In each class of our kindergarten, Czech and English-speaking teachers guide the children throughout the day. Therefore children learn a foreign language in the real and natural situations of everyday life.
Thanks to years of experience and observation, we know that if we create a class with a combination of Czech and English-speaking teachers/guides, we allow for a natural bilingual environment in which children learn both languages on such a level that they become active users of both languages.
At the beginning, children become acquainted with the language through games, songs, or rhymes with movement. They soon start to feel safe and sense that in our preschool, foreign language is a part of our daily life. At first, children often observe, listen, and absorb the new language. Gradually we see that they understand the instructions and react without further explanation and the first words come. Teachers then gradually involve children more in communication, offer opportunities to choose answers, find situations where the child is motivated to react and want to learn to ask questions and communicate in both languages.
After a short time, most children take it as natural that they communicate in English with the English teacher and in Czech with the Czech teacher. Children communicate in the language in which they are prompted - in the everyday life of the class, as well as during instruction with Montessori materials and aids.