In my last article I discussed teaching kids Spanish when you don’t know a lick of it. Fortunately, several quality homeschool curriculums teach Spanish with little parental involvement. In addition, you can also find tutors and local classes as well. For those of you looking to teach Spanish using a pre-packaged curriculum, here are some you should investigate. Rosetta Stone is definitely one of the most popular homeschool Spanish curriculum’s around. My son is using as a supplement to help with an actual Spanish class and it does a great deal to help him to actually speak the language. That … Continue reading →

“How are you going to teach foreign languages?” This is one of the most common questions homeschoolers hear when people find out that you are going to continue homeschooling through high school. “Resources”, is my answer. The truth is I don’t know a lick of any foreign language, (outside of Latin songs learned in Catholic school and some choice Spanish words my Dominican roommate taught me in college). Whether I have resources or not, having kids learn a language when you have not way of determining results, can be unsettling. But what public school parent knows every subject that their … Continue reading →

I have written before about teaching foreign languages in the homeschool. I think it is one of the more difficult areas to teach as a homeschooler because it is one of the few areas where a background knowledge is somewhat essential if you’re going to think of starting in the younger grades. What has always bugged me about any pre-packaged foreign language curriculum is that they often lead a parent to believe that they will be purchasing a program that will yield fluent speakers without the parent having to know the language. While I wouldn’t say that you must speak … Continue reading →

I had been writing about my recommendations for studying foreign languages throughout the elementary years. I have said repeatedly that I don’t think you need to feel like you must spend a lot of money to teach your children foreign language and that the goal early on is exposure. However, I’ve consistently received two comments. One is that exposure is great but that most colleges want to see at least a few years of foreign language on your child’s transcript and the second is from people who have a good working knowledge of the language who disagree with my methodology. … Continue reading →

Awhile ago, I wrote about why I believe that teaching foreign languages to young students is over rated. It’s quite hard to teach your child a foreign language if you don’t speak it yourself. Consequently, I do not advise parents to spend an arm and a leg on a foreign language curriculum in the early elementary grades. You will find that it does very little, if any good towards producing a child that can speak the foreign tongue. Exposure on the other hand is never a bad thing. I do feel like I need to make the point that I … Continue reading →