How the idea was born
Our school was established in May 2016 with the goal of teaching the Slovak language to Slovak children living in Cyprus.
From September 2016 until June 2020, we provided Slovak language training to children in various cities across Cyprus. We created a vibrant community of Slovak "flamingos" on the island – not only through the lessons we offered but also through the weekend activities we organized for Cyprus Slovaks and their children.
After four years of successful operation in Cyprus, and positive feedback from children and parents, the Flamingos school was transformed into an ONLINE school of the Slovak language with worldwide operations.
We now provide qualified teaching of the Slovak language to children anywhere in the world.
For Parents
We are also parents of multilingual children born and raised outside of Slovakia. As such we totally understand the daily challenges of multilingual parenting you face.
Given the busy lifestyles we all have, especially in a foreign land, we understand how difficult it is to motivate children to communicate in Slovak, and how challenging it is to systematically teach them grammar and other necessary language skills.
We are proud of our heritage and culture. As parents we believe that the most precious gift we can give our children is the ability to speak the language of their ancestors. We are happy to see our children feeling at home in Slovakia. The moments when we see our little ones talk and laugh with their grandparents, understand their cousins’ jokes, share stories with their relatives, and become friends with the children of our friends are the moments we know that all the effort is worth it.
None of us can now imagine the world our children will live in or the professions and lifestyles they will choose. But we are sure that knowing more languages is always a bonus.
This Slovak language online school offers the option to Slovak children anywhere in the world of discovering the beauty of their language. Let your children become properly bilingual/multilingual with us. Don’t deprive them of their right to understand their roots.
All you need is an internet connection, a laptop or tablet, and a bit of dedication. There is no need to drive your child anywhere—we will come to your home and teach your child in the comfort of her/his room! This way you don´t have to be a teacher, you can stay a parent and spend your time with your child on fun activities together.
Our Mission
Personal contacts and face-to-face friendships cannot be replaced by virtual reality. However, modern technologies are a part of our daily life, so why not to use them for our best benefit, and for the benefit of our children? Sometimes it is difficult to provide regular exposure to Slovak language and regular in-person contact with children of the same origin. Having the option of live online classrooms can help us meet our goal.
So what do the online lessons look like? Well, our children exchange ideas about educational videos they watch together, complete various online quizzes for a comprehension check, read stories, learn interesting historical facts, talk about famous Slovaks, and learn about Slovak geography. They write stories and create projects on different subjects which they then proudly share with their classmates. They work in groups, in pairs, or individually in their breakout rooms.
They even dance, sing, and bake together! This module was not even in our imagination a few months ago. But today, we are totally enthusiastic about it and cannot imagine a more engaging and fun way of learning Slovak.
Our Aim
There are many existing educational centers and schools of Slovak language worldwide that offer lessons and educational activities. We do not aim to compete with these. We simply aim to meet the needs of children living in countries without these options, and to offer an added value to children in countries with existing Slovak schools.
Our school will continue to support personal gatherings and weekend activities for our students and their parents. We will personally continue organizing events in Cyprus. We strongly believe that there will be a chance of summer get-togethers of all our students in the form of summer camps in Slovakia in the near future.