Research consistently shows that maintaining a home language and supporting multilingual education benefit children’s wellbeing, identity development, and future social participation. Play & Learn Vietnamese is a pioneering initiative by VietSchool that promotes multilingualism from the earliest years of life. This program offers free, one-hour Vietnamese language sessions each week to preschool-aged children in childcare centres across Sydney, using a specially developed curriculum tailored for this age group (https://www.facebook.com/vietschool.au/).

The idea originates from our findings in the VietSpeech ARC project, which highlights that early childhood is the most effective time to support home language development (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/vietspeech/overview). While government support exists for community language education from Kindergarten to Year 12, the preschool sector remains largely overlooked. Play & Learn Vietnamese aims to fill that gap.

We launched a call for expressions of interest earlier this month, and four Montessori centres in Sydney immediately registered. Our first sessions began in April at Croydon and Strathfield Montessori, with more centres eagerly awaiting our arrival, including Fairy Kingdom Childcare Centre (Revesby), Burwood Montessori, and Earlwood Montessori.

Each session engages around 15 enthusiastic pre-schoolers, including both children with Vietnamese heritage and those from non-Vietnamese backgrounds, who sing, dance, colour, and learn through play. It’s incredible to witness how quickly and joyfully they learn and interact in the language.

This project not only nurtures a love of languages but also fosters appreciation for cultural diversity and inclusion from a young age. With the Awesome Foundation’s support, we hope to expand this initiative and eventually adapt it to other community languages, bringing the joy of early multilingual learning to even more children across Sydney.