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Park Slope preschooler Otis Cheung, 3, is the son of a Mandarin-speaking Australian mom of Italian descent and a Cantonese-speaking Chinese-American dad. But despite his diverse ancestry, Otis speaks only English. That’s why his mom recently brought him to a Talk-n-Drum Italian class where the two of them could clap mani and stomp piedi together. “I speak a bit of Italian here and there, like ‘Let’s go to bed!’ and ‘Hurry up!’ Otis understands that,” says his mom, Rachael Macchiesi. “But I’m not proficient enough to teach him the language. I hope that the class will make him more open to picking it up later.”
Five years ago, it might have been tough for Macchiesi to find an Italian class for a kid Otis’s age, much less one that would take his four-month-old sister, too. But thanks to the recent boom in early language instruction, there are now dozens of options for city tots. From Bay Ridge to the Bronx, kids—and not just those with bilingual parents—can attend Russian sing-alongs, German storytime, Mandarin puppet shows or yoga in Spanish.
“Most of the parents I work with don’t have any experience with a second language,” says Sarah Farzam, founder of Bilingual Birdies, a Manhattan-based toddler music class held in Spanish, French or Hebrew, “but they see the way the world is going and they feel strongly about their kids learning one.” Farzam, who started out a year ago teaching three students, now runs ten classes a week.
