Yes, I had experience teaching kids (I spent years teaching in various settings- classrooms, tutoring, charter schools, and in home classes!). But what really helped me was my background in theater and dance choreography, ironically. In improvisation, if you don't get your objective the first time, you have to be clever in changing your tactic. I basically chose to choreograph this storyline curriculum to get to our objective, and sneakily teaching through fun was my forté!
SO I spent late nights writing out exactly what I’d say the next day, scripting out conversations so I didn't have to remember what I had planned in the few precious moments I had to teach while the baby slept. Then the next day, my sweet son was the guinea pig- what worked stayed in the text, what didn't was quickly revised.
...Like the puppet! My son wouldn't respond to me because, duh, why exert himself when he knows I speak English? I told him: "Well, this new puppet DOESN'T speak English, we'll have to learn his words to talk to him!" ...Worked like a charm.
I figured out how to make Spanish feel fun and natural for the both of us... through play, through confidence-building moments, through sneaky little tricks that got my kids to actually reply.
As I refined what worked within my own home, I reached out to friends who spoke other languages—just to see if they’d want to help to at least have something like this for their own kids. What I didn’t realize? They were masters of curriculum development, experts in teaching languages to elementary students, and university-level language educators. WHAT!
Together, we saw what had been missing in this space. We got the team together, pulled our knowledge, experience, and passion together to create something truly different—something that didn’t just teach a language, but made it a living, breathing part of a family’s home.