? Which one is the biggest? What colour has this animal got and what's the name of it? etc. We also figured out what speeds they achieve and made a row from fast to slow animals.

With Sara I first watched a tutorial on :How to groom and look after your Shetland pony.Then I repeated a number of words she wrote on her whiteboard in English and then translated it into Dutch.Now I'm lucky enough to live on a street with a Shetland pony in the pasture, so I took the plunge and asked the owner if we could take care of this pony and take it for a walk. He thought this was an excellent idea as he had little time for it himself and so we went for a walk with the pony. In the meantime, I asked Sara questions in English and she was allowed to answer them in Dutch.

With Silvijn it was even more playful to learn English. Since they had block hours, you can't expect a five-year-old to sit in a chair for 2 hours.

So we took our dogs for a walk outside, he was also allowed to hold a leash and I mentioned what we saw outside in English and then asked a question about it. Or we went to our KuneKune pigs and we were going to feed them apples.

Quite an experience for him and enough reason to learn the anatomy of a pig (at toddler level ;) ) in English! He also dared to walk with the pony!

During the lessons with these two children, I realised once again that this living-learning that is my method is close to my heart. I think it is THE perfect way of learning because you connect to what is available in terms of interest (the zone of proximal development) and you make the teaching methods diverse so that an active learning attitude is created. The extent to which they always diligently did their homework also spoke for itself!

I've also chosen topics to cover the first few weeks at school in Washington: How are you? Who are you? Tell me something about yourself. Where are you from? etc. In this way, both children are already somewhat prepared for what is to come.

We have worked together, in close cooperation with the parents, to ensure a soft landing for these children who, starting this week, will only hear English spoken around them when they are in their new classroom with their new classmates and their new teachers.

I wish Paul, Jessica, Sara & Silvijn all the luck in this new phase of their lives in Washington!