Wednesday, July 25, 2007

homeschooling in French

My dear friend Amy, who is homeschooling her children, reports from Mississippi:

We’ve just begun formalized French study. Lily, who is six years old, is the primary student, though Gregory (4) and Lia (2) sometimes participate. We’re using Il etait une petite grenouille, a French as a Second Language (FSL) curriculum. We begin by listening to part of a story on CD and following along in a picture book. We review the previous lessons and then work on the new lesson. For instance, yesterday we worked on “Qu’est-ce que c'est” (what’s that? with the appropriate response) and pointed to pictures in the book, as well as in a picture book of French words, and we also practiced with “what is his/her/your name” and the appropriate response. Then, the new information included using “Je suis” (I am) so we did that for a while and the children pretended to be various animals, and tell me “Je suis une vache” or “Je suis un cheval” or whatever was correct. Already I’m concerned about my own grammar, however because I couldn’t remember if I ought to have them use the article in such sentences. (ARGH!) Over the next several days Lily will also use her activity book, writing, and reading book that go along with the lessons. Then, we’ll move to the next lesson on the CD.

Lily has also been playing a computer game called
Adiboud Chou au Bord de la Mer for fun and I’ve found some online sites with FSL computer games that I’ll let her begin playing as soon as I have a faster connection. (This site also offers games in English.)

I'd love to hear from other parents who are homeschooling their kids in French (or other languages too, like Jeanne and Corey). What activities and techniques work best for y'all?

1 comment:

  1. I just finished a post about learning a second language is beneficial to children’s growth. Learning a second language can bring children invaluable skills, such as viewing the world with different lens, better reading abilities, better academics performance and etc. It can help boost children’s brain power, making them stronger, quicker and smarter.

    So I agree with your opinion. That is why we should encourage parents bring up their children bilingual!

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