Hello all. I am want to start teaching my kids a second language and am unsure how or where to begin. I know English and that is it. Ideally I would like to learn the language along with them. I am considering Spanish, but am thinking maybe I would like to do French or even Portugese. Portugese is a little random, but I have been to Brazil several times on missions trips and have fallen in love with the people there. Any and all suggestions, ideas, etc. are greatly appreciated.
Since you're open to suggestions, let me throw this one out there... Latin. Why? Because so many modern languages are based in Latin. It'll be a breeze to pick up any of those languages after learning it (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc.). We're using Latin for Children, and let me tell you... you CAN learn it along with your child. It's designed that way. You get DVD's of the lessons, a child and parent friendly workbook, an answer key, a CD of the vocabulary to chant along with in the car, optional activity book (crosswords, etc.), optional reader with Roman history and such, and free access to online games, videos, etc. through www.headventureland.com. It's very fun. The series is from Classical Academic Press. It starts with a very gentle, fun intro for K-2nd graders (Song School Latin), then gets into a little deeper study (Latin for Children, for appx grades 3-6 or so, and is the equivelent of 1.5 years of high school Latin), and then much deeper for the final series (Latin Alive, for late middle school or high school). Classical Academic Press also has some Greek, Spanish, and French available, but not as extensive as what they have for Latin. You'll be surprised how quickly you pick it up (simply because 60% of English comes from Latin), and you'll be surprised how quickly your kids pick it up (because kids are sponges).
Our family is learning American Sign Language. I realize it isn't a spoken language, but in our lives it will be used more often than acquiring a literally foreign language. We are not required to hold to the public school requirements here in IL, but if we did ASL would count as a foreign language.
Right now we aren't studying a foriegn language formally. I would like the kids to learn french as Canada is bilingual which means most gov't jobs require it. And the wages are higher for those who are bilingual. However I didn't start until grade five to learn french so I don't feel the rush yet. Our hs group has a french class we can opt to take which I am looking at trying for next year.
We are using Song School Latin here this year and love it. It is a great introduction. next year we will be using Latin for Children. Latin is a great base for any of the Romance Languages.
We do Latin. We are using The Latin Road to English Grammar. It is written so you, the teacher do the lessons about a week before the kids do them then you are able to teach it to the children. I have tried Prima Latina, it does not give the stems it just gives vocab and some derivatives. It was too slow for my kids and frustrated me to no end. I took 4 years of high school Latin, 2 French, and 1 Greek. My 4th grader is doing very well in Latin Road and my 7th grader is really ready for the Ecce Romani or Wheelock's next year. LAtin Road interweaves Latin and English so it teaches why we use prepositions and why we say certain words like we do. It makes a child go to an English dictionary and look up words that came directly from Latin roots. ONce you have some Latin then all other Romance language vocab comes pretty easy, as does knowing your English language roots. Our next endeavor is German. They chose it, I would have started French.
Thank you all for responding. I am going to look into Latin. If it is a good base for other languages then it seems more reasonable. Thank you for all your help.
We're planning to do both Latin and Greek from C.A.P. There's a lot of Greek in English (helps with SAT score and future job vocabulary), and it's something "cool" that my son wants to learn because it has an entirely different alphabet. He also wants to learn Hebrew so that he can have the three major languages of our history (Christian/Biblical/American), but I'm not sure if we'll actually end up doing that one at some point or not.
