Bilingual learning

[NCmadredetres]

I am teaching my kids (5yo (year old) -soon to be 6 ds, 4yo dd, 2 1/2yo ds) colors, numbers, letters, fruits and animals etc in English and Spanish. I would love to hear from others who are giving their children a bilingual christian education at home. I want to eventually teach them conversation, writing and reading in Spanish. I have Brainy Baby and Osmosis Spanish DVD's, which have helped them see the images and hear the words in Spanish, as well as my voice and pronunciation. I also have some bilingual Clifford and Spot books, as well as other christian books that I read to them.

Most of the focus right now is in conversing, reading and writing in English. Can anyone recommend a program to teach small children the Spanish language in a fun hands-on way?

Many members of our family speak Spanish and English. I would love for my kids to enjoy both languages as well as both our American and Latin American culture and food. (I have not met anyone yet who is Latina and homeschooling. I know I'm not the only one!)

Married to dh for 8 years
2 1/2 ds LHTH
4 dd LHTH
5 ds LHFHG

[inHistiming]

Well, I'm not Latina, but I do want to teach my kids Spanish. I'll be learning along with them. We have some flash cards we'll use. We also found Hooked on Spanish at our used curriculum sale. It is meant for very young children, but I thought it would be a fun introduction even for my older kids. Another thing I have is a set of cd's I got at the Dollar Tree that has colors, shapes, nouns. I plan to let them listen to these, and use the flashcards, as well as the HOS program. Once I feel we've gotten a good intro. I may have the olders move into Rosetta Stone Spanish, which is a program my huband got for me. It's not the homeschool version, but I figure it can still be a learning tool. There are also some free online Spanish sites (probably other languages as well) that you could do a search for. If you already speak the language, then of course you're many steps ahead of me, but these are my plans so far. We'll probably only do this once or twice per week.

[Dorla]

Hi Ncmadredetres! I am Latina and homeschooling! we just got back from Costa Rica where we stayed for a month with my parents and finally my son (6 yr) is happy to speak Spanish. He has always understood, but did not want to speak it. After seeing, hearing and observing other children that look like him speak the language he is now asking for school in Spanish.

We will be starting Beyond next week and continuing with Rod & Staff spanish reading Aprendiendo de Dios. This is in addition to Reading Made Easy. I am still in search of good spanish literature to add to our night time reading. We use some of the Rod & Staff story books in Spanish to balance out our reading in both languages. For LHFHG there is Historias de la Biblia that you can use instead of the English version and for story time Dover has the Beatrix Potter selection in Spanish that is scheduled in the manual.

We are working hard on speaking spanish only at home!

glad to meet you!
Dorla
www.escuelitaaparicio.blogspot.com

[water2wine]

I think you are so smart of doing this. We are using The Easy Spanish and I had honestly never though or actually trying to incorporate something into our lesson that is Spanish in nature. The program we use is CM style at least. But I love this idea. The only thing I do is make silly sentences up about them and they have to try to understand what I am saying. This is usual breakfast time activity. Glad you started this thread though. I am looking forward to hearing others responses.

[Samuel'sMommy]

I'm hoping to teach Spanish to Samuel in a year or two also, plus hopefully pick up some myself. I've always wanted to learn but never taken the time. Water2Wine, I looked at The Easy Spanish and have a question for you. Do you use the Junior Level or Level 1. It says Junior Level is for K-3 but also says that Level 1 can be used for a variety of ages so I wasn't sure if we just start with Junior and then advance to Level 1 or if they would overlap.

Someone on another board recommended La Clase Divertida http://www.funclase.com/welcome.html Have any of you heard of it or used it? One thing I liked about it was that in the last level they end by teaching you how to present the plan of salvation in Spanish. I thought that was pretty cool especially since most of the mission trips our church takes are to Spanish-speaking countries so if we ever went it could be good to know.

[moedertje]

I speak Dutch and have been doing my best to speak both languages to the kids. It is strictly conversational, because I know the language. My older and younger one understand the most. My middle one did not hear too much Dutch as a baby.
I would love for them to learn Spanish when they are older, because we live in Fl. At the moment I am focusing on them learning Dutch and when they know that it will be easier to learn other languages. I also want to Latin so it will be a toss up between Spanish and Latin in about 2 years.
It's encouraging to see that many people are trying to teach other languages. Start them off young! Before 7 is preferred.

[water2wine]

I am using level 1 after emailing the author this is what I came up with for all my kids. I am actually considering getting the JR level too. The author said I could use level 1 with all my kids and I suppose I could but I don't want to work that hard. I think the JR level is better for k-2 and maybe starting 2/3 with the older level on up to high school is better. It is fairly new for us. We got it at the end of last year. I think it is a really good program I am just questioning having to modify it for my K and 1st grader, so I have really just been using it with my older kids. This year I will probably get the JR level and use that with my little ones. I do not want to confuse them about Spanish spelling etc before they know English.

