Enhancing heritage and additional language learning in the preschool years: longitudinal implementation of the Little Multilingual Minds program

Little Multilingual Minds (LMM) partners with universities, multilingual communities, and early childhood centres to offer a language exposure program for heritage language (HL) and additional language (AL) speakers in a naturalistic, play-based environment. This paper reports on two implementations of the LMM program conducted in a Spanish-English bilingual preschool in Sydney, Australia. Implementation 1 focused on HL children (n= 11; Mage = 4.24) for HL maintenance over six months, while Implementation 2 expanded to include both HL and AL children (n=27; Mage=2.93) with a new cohort over one year. Both implementations were quantitatively evaluated in three key areas: linguistic proficiency (vocabulary, listening, speaking, literacy/numeracy), alignment with educational principles (disposition, interaction, interest), and task-related precursors of school readiness (attention, cooperation, engagement), using Bayesian modelling for reliable statistical testing. Results from Implementation 1 showed significant improvements in HL children’s linguistic skills from the first to the last assessment, effectively strengthening HL proficiency while preventing a shift toward English. In Implementation 2, despite challenges, the program was successfully adapted to accommodate both HL and AL children in the same session, yielding encouraging outcomes for both groups. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for successful HL maintenance and AL learning within preschool classes with mixed language backgrounds.