Caniel Furgerg - Children's Spanish

You may not be aware of the number of Swedish speakers in our area. Somehow some of them found us and we are now teaching Swedish to their children. We have had classes and camps for children's Swedish for some time now. We'd like you to meet Daniel Furberg who is one of the most active participants, via his father Robert. Daniel is also in the bilingual Spanish program at school—an incipient polyglot.

On December 13, 2010, Luciadagen [St. Lucia's Day] for Swedes, CHICLE Language Institute held its first Swedish class. Among the students present was my (then) four year old son, Daniel Furberg.  Dano has continued taking the class over the past two years with CHICLE's instructor Irene Testa. In June of 2011, a week-long Swedish camp with CHICLE instructor Anna Norman was held that coincided with the Swedish Midsommar holiday.  We're psyched to have just registered for the second annual Swedish summer camp at CHICLE this June and plan to continue with the classes as long as they're offered! 

I started speaking Swedish to Dano at home when he was about a year old.  He has the chance to use the language whenever he talks to my parents, brothers and sister but it was really difficult to get him to ever answer me in Swedish. I was also concerned that he never really had the chance to speak to kids his age outside of the rare visits with his cousins who still live in Sweden, so as soon as I heard about the possibility of a class at CHICLE, I was really excited for him. 

Amazingly, within two weeks of having started the class, he willingly started to work on pronunciation with me and using brief phrases in Swedish when answering his farmor and farfar (and eventually me!). The CHICLE class has been excellent for Dano socially, too, as we've created a new, much more local and friendly social network of kids and parents. 

When asked what he likes most about class, Dano quickly says, “I like that I can talk to farmor and farfar. What day are we going back to Sweden?”