🌱 Little Voices. Big World. 🌎

A weekly Mandarin immersion playgroup for Goddard children ages 2 to 4.
Held right at school during the regular Goddard day.

Fall 2026 | Thursdays, September 10 through December 17

Mandarin at The Goddard School of Athens

What Is The Language Nook

The Language Nook brings native and heritage Mandarin-speaking instructors and a research-grounded curriculum into your child's school for 45 minutes a week. Sessions are built on songs, movement, and hands-on play, which is how young children pick up the sounds and rhythms of a new language.

Sessions happen during your child's regular school day. You do not need to be there, drive anywhere, or add anything to your calendar. Your child stays in the building, with their teachers nearby, and comes home with something new.

No Mandarin at home? Perfect.
Most of our families have none. Everything that comes home is built for exactly that.

Why Mandarin

Around 940 million, which is more than the native speakers of English and Spanish put together.
Mandarin is not a niche choice. It is the largest one there is.

Still, none of that is why we start this young. At this age, what matters is sound.

What makes Mandarin hard for English speakers is not the grammar, which is simpler than Spanish or French in several respects. It is the tones, and a handful of sounds English does not use. Those are precisely the things that get harder with age and easier the earlier a child hears them. An adult learner spends years training an ear to hear the difference between the tones. A two year old is still doing that work automatically, without being taught.

There is also nothing to read yet. At this age Mandarin is entirely listening and speaking, so the character writing system, the part that intimidates most adults, is simply not in the picture. Your child gets the hardest part of Mandarin during the years it comes most naturally, and the written language can wait until they are ready for it.

More people speak Mandarin as a first language than any other language on earth.

Every session runs 45 minutes and follows the same shape week to week, because young children settle in faster when they know what comes next.

🎵 We open with a welcome song. The same Mandarin greeting song every week. It signals that something special is starting and helps children transition in.

🕺🏼 We move. Songs, movement games, and sensory play built around one theme, like animals, food, or colors.

💬 We play with the words. Guided vocabulary play and a hands-on activity. The same words show up in several different formats within a single session, so children meet each one in more than one context. We also incorporate interactive reading to bring story time to life.

👋🏽 We close with a goodbye song. The same one every week. Children come to hear it coming, and a predictable ending makes the handoff back to their classroom an easy one.

Each theme runs four sessions in a row. Children hear the same songs and vocabulary across a full month before the theme changes. That repetition is deliberate. Layered, meaningful repetition over time is one of the most consistent findings in early language research.

What A Session Looks Like

What’s Included

🗓️ Weekly playgroups. 45 minutes, every Thursday, led entirely in Mandarin by native and heritage speakers. 14 sessions across the fall term.

🖍️ Two take-home pieces with every monthly theme. One is a hands-on anchor activity. One is quick and simple. Both are built to be done in a few minutes with a parent who speaks no Mandarin.

📝 A Parent Resource Card each theme. The month's vocabulary, songs, and a handful of prompts you can drop into things you already do, like breakfast, the car, or bedtime. It is not homework and it does not require you to learn anything first.

📱 A private family resource page. Audio recordings of every song and vocabulary set in the program, so the Mandarin your child hears at school can play in your kitchen. Access by QR code on the resource card.

🗣️ No Mandarin experience needed. Most of our families have none. That is who this is built for.

Who Leads Sessions

Every session is led by a Lead Instructor, a fluent or heritage Mandarin speaker who runs the whole session in Mandarin.

All instructors are background-checked before their first session and trained on child safety protocols and our curriculum.

The Language Nook carries its own general liability insurance covering all program activities.

Hi, I’m Casey

First time mom, former professor, founder of The Language Nook.

I started The Language Nook at 3am, feeding my daughter and searching for a Mandarin program that did not exist.

I do not speak Mandarin. I always meant to learn and never did, and by the time I got serious about it, it felt like I had waited too long. I did not want that for her.

My PhD is in communication and organizational science and teaching college students, so early language acquisition was never my field and working with toddlers was never my plan. What actually happened is that my daughter did not sleep, and in those long 3am stretches I started reading second language acquisition research on my phone, the way any determined, sleep-deprived mother does.

What I could find for an actual toddler was either built for much older kids or built around drills and screens. And I did not find a local Mandarin immersion daycare program in Athens. So I built the thing I had been looking for, around what the research kept coming back to: play, songs, repetition, and no pressure on a child to perform.

I am a researcher and an educator at heart, so I am always looking for better evidence and simpler ways to help families build language-rich homes without having to speak Mandarin themselves. And because this began with my own daughter, everything gets tried out on a rambunctious and easily distracted toddler first, in my living room, on the drive to school, in the bathtub, before it ever reaches your family.

I am also the person who reads every email that comes to hello@thelanguagenook.com, so ask me anything.

I hope we get to have your child in The Language Nook!

