Trying to be Trilingual?

It seems only yesterday that I was talking about how many mls of milk a day she drank. Now we are thinking about Sienna's grade school education already. I went for an information meeting last night at our area school about it's French Immersion program. Our train of thoughts certainly started roaming here and there. So far, we haven't made up our mind about two major things.

Public or private. At this point of time, it's nice to know we can in fact afford to keep her in the private system as she is our one and only. She is the kind of kid who, we are pretty certain, will survive well any where we place her. She is likely to miss out more inside the private system than outside of it. We live in a superb school district. Fraser Institute places our home school one of the best among the province's nearly 3000 schools. The school is 5 minute's walk from our house. Going to public school will get her to know the neighborhood kids, play with them and grow up with them.

Bilingual or trilingual. Sienna is and will be for sure a bilingual person. The idea of learning French only comes in handy. The area school here has one the 7 French immersion programs in the city. We can easily get Sienna to it's SK this September. Doing French immersion can get her something else to do. She is advanced in her writing, reading and counting, thanks to the school and her temperament. I hope she is not going to be bored if she goes into public system.

Also I heard kids who come to French Immersion are at least normal learners in their first language. They are less likely to be ADD or whatever problems that some regular program kids might have. Those kids would usually need a lot of attention from the teachers. Last and not the least tempting, if Sienna goes into the French Immersion, I am for sure will be learning French too. I got so excited about the idea.

So much to think about. We have time, but not much time. We have to make up our mind about these two things by mid March. There are other things to consider. If the home school's affiliated on-site daycare service doesn't have a space for Sienna in September, (we are on a waiting list) we cannot do the French Immersion because we simply cannot do the mid day drop off/pick up routine. In that case, we will have to keep her in Montessori system till Grade one. And she will never be able to go for French Immersion. The coordinator made it clear they don't take on the French teaching from other facilities. An hour of French at Montessori system now will not be counted. And there will not be a mechanism to test her French level either.