Oh one thing the minute you get it make a coy of the CD and take the original out of the book. It will crack in there and that will cost you $20. Found out the hard way.

[NCmadredetres]

Please check out this free website for learning Spanish. [www.123teachme.com] If you want to learn the basics (alphabet, numbers, fruit, etc) See the section for Conversational Spanish and click on the For Kids area that you want to learn and teach. The really cool thing about this website is you can hear the pronunciation in Spanish when you click on the word or picture. Enjoy!

[Amey]

I just wanted to comment on the La Clase Divertida someone mentioned. We live in Mexico and I bought this curriculum to use with my two boys when moved here. I found it to be excellent and well worth the price. The videos were fun, VERY interactive with songs and hand movements that my boys loved and thereby remembered well. Time is taken to learn the spanish pronunciation of the vowels which is integral if you don't want to speak spanish like a gringo The crafts were enjoyable and everything was included for those in the package as well. They include cooking lessons for kids ie: fried platanos, etc. and they also share some Mexican history. That said, since we live in Mexico and my children are emersed they quickly passed the level of spanish that the program focuses on. YAY! But..were we still in the states, I would still use La Clase Divertida. Excellent company! They also gave us a 30% discount as missionaries. What a blessing!

[6timeboymom]

my mom bought us the Rosetta Stone Latin American Spanish!! woo hoo!! My BIL is from Mexico, and there is a large population of Migrant Workers here, so we are very excited to learn Spanish.

[Natreez]

Hi all! Just chiming in to say that German is my native language so thats what we will be doing. The boys are looking forward to finally being able to have conversations with some of our family members in Germany that don't speak English very well or at all. I'm still researching teaching options although at some point we might invest in the Rosetta Stone software. Meanwhile, I'll probably surf the web to see what I find and beg & plead for family members to send me some German storybooks and music cds.

Natreez

[blessedwith2]

Hi! I also wanted to comment on La Clase Divertida. We will be doing this program in our co-op this year. The reason we chose it is because of its multisensory approach and FUN craft and cooking activities (Our co-op focuses on supporting each other from a Christian perspective and learning together in FUN ways as a family.) Anyway, I feel like the author of this program has really captured the essence of approaching all of the learning styles when teaching, just like Carrie has in all of her WONDERFUL teaching manuals! What a great fit I think it will be! I can't wait!

[busybee4]

This is something that I've been VERY burdened to do with our children! I am Hispanic but did not learn spanish fluently growing up so I've been hesitant to teach it to my children with the fear of teaching them incorrectly. However, I really desire for them to learn!!! My question is does learning, for example, their numbers in both languages at once slow them down or hinder them? I'm sure that eventually they might be okay but is it something to worry about or are they really not affected at all?

And how do you go about introducing Spanish into your school day? Do you set aside a special time or do you bring it in whenever you want? For example, "Okay kids it's spanish time!! Let's review our colors" etc? I'm curious cause I want it to be fun and effective without being overwhelming.

So, whatever ideas you ladies may have will be a blessing.

Oh, about some of the books some have mentioned on here, should those be read even though the children don't understand spanish?

[Natreez]

Hi Krissy,
I don't really have any software programs just yet so this what I plan on doing with my son. For about 15min either daily or every other day we will have scheduled "German" time. I plan on starting out the year discussing a bit about the country's culture and making the German flag. Perhaps I might give him a "schulttute" which is basically a cone filled with pencils, erasers, crayons, and some candy German children are given for their first day of school. I plan to use his middle name which is more German sounding than his first. We will start each day with doing the calendar/weather in German then transition into working on various topics which I chose that I'd like him to master for this year. Ex- alphabet, numbers, animals, colors, family, greeting expressions, body parts, shapes, directions, and clothing items. I plan on having a German food night once a week. We can't visit Germany so I plan on taking some virtual field trips, gathering as many photos and videos that I can that show the country. I have a cd with German songs that focus on some of the topics I've mentioned which we'll listen to either at home or in the car. I plan on trying to find some German story books online and reading these to him. The storybooks I plan on using will be well below his own reading level but I plan on trying to find books that he can relate to. Ex- popular characters- spongebob, or classics- cinderella. I will probably begin by reading a page in German then re-reading the same page in English and eventually only read the book in German. I have a workbook that will help him practice learning to write the topics we will be working on.
I plan on only speaking German to him (whether he understands or not) from about 3-5pm daily. Finally the last thing I plan to do is label index cards with the German word and tape it to the item to aid him in conversation. Ex- table/tisch

I'm open to any ideas anyone else has in teaching a foreign language. I hope some of my ideas perhaps helps someone else as well.

Natreez