The Details

Ages: 2 to 4

Day and time: Thursday mornings, during the regular Goddard day

Fall term: September 10 through December 17, 2026

Sessions: 14. No session Thanksgiving week.
September 10, 17, 24
October 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
November 5, 12, 19
December 3, 10, 17

Group size: Each playgroup session capped at 8 children

A note for part-time families: Sessions are on Thursdays. If your child attends Goddard on a MWF schedule and you would like to join The Language Nook, talk with the Goddard staff about your options.

What It Costs

$120 per month, per child

$100 per month for each additional sibling

This is separate from your Goddard tuition and billed by The Language Nook, not by the school.
The fall term is billed monthly, four payments across the term. Your first payment confirms your spot. The next three are charged automatically to the same card on the same date each month.

We close out your subscription at the end of the term. You will not be billed into the new year. If you want your child to continue The Language Nook in the next term, we will send you a new registration link.

If you need to withdraw, email The Language Nook at least 7 days before your next payment date and we will stop billing. We do not credit individual missed sessions, since your child's spot is held in a group of only eight. If we cancel a session, we add a makeup date at no charge.

  • On its own, 45 minutes a week is exposure. What makes it add up is the other six days, and The Language Nook builds that for you.

    Each theme runs four weeks, so your child hears the same songs and words again and again in a setting they know. In between, you get a hands-on anchor activity and a simple print-and-go one, roughly every other week, a Parent Resource Card with the month's vocabulary and a few prompts, and a private family page with recordings of every song and word in the program.

    That means Mandarin can show up at dinner, in the bath, in the car, in the two minutes before bed. At this age, a little every day goes further than a lot once in a while. Ten seconds of a song on the drive to school, five days a week, does more than any single session can on its own.

    None of it asks you to speak Mandarin. The prompts are short, the recordings handle the pronunciation, and you use them alongside your child rather than teaching them. And if Mandarin is already spoken in your home, the same materials go further. Use the songs and vocabulary as a starting point and build out from there in ways we could never script for you.

  • No. Sessions run during the regular Goddard day while your child is already at school.

  • Not at all. That is who this is built for. Most of our families start with no Mandarin at home, and the whole program assumes it.

    And if Mandarin is already spoken in your home, your child is just as welcome. Heritage families use the playgroup differently, as a place where the language shows up outside the house, with songs, books, and other children. Both kinds of families do well here!

  • No, and this is one of the most common worries we hear, so it is worth answering carefully.

    Growing up with more than one language does not confuse children or delay their language development. Children raised with two or three languages reach the same broad milestones as children raised with one. Mixing languages inside a single sentence, which often worries parents most, is normal and is a sign of skill rather than confusion. Your child is drawing on everything they have!

    Bilingual children sometimes know fewer words in one particular language early on, while their total vocabulary across all their languages tracks right alongside their peers. Those single-language gaps typically close.

    Your home language will also stay dominant, because that is where nearly all of your child's language input comes from. Forty-five minutes a week plus songs in the car adds a language. It does not compete with one.

    If your child has a diagnosed speech or language delay, additional language exposure does not cause it or make it worse. Your speech-language pathologist knows your child, and we defer to them on anything clinical. If there is something they recommend that would help your child in a session, tell us and we will build it in.

  • Very normal at this age, and the format is designed for it. Some children sing along in week one, some watch from the edge for a month and then surprise everyone. Both are learning. We never push a child to perform.

  • This is an early foundation, not a fluency program. What we build is the ability to hear and produce Mandarin sounds and tones, comfort with the language, and the beginnings of vocabulary. Those are the things that make real Mandarin learning accessible later on, and this is the age when they come most easily. Very young children are still sensitive to sound and tone differences that adults stop noticing, and that sensitivity narrows toward the languages a child hears regularly. Regular Mandarin now means the sounds and tones stay familiar rather than becoming foreign, which is a real head start whenever formal study begins.

  • Ah, the joy of life with toddlers! 😊 Come back the next week and nothing is lost, since the same theme runs three-four sessions in a row. Your take-home materials and song recordings do not go anywhere either, so your child can keep hearing the language at home on a week you are out.

  • Sessions are on Thursday mornings. Ask the Goddard Director about your options.

  • Email Casey Pierce at hello@thelanguagenook.com

Your Questions, Answered

Reserve Your Spot

Each playgroup is capped at eight children. At this age, small is what makes it work. With eight, an instructor can notice every child in the room.

If the first playgroup fills, we open a second, so reserving early both helps us plan and holds your child's place in line.

Fill out the short form below to reserve a spot for your child.

Once reservations are in and we know how many groups we are running, we will email you a payment link along with two forms. The participation waiver is required for every child. The media release, which covers photos and video, is entirely optional. Declining it changes nothing about your child's spot or their experience, and we keep careful track of who has opted out.

We build the fall playgroups from these reservations, so please reserve only if you are planning to enroll. It helps us manage the playgroup sizes and language instructor staffing.