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Scheduling Languages
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I noticed in the sample schedules that there does not seem to be any foreign languages listed… how do other people schedule them? What type of frequency and how many languages are you working on at a time?
We found that we need to work on Latin every day. We have a more variable schedule with our others, right now we work on a Spanish song two days a week and work from CD’s two days a week but try to work in “conversation breaks” frequently. We do this right now:
14yo: Spanish, Latin, French
12yo: Spanish, Latin
8yo: Spanish
Michelle D
*bumping this thread to the top*
I realize this thread is pretty old, but I am wondering this, too. If I have a Kindergartener who is fairly fluent in ASL (I teach ASL and have signed with both my children since infancy), and I want to continue with ASL and add in Spanish when we start first grade in the fall. I noticed that foreign language wasn’t included on the sample weekly schedules, so how often do we immerse him in the language? 1x/week? More? I would assume that it has to be done fairly regularly to be affective. Is foreign laguage at this age more for vocabulary, or are they to learn grammar at the same time?
We do foreign language once a week, but that’s just me. Of course, if ds wants to watch the video again during the week, I let him. We do Salsa Spanish (www.gpb.org/Salsa). I have a third grader and a kindergartener.
Foreign language at that age is more vocabulary than grammar based.
We do Korean 3-5x/week. My two boys (ages 11 and 7) do a few days of Rosetta Stone and a few days of activities that I schedule – practicing counting, common vocabulary, etc.
Today we set the number 1-10 to song and we’ve been practicing that.
I believe Catherine Levison’s book, A Charlotte Mason Education, has sample schedules from primary through school that include foreign languages (several.)
We have French scheduled four days/week. I haven’t been diligent enough with it. But, it only takes about 15-20 minutes a day to see great progress when you practice words and phrases daily off and on. This way, nothing is lost over time, even if lessons aren’t completed as often as you’d planned.
Becca<><
We do French but not very long, I have them read a couple pages, they are already pretty fluent.
I have been thinking about adding Spanish but do not know how to fit it in our schedule.
We do ASL 2x a week, and German 2x a week… That said, I’m not sure we are getting anywhere at times….
We are doing ASL about 10-15 minutes a day, plus we get to watch the interpreter on Sunday during church. I am amazed at what we are able to understand and pick up now-a-days just from this short amount of time.
I think CM advocated that kiddos needed to be fluent before starting grammar.
We do a short French vocabulary lesson with all of the kids during our family learning time. Sometimes this is from flashcards naming objects, or sometimes I will pick a phrase and work on it with them for a week or two (until they can all respond easily).
During their individual lessons, they also work on French. My older two (11yo & 10yo) do a written assignment and Rosetta Stone every school day. My 8yo is just beginning the written French and uses Fluenz – he wasn’t quite ‘getting’ Rosetta Stone. My two youngest (6yo & 4yo) watch Little Pim for 5-10 minutes together and we discuss briefly.
This may seem like too much foreign language, but I think a language really has to be kept up with consistently if you want to see progress. Also, we don’t spend a great amount of time on it (especially in the younger years) – maybe 15 minutes a day, total.
I think Charlotte recommended the “Hearing, Saying, Reading, Writing” approach. I know she introduced new vocabulary to the students each week, but didn’t expect them to write the language or study grammar until the later years.
We recently started Prima Latina. We’ve been doing a lesson once a week but review it daily. We spend 10-15 minutes a day.
We do French daily – probably 15-30 minutes, but not all in one chunk. My dd7 does The Learnables (10-15 minutes/day). All 3 kids (7, 4, 3) also read from a French book (right now using a preschoolers Bible story book) and sing French songs daily, sometimes we do vocabulary games together too. We also have French language materials around the house (videos, audio books, French storybooks on the shelf with their English ones) that aren’t scheduled, but do happen from time to time as part of our family life. And then of course the environmental exposure (we moved to French speaking W. Africa a month ago)…working on finding a French-speaking househelp which will increase that environmental exposure a lot too. I think some kind of exposure daily is important if you want to make forward progres with a language (even if it’s something as simple as listening to a CD or watching a video).
We plan to add Latin in a couple of years – probably when dd is 9 or 10. If they want to take up a third language for HS credit, that will be their choice (I imagine they’ll be fairly proficient in French by that point if we keep at it.) We’ll see how we go. =)
Jen
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