Day after day, the richness of possibilities of the English language world brings us new opportunities and challenges. Our passion for discovering more and more new fields brought us the chance to meet a team of nursery school educators willing to implement the best educational proposal in English for their bilingual institution. They had to choose between the option of just hiring native English teachers or the alternative of finding the best educational project in English for their learners. They chose the second. When The Little One director Ixiar Vilas first called us, we had already been toying with the idea of exploring the world of very young learners of English. So her call couldn't have been done in a better moment. We met and our ideas on education immediately connected. We were dreaming the same dreams, sharing the same goals and we decided to partner up in the adventurous project of creating an exclusive methodology for very young learners in English, non-existing in the Spanish market right now.

September was the chosen moment for OxbridgeTEFL and The Little One to start intensive workshop sessions with one objective in mind: to create an ESL  methodology featuring learning environments for very young learners in English.

After researching the existing methods offered in the market nowadays, we realized that there is a total absence of material for very young learners: children aged 1 to 3 years old. Most publishers target their resources for 3+ years old learners but there is absolutely nothing for kids under that age. This gap in learning material for very young learners goes together with a gap in specific ESL teachers preparation for accomplishing teaching 1 to 3 year olds in English. There is no specific teacher training and there are no specific resources but there is one reality and this is parents wanting and looking for institutions who provide education in English for their children.

After analyzing the situation, we decided that if there isn't a specific educational project that would target very young learners of English language in Spain, then we would create it from scratch. We couldn't have done it alone and we couldn't have found a better partner: a young nursery institution with highly qualified educators who care deeply about the educational project they are offering in English and Spanish.

A team of young educators leaded by entrepreneur  Ixiar Vilas, director of the school and her partner Maite Martin, an experienced and vocational teacher, accepted the challenge to participate in the creation of an ESL methodology and resources for very young children under the expertise of OxbridgeTEFL.

We launched our first workshop in which our aim was to create the fundamentals of our project. Our goals were:

1. Setting clear educational objectives and goals for learners aged 1 to 5 years

2. Creating course syllabi for every particular age group between 1 and 5 years

3. Creating learners' materials and resources for the classroom in English for each age group

The two-week event ended with vary valuable conclusions and, what is more important, with full accomplishment of our goals. Now the first term class materials are being designed, printed and tested with our young learners. Ah… and we have a new family, The Little One family.

Our next steps include analyzing the results of our material in the classroom and preparing the next two terms of this academic year. Meanwhile, we cannot stop amazing ourselves with how quickly our young learners evolve and react to the stimuli we have suggested. Their smiling faces, the loving attitude towards their educators, their unconditional acceptance and their progress is our best reward. We know that what we've started was necessary and now we know it is worth it!