My 8 year old wants to learn some spanish. I thought about Jumpstart but I've read that the disks don't work consistantly. Does anyone know of a good program, game based like Jumpstart, that would be suitable for an 8 year old?
My 9 year old worked through Rosetta Stone. Also there are the Muzzy series of DVDs. My child did that after Dora. But after Muzzy we did Jumpstart and liked them. The children didn't learn much, but they did learn some catchy tunes, learned their numbers etc.
Fingers crossed - we are going to start an afternoon playdate with a spanish family. They have a niece (just graduated HS), who is coming to live with them and needs to learn English. So all the kids will get together to play and then the Mom will lead a structured time teaching Spanish/English around the table. She's already started teaching our kids bits and pieces when she sees them. I hope it works. It seems kids don't really retain a lot from their language learning if they are not using it. I wouldn't buy an expensive program unless you can supplement it with real person to person interactions somewhere. Even if that's just a parent learning along side and using it with them. (oh, and we tried Rosetta Stone, but it didn't work for us)
If you can afford it, discoveryeducation.com has an awesome spanish course. It's like $200 a year though going through the buyers coop. It might be available on cosmeo too, but I'm not sure. I heard pretty much everything is you just have to know exactly what you are looking for.
Yes, I hesitate with Rosetta only because I think dd just wants it for fun. I like the idea of Jumpstart Spanish but am worried to program won't work. I think I'll just go on ebay or half.com and find someone selling an inexpensive disk and see what happens. Thanks!
