Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

A French Lesson


Being a former French major and travel-lover, it has always been a goal of mine to give my kids exposure to other languages at a young age. However, since I didn't grow up bilingual, it doesn't come naturally to me to teach them two languages simultaneously. Although my girls have both spent hours listening to a music and rhymes CD Baby's First Words in French as well as watching the Brainy Baby French DVD, they haven't picked up too much French - just a few words here and there. So, I realize that it will take much more effort on my part if I actually want them to learn French before high school.

About a year ago, I stumbled upon the Learn French Together system from Random House's Living Lanugage (they also offer the system in Spanish and Italian). The system includes three workbooks complete with lesson plans, three CD's, stickers and crayons. After I purchased the set, Ella was just interested in the stickers and crayons. Yesterday, I decided to try working on it with her again -- and Lucie even sat in on the lesson. We worked on basics like Hello, My name is..., I live in..., Goodbye and Please. Overall, I would say that it was a success! Since Tuesday is our least-scheduled day of the week, I hope to continue working on a new lesson each week. I think that it will be fun for all of us!

Monday, September 17, 2007

Brainy Baby

This weekend I picked up a Brainy Baby French DVD at a neighbor's garage sale. So far, Ella has really enjoyed watching the video. It just teaches some basic French words like colors, numbers, parts of the face, etc. Just yesterday, Ella started repeating some of the words. She does a pretty good job following the counting part of the video. A couple of times now, I've heard her repeating the numbers in French but when they get to "Sept" which is "Seven", she says, "No, that's seven." It's pretty cute.

I told Ella that Daddy needs to start watching the video with her. He's been wanting me to teach him some French, but I must say I'm horribly out of practice. The last time I used it was four years ago when we went to Paris. But, I suppose the video won't teach him very useful things for his purposes. He wants to pick up some language skills for his Spring Break trip to France with students from the high school. This past Spring, we got to go to Italy with him on a similar trip, but I think it would be far too much to take a 3-month old and a 3-year old this time around. We'll just wait until the kiddos are a bit bigger.