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Campers practiced Spanish and French

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris don’t start until Friday. But they already happened in Arlington at Wimbish World Language Academy.

Wimbish is a dual-language elementary school where all students – pre-K through sixth grade – are immersed in either Spanish or French.

But the summer break can take a toll on the language skills students acquired during the school year.

So, last week, Wimbish hosted its fourth-annual Summer Enrichment Camp to beat the summer learning lag. Students – or rather campers – honed their French and Spanish language skills each morning with classes and fun activities. And the theme for it all was the .

“It’s important for kids to have access to language over the summer – that’s the main goal,” said Kailey Corpman, a Wimbish dual language specialist and the coordinator for the camp. “It’s really nice that we can bring this to our community for free and students have another opportunity to practice and learn over the summer.”

Each morning included four rotations and started with language instruction. In the library on Wednesday morning, third through fifth graders learned about cognates. In a nearby classroom, soon-to-be kindergartners colored pictures of Olympians as they practiced French.

“I colored her legs blue,” one little boy announced.

“Do you know what that’s called?” Wimbish principal Dr. Chelsea Kostyniak asked the boy about his picture. “That’s rhythmic gymnastics.”

In a room across the hall, second-grade students wrote in Spanish in their journals about Rodelfo Falcón, a Cuban Olympian.

“He was a swimmer and won a championship,” Viané, one of the students, said.

Once the language instruction class ended, students rotated among three other activities – art, snack and P.E.

In the gym, P.E. teacher-for-the-week Annie Eagler – who is a special education teacher at Wimbish during the school year – introduced campers to Olympic sports. Each day was a different sport, from soccer and basketball to volleyball and badminton.

“Did you know that volleyball can be played indoors and outside on the beach?” Eagler asked the students on Wednesday before teaching them how to bump the volleyball.

She then listed some of the countries that have won a lot of Olympic medals in volleyball.

“Brazil, the United States …” she said before being interrupted by cheers from the students.

“Yeah! “Yes!” several shouted.

Down the hall in the art room, campers made colorful Olympic torch replicas or gold medals and drew pictures of themselves as Olympians.

“I drew a picture of me on the USA basketball team,” said Hatcher, a rising second grader.

Basketball must have been on his mind, because later in the library, he built a basketball court out of Legos. His classmate, Iram, used Legos to make an archery range.

Ryatt, another rising second grader, said building Olympic events out of Legos was his favorite part of the camp. But then he quickly changed his mind.

“Actually, STEM is my favorite,” Ryatt said.

And by STEM, he meant snack time.

That’s because the STEM lab had been converted into a culinary lab for the week of camp, where campers got to make their own fun cultural snacks.

Tuesday, it was fruit salsa.

“So, we made a fruit salsa yesterday,” said Elsa, a rising fifth grader who wished they had more time to spend making snacks. “We weren’t able to cook cook it – we just mixed it and got our ingredients. We have limited time to do this – to make them. But we do get to partially make them and eat them.”

On Wednesday, they got to “partially make” a different snack: French – a cream puff.

Chef Anai Arzola, who is a high school culinary instructor at the 91��Ƭ�� Career + Technical Center during the school year, was in charge of the snacks and made all the pastry puffs for the profiteroles herself the night before. Campers got to fill their puffs with cream and drizzle them with chocolate sauce.

As Malcolm, a soon-to-be sixth grader, waited for his turn to assemble a puff, he explained why he really enjoyed the week at Wimbish.

“I really like how they did the Olympic theme because it’s not every day that the Olympics happen,” he said. “I like how the teachers are incorporating the Olympics into the lessons.”

In other words, Malcolm would give Wimbish’s language immersion camp a gold medal.