Parents guide · starting school

Getting ready for school when Luxembourgish isn't spoken at home.

Your child is about to start how the précoce works or the Spillschoul, and at home you speak English, French, Portuguese, something else. You're not the exception: according to Edustat (SCRIPT), 69% of primary-school pupils do not have Luxembourgish as their main language at home (2024/2025). And it's something you can prepare for.

What the first day feels like for your child

On the first day of school, everything lands at once: the goodbye, the group, the rules, the noise, and a language they've never heard. The first four challenges can't really be rehearsed in advance. The language can. A child who recognises the melody of Luxembourgish, a few words, a nursery rhyme, keeps their energy for everything else.

The 3-month plan, four small habits

These four habits spread a broader method across three months. If you'd rather see the whole picture first, here are the four routes for letting Luxembourgish in, and how they fit together.

1 · Nursery rhymes and cartoons

The gentlest way to let the melody of the language in. The classics are all online, and we've gathered them in our piece Luxembourgish nursery rhymes: where to begin: Kinidous, Kätti the mouse on RTL Play, Schkabetti, and the much-loved Léiwer Härgottsblieschen. Ten minutes playing in the background is plenty, the ear does the work on its own.

2 · Everyday words

A handful of concrete words, heard often, beats a long vocabulary list. Start with our page first Luxembourgish words with the official pronunciation: 24 sound cards, the same ones as in the app. Tap, listen, repeat together, two minutes here and there. The very first is Moien, hello in Luxembourgish.

3 · Playing together

This is where preparation becomes a regular thing without becoming a chore. A short game, with the pronunciation from the official LOD.lu dictionary, where your child does something rather than watching passively, and that you play together. That's exactly what Kawi is built for: hear a word, tap the right picture, succeed, and you discover the language right alongside them.

4 · The school itself

This step assumes the choice of school is settled; if it is not yet, what that choice changes for the language will help you decide. If your commune offers it, visit the school before term begins. Greet the teacher with a Moien, and show your child that you're giving it a go too. The teams are used to families who don't speak Luxembourgish: just tell them which language you speak at home, and they'll build on it. And for the practical side of day one (the bag, the goodbye routine, the evening chat), follow our first-day checklist. The school year is punctuated by dates you may not know yet: the festival calendar seen from the classroom will keep you from being caught out.

What not to do

• Pushing. A 3 year old doesn't learn under pressure: if the game doesn't land today, it will tomorrow.
• Passive screen time. Hours of videos in Luxembourgish don't replace ten active, shared minutes.
• Making it a drama. If your child senses you're anxious, anxiety is what sticks, not the words.
• Dropping your own language. The home language is an asset: the country's multilingual programme is built so it lives alongside Luxembourgish, not so it gets replaced (and no, being multilingual does not confuse a child).
• Getting a head start on German. It's the logical reflex, since reading will be taught in that language. Except that before six, it's Luxembourgish that matters, and the order is set by the curriculum.

If a screen is going to be part of the routine, it helps to know how to spot a sober app for this age.

What if they have already started?

This plan assumes you are preparing for the first day. Plenty of families arrive mid-year, or only face the question once their child is already in class. What changes is smaller than you would expect.

The method does not change: still the ear, still play, still a few minutes. What changes is that your child already gets several hours of Luxembourgish a day, and your role shifts from preparing to keeping up. The words they bring home beat any list you could find, so use theirs.

And talk to the team. Tell them which language you speak at home, and ask where your child stands: cycle 1 teachers watch exactly that, and they see progress you cannot see yet.

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