About LOTE KIDZ The limits of my language are the limits of my life LOTE KIDZ was developed after 27 years teaching Greek to young learners in Victoria. The founder Maria Gindidis was State Coordinator of the Bilingual Schools Project, teacher trainer LOTE Methodology Monash University, Innovations and Excellence Cluster Coordinator (5 schools) and Director of Protypo Greek Centre Ltd. During this time Maria developed curriculum and teacher methodology strategies for children learning second and heritage languages. With brain research informing many new advances in the teaching of languages other than English, an interest to extend such programs for babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers emerged. Why learn a second or heritage language so young? Teaching languages to infants is not only possible but it is a highly recommended practice especially between the ages of birth and six years old. Studies have shown that learning second languages can increase IQ, improve mathematical abilities and improve overall future performance. Infants and children who learn a second language such as Greek exhibit superior first language development, greater cognitive flexibility, intercultural awreness, concept formation and creativity. “In our LOTE Greek KIDZ Protypakia immersion classes our babies and toddlers are not learning about the language, they are learning in the language through using it.” What is our “immersion approach”? An immersion approach to learning another language may seem unnatural to adults but is intuitive and effective for children.  Think about it -- we all learned our very first native language by an immersion approach (no one translated anything to us because there was simply no language to translate to). Through lots of repetition, young children learn a language -- any language -- naturally and intuitively simply by being immersed in it. The quantity and frequency of words a child is exposed to has a direct influence on how fast that child will learn a language both on a receptive and expressive level.