Closing our "homeschool" before it opens

It's official. We just enrolled Annie in "St. Louis Language Immersion School" So, August 17th she will start Kindergarten. We had completely decided to homeschool her and were debating curriculums when Michael came across a flyer for this school. It is new this year. It is a part of the St. Louis public school system, so it is free, but it is a Charter school. All of the classes are taught in SPANISH. The teachers only speak SPANISH. They teach Spanish grammar and do not even introduce English until 3rd grade.

We decided to test out this opportunity for a couple of reasons:
1 - It is a rare opportunity to have a FREE Immersion school. This is something that is only available to us because of the city that we live in. I think there are only 20 immersion schools in the country. Most of them have very high tuitions.
2 - It is something that Annie has expressed interest in. She has actively tried to learn Spanish words, asked for Spanish videos and started naming her animals words that she made up to have spanish sounding names like her doll is named  "Jasmino" (a variation of princess Jasmine) and her horse is named "ponito" (from the word pony). It is something that is not easy for us to offer her at home. We could teach Spanish vocab, but not offer the immersion learning style.
3 - She already knows almost all of the Kindergarten standards (she can read, count, write, etc.) so if it does not work out, I do not feel like her education is at risk.
4  - She is really outgoing and wants to GO to school with other kids.
5 - Michael was going to do the bulk of the homeschooling but has the potential to be gone a lot of this school year
6 - Many of the teachers are not from the US, so we feel like they will not push an agenda that we would normally fear from the St. Louis Public schools.

We visited the school tonight. Half of it is under construction still. It is all new and pretty. The teachers are all motivated and bending over backwards to make sure it is a success. There are some things that it will be lacking (like an outdoor play structure) because there is just not enough time between now and August, but they are working toward all of it. It is less than 4 miles from our house.

Anyway, we are very much going into this as a test.  There are several things that could cause us to re-consider homeschool. The #1 right now is the schedule. If Michael is gone most weekends and evenings and she never sees him, we would re-evaluate. It will be a process of working out schedules and routines for a while, but we are excited. I'm shopping for uniforms and school supplies now.

Here is the website. http://sllis.org/