NEW & NOW
Metro mother daughter team creates educational language boxes
Mindy Nix and Susanne Huffman founded Oui & Sí to give kids a hands-on introduction to learning French and Spanish. The mother daughter duo are French language professors in the metro, Nix at Oklahoma City and Oklahoma Christian universities and Huffman at the University of Central Oklahoma, and both tutor in French and Spanish. Huffman also teaches kindergarten and preschool French. Together they carefully curate Oui and Sí French and Spanish learning boxes for open-ended play and instruction for ages 3 through 7. Each themed box comes with a variety of high-quality tactile objects, like letter tiles, figurines, objects from nature, flash cards, dominoes and dice, to promote interactive learning of numbers, letters, shapes and language in either French or Spanish. A QR code can be scanned to reveal a lesson plan that focuses on French or Spanish vocabulary,
new phrases and fun games. Box themes include space, construction, dinosaurs and farm fun, as well as holidays, and rather than just a focus on memorizing pertinent words, the learning is immersive to include conversation, sentence structure and more. Oui and Sí officially incorporated during the pandemic, and the word-of-mouth response has surprised Nix as parents are seeking supplemental learning for kids at home. While learning languages at a young age is beneficial, it’s never too late to learn, and Nix has enjoyed hearing about parents learning right along with their kids using their boxes. “Teaching has always been a passion for Susanne and I, especially teaching languages,” said Nix. “So, being able to reach more people, especially during these times, has been very gratifying.” Next, the founders of Oui and Sí are working
on resources for kids through age 12. Boxes can be purchased individually or as a subscription at ouiandsi.com or local retailers Learning Tree and Plenty Mercantile.
Meet the Directors
one of my children’s first grade teacher and he empowered her to be exactly who she is, embraced her learning and changed our family’s lives forever. We partnered and asked, “Why can’t school be fun for every kid, every day?” We realized we would have to make a school to make that dream come true. So we did. How has the pandemic changed things at your school? John: Keystone believes in protecting its students, staff, families and community from the spread of COVID-19. We have implemented our own data-based metric to decide when we are in-person or online virtually. Although our metric has kept us in distance learning for a good portion of our year, we do offer daily, safe, outdoor time to our students each week where they can socialize with their classmates distantly and experience our amazing outdoor campus. It is not what we want, but it is safe enough that when other schools have shifted to fully online learning, we can continue being on campus safely. Find more information about their educational philosophy and how they are morphing during the pandemic at metrofamilymagazine.com/keystone.
We asked the co-founders and directors of Keystone Adventure School and Farm in north Edmond, John Duhon and Jenny Dunning, how they started their unique, hands-on, mostly outdoor school. Tell us about your background in education and what led you to establish this unique school. John: I received my degree in Elementary Education and have been at Keystone since the words, “Let’s make a school” were first uttered. Jenny: I studied Language Arts, focusing on Cognitive Theory and Learning Disabilities and founded Keystone with John in 2004. I always felt like school could be done better, differently, with love of kids and childhood driving the dream. As a mom of six kids who all learned differently and who needed to be unschooled every day when they came home from school, I wanted to restore the twinkle in their eyes and the creativity in their hearts. I found pathways for each child that celebrated their learning styles by capitalizing on their interests, strengths with art, lots of play, hands-on, experiential and messy learning. John was
JOHN DUHON JENNY DUNNING
19201 N Western Ave, Edmond, 405-216-5400 keystoneadventureschoolandfarm.com
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