I’ve always felt learning a foreign language is important.

My high school offerings were only Spanish and French. My parents encouraged me to take Spanish since they thought it would be more useful. I took three years, but in college, I maxed out the program and also took the maximum courses offered in French and German. I really wish I had become a linguist but I had few role models and no one I knew was into that.

While I am not fluent, I can get by with childish conversations in French, German, and Spanish. I can read it ok, so that’s good when we travel. I can break down and pronounce Italian.

It’s totally true that if you learn one language, it’s easier to learn others.

I don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars on a language program.

We’ve reviewed Mango, but it’s so expensive for a large family. I’ve seen Transparent Language and Rosetta Stone at the library.

Most colleges require 2 credits of the same foreign language. I want my kids to be more than prepared.

How do I teach foreign language in our homeschool?

Latin

Since we follow a classical education model, we focus on Latin in the beginning.

We being with Prima Latina at about age 8.

Then we follow the books as far as we can:

We study Latina Christiana I and II for upper elementary or middle school.

Then First Form Latin I-IV (which is mostly Henle in workbooks) in high school. There is some argument among homeschoolers about whether to count each Form as 1 high school credit.

The girls love it. It’s easy. We watch the DVDs and complete the workbooks and sing songs and recite prayers. I know it’s working because when we travel, the girls totally read the Latin inscriptions!

Greek

I’m so happy there’s a Greek program that begins with the Alphabet and continues with Elementary Greek I, II, and III.

Easy and I use the teacher’s guide for snags and to make sure since I’m unfamiliar with Greek. When we traveled to Greece, it was fun to pick apart the letters and words. While ancient Greek is a bit different, the sounds and alphabet haven’t changed!

French

I’m not super thrilled with First Start French. The lessons are not comprehensive enough for high school credit. The girls enjoy the workbooks. The CD isn’t the greatest, so I read the dialogue exercises aloud. The girls review with apps and love to practice speaking French anytime we go over the border! We’ve heard great things about William Linney’s Getting Started with French and may look into that. He also has Spanish and Latin.

German

We live in Germany, so it’s important that we can communicate with our neighbors. I bought some kids workbooks and we worked through those for vocabulary.

We worked through German for Children and now we’re on German DeMYSTiFieD.

More

• The kids use the Duolingo app for review.
• Great resources from Mason’s living languages.
• These are some free online college courses we’re looking into.
• BBC Languages offers free online courses.
• Easy Peasy Spanish and French (scroll down)
• Georgia Virtual School has courses in Latin, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, or German. I haven’t reviewed these, but they look like little lessons and quizzes, similar to Mango.

We love these apps for when we travel:

• Google Translate and Word Lens
• Linguee
• iTranslate
• Country or Language specific apps come in handy with basic words and phrases but often have in-app purchases for more info.

How do you teach foreign languages to your students?