How To Teach Your Child A New Language
I want to teach my daughter, Willow, a new language.
I studied French in middle and high school. I also took Latin classes. I've forgotten most of my French, but I can still understand a few words when I hear it spoken in conversation. Little Willow is just seven years old, which means she is ripe for learning the intricacies of a new language. I wish that I had started teaching her when she was a baby, but I was so overwhelmed at the time with being a single mother. I had other priorities to tend to.
This morning just before I dropped Willow off to school, I told her that I wanted to start teaching her Swedish for 30 minutes after school each day.
She fell back on the bed dramatically and heaved a deep and heavy sigh.
"Oh brother!" Willow exclaimed.
She'll thank me later.
Now that both of our lives are less stressful and hectic, I want to do something that will sharpen my child's mind and hopefully set her up for a lucrative bilingual job in her future. There are a lot of Spanish-speaking residents living in Yakima, but there are so many other languages spoken throughout the Central Washington Valley that I want Willow to learn!
I found this website, Little Pim, that has a language program for kids and it looks promising. It doesn't offer Swedish, to my dismay, but I can still give Willow the choice of choosing which language she wants to learn. Parents can select tools to teach their children Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese or Russian! Little Pim offers DVD's, videos, printable parent guides and downloads for a phone app, including a feature that lets you track your progress.
This language program looks like so much fun; I already want to learn the new language right along with her!