Check out my schedule and tell me what you think!

Looks fine to me, although personally I would try to include something for foreign language daily, even if it’s just something simple like watching a video, listening to a CD, or reading a book. If you’re only doing it once a week, he’s probably not going to retain very much. The early stages of FL learning are absorbing as much as possible the sounds of the language.

My first grader + pre-K and I are usually done somewhere between 1-1/2 to 2 hours as well, so I don’t think that is too little for a first grader.

HTH,

Jen

Works time-wise similar to mine around that age. Looks nice!

I should probably preface this by saying that I speak French at a comfortable conversational level and that we are actually living in France right now – dh and I are attending language school here in preparation for mission work in W. Africa – so we have easier access to French books, videos, etc. Believe it or not, though, it’s been hard to find much direct interaction for the kids other than church – we are definetely ‘outsiders’ on account of homeschooling.

Anyhow…we are using The Learnables as our base. We don’t LOVE it – it’s not super exciting – but I like it better than anything else I’ve looked at or tried. (I also tried Le Francais Facile and hated it, L’Art de Dire and found it too classroom focused and hard to implement at home, and Rosetta Stone which I liked OK for myself, but couldn’t imagine my 6yo using it. I don’t know that there’s really anything very good out there for young children.) She works with the Learnables software 3x per week, and watches one of these videos http://www.knowitall.org/instantreplay/content/program.cfm?SeriesIDpassed=45 on the other 2 days (again, I don’t love these, but the kids do, and it’s giving them additional exposure). I supplement with a variety of other things :my kids watch French cartoons several times a week and we try to read a French picture book everyday (and talk about what’s happening). I have a CD of French nursery songs with motions and we learn a new one each week – all three of mine love this (ages 2, 4, 6). We also do little activities like reading and following the directions in a little French activity book, or play “I Spy” type games to practice describing things. My dd is very visual, so we keep a little notebook that we record new words in as we come across them, come up with a sentence to use them in, and she illustrates it. I realize that’s not super-CM, but it works well for her. Quite honestly I think they’ve gotten more out of our ‘supplementary’ stuff than the formal program, but I realize that those kinds of things may not be possible for you if you don’t speak French.

Anyhow…hope that helps some…

Jen

I also think it looks good, though I have a couple of questions: what literature are you reading aloud and/or other read-alouds? He can begin narrating at this age the lit. and the read-aloud is just for listening without narrating.
The Fifty Famous Stories Retold are a great collection for this age for read-aloud. Aesop is another common one with which to begin narrating.

As for music, don’t feel pressured to have him actually take music lessons unless that is your desire, though it is a very good thing. I notice you have composer study 1x a week, which is right. I recommend playing that musician’s music (As well as other types of music) daily.

I second doing FL daily in some form.

We always (up till the last half of this year) read a poem daily; it doesn’t take very long and it really gives them an ear and interest in it that once a week can’t do, IMO. I didn’t follow the view of one poet at a time, though I think that’s the “rule”; for the exception of A Child’s Book of Verses, I read a variety of poems directed towards children.

HTH