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Spanish or French? Cherrydale Press
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I am considering buying from Cherrydale Press but am hesitant since I can’t really seem to figure which language to start with, Spanish or French.
I saw that SCM suggests spanish, anyone know why? Is is due to culturally it is closer to something our children would use these days and when they are grown?
Also do I need to buy all items offered for the Volume set (the book and the audio)?
My first instinct is to have the children learn French first, my oldest loves anything fancy and apparently anything French is fancy to her 🙂 I love kids thought processes. But then I am more familiar with spanish, actually more than I realized but no expert by any means. I can typically figure out a written sentence with I cannot speak Spanish well at all or translate it when spoken.
Any suggestions or guidance would be appreciated!
oh and how long do each of these volumes last, one school year, a semester, many years?
I’ve been google searching and have found links from the scm.com forum about language, even though I apparently am not able to put a word in the search within the site :/
I found that Knowitall.org and ket.org seem a lot like what I am looking for to have the children simply hear natives speaking the language.
Still questioning which language to start with though.
Any thoughts from you experienced mama’s?
We have done K this year and will start grade-ish 1 next year
Sorry I don’t have any advice for you, but I am curious as to what others will say too. This has been such a hard decision for me. I just cannot make up my mind. That’s why we’ve not started anything yet. 😉
I had 2 years of French in high school. I don’t remember a lot of it, but enough to feel like I would be of more help with that instead of Spanish.
We live in TX and there are a lot of Spanish speaking folks here. But, I have been told that people speak different styles of Spanish as well. Maybe the words are the same, but spoken differently? That makes sense, though, thinking about how different English sounds in places like England, Australia, and even different sections of the United States (New York vs Georgia, for instance 🙂 ). There are actually Spanish teachers in the homeschool circle here that are very different, depending on what you want. So, that would make it difficult to me in picking a curriculum.
I really would rather do French, but I want whatever we do to be useful for the kids too.
Another thing to think about is, we don’t know where the Lord will lead our kiddos when they are adults. What if we do Spanish and they wind up living somewhere like Canada for some reason? Or Asia? I really couldn’t help teach Chinese. These are things that I worry about. 😉
Just a thought.
Christy
We mention Spanish on our old posts because that was the first language she had available. It was the only one when she started and we began to recommend it. We’re excited that she is adding more as her life-work allows.
As to which one to select, I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. A couple of considerations might help you decide:
1. Do you already know one of the them yourself? If so, it will be easier to teach it. (If not, no worries; the audio mp3 is available for you.)
2. Do you know people who speak the language and would be willing to engage your child in conversation as he/she learns it? The goal is to be able to speak the language conversationally, so that type of resource person could be very helpful and might also make one language look more attractive than the other.Of course, you could always do more than one. Get one started and work on it for two or three years, then keep going with that one and introduce another one. That’s how Charlotte did it (her students learned four languages) and that’s how Allyson does it in her family (the author of the Cherrydale Press books). 🙂
I bought the book version for French. I studied French in school so I am much more familiar than with Spanish. Also, we use Salsa for Spanish with my DS6, so we have a resource for two years with that. (Salsa is a young childrens TV show that can be found on gpb.org There are about 42 15min segments, completely in Spanish, which have free downloads) Using Salsa for Spanish means I don’t have to actually teach the language. We’ll start the Cherrydale French later this year. The Cherrydale volumes can last 2 years, or a bit longer if you take your time.
HTH,
VanessaChristy- that is about how my thinking went along on this subject of foreign languages as well lol.
I remember learning in college that children have their neuro transmitters open to language of basically any kind until 7-ish and then the brain starts to pair things down if not used. My first thought is “Oh no, she’s 6! I need to start playing languages of any kind to make sure they are open later for her to use them!!” But I can only imagine with now rhyme or reason it would likely end in confusion and things not feeling as though they are to go together. idk.
Sonya- Thank you for the points you brought forward. I know some spanish but not a lot. I do not know anyone who speaks fluent spanish, yet we do have a lot of spanish speaking people in our area, I would think someone would like to earn some money speaking spanish to children(reading books singing songs, etc).
I remember my mom saying she had french in high school then later she took spanish in college and the french had made the spanish very hard for her to learn. With getting the children started in at least hearing a foreign language at a young age does anyone think that would lesson the chances of confusion later on. Do kids ever get confused with which language they are studying if they are already studying 1 or 2 others? (merely a question out of curiosity :))
Vanessa- I looked at gpb.org earlier today and Wow! what a great resource for so many things than just the little Salsa guy 🙂
We have been studying Latin at a snails pace for several years! I have been thinking of adding a more modern language next year. Cherrydale is on my list of possibilities. I think French would be fun, but Spanish would be so useful…We have a relitively large Mexican population in our town and there would be many more chances to use it or even have a tutor to work with them. If this goes well, maybe I will let them add a 3rd language for high school (DD has requested Japanese).
If approached the way Charlotte taught multiple languages, I don’t think children would get them confused. 🙂
Sonya- Great! Thank you for answering that question. That makes it look not as daunting for foreign language in the future as well.
Now I just need to go read how to teach the Charlotte way 🙂 I feel like there is so much reading to do and so very, very little time.
This next school year coming up will be our first with a cm approach, even though I feel I have done many things similar because they felt more natural than other ways I have since read about, and will be 1st grade with 1 child and then a 3 year old. I am so excited to be going in the CM direction and so looking forward to my children and I actually learning things of Value! We ordered from a kind of “Fun and Flashy” place last year for K (I liked the curriculum but it was too choppy and disjointed) and it fell flat quick!!!! And since it fell flat I have been trying to get us done with what ever it is on our list. My dd6 still finds “school” fun even though we are down to Bible, Bible study, Bible verse memorization, math, handwriting, family reading and then dd6 narrating. All else has pretty much worn us out, so SCM has really given me a glimmer of hope and excitement again about teaching and learning! (which is exciting in itself)
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