Poll: What languages are your children studying?

[Ramona]

Wow, I'm suddenly feeling overwhelmed. I have a 3rd grader and a Pre-K should I be doing this already? We are learning sign language...

I'm just wondering what grade all of your children are in to be learning ALL those languages??

Don't compare yourself to other homeschoolers. Do what works for your family.

I exposed my kids to a bit of Spanish, which DH and I both speak and I have a lot of native-speaking friends, and a few words in other languages including signing when they were Pre-K, but made no formal attempts to teach them any foreign languages.

I started formal Spanish lessons when the oldest was doing grade 1 or 2 work. (Sorry I don't remember exactly. He's in college now and I'm 38 weeks pg. It's been a L-O-N-G time and my memory is out of it.)

By the time my kids had done Spanish and ASL for a couple of years, I decided we needed to take some time off from foreign languages. I had them start again when they were in about 6th grade, maybe? DH and I have textbooks and a few other resources for a bunch of different languages, so I told them they can pick one every term. DS1 did Spanish, then French, then German, then Russian, then Portuguese, each one for a different amount of time and no two at once. DD1 has stuck to Spanish all her life. DD2 did Spanish, Russian, French, and now is back to Russian. DD3 just started Latin halfway through 2nd grade.

Ramona

[Theodore]

The earlier, the better, as far as languages are concerned. Children up through early teens? learn languages more easily than adults. Given, formal language instruction for young children probably isn't a good idea, but if you happen to have native speakers handy, a few hours per week of immersion won't hurt. Even just hearing a foreign language builds brain patterns.

[Elei]

Hi,
We do dutch as mothertongue language, Spanish and Catalan as they are the languages they live in and they do English with me as a foreign language.
My oldest is 8 years old.
Anybody who wants a Spanish penfriend?
Elei.

[Ginia]

My eldest took Spanish (through distance learning)
and American Sign Language (at community college)

Now my 9th and 6th graders are taking Chinese with Rosetta Stone.
I'm so glad Rosetta Stone offers so many choices!

[mark_egp]

Don't forget two of the most useful languages these days:

PHP
C++

[Theodore]

Ha. Except I'd say that it's PHP and Perl. I know C++ as well, but I've never had to actually use it for work, though I suppose if I were writing regular applications instead of web applications, C++ would be my primary language.

[tricia]

My elder daughter started on Chinese Mandarin this year. My younger one is doing Hokkien. We will do German later when they are older.

[lorelei]

We are learning French and Spanish with my 6 and 3 year old. I bought two cds from Twin Sisters Productions and there are songs that teach them the alphabet, numbers, weather, food, etc. It's a lot of fun and they have picked up a lot doing them in a song.

I also bought a pottery barn kids language wheel and it teaches like 6 or 8 simple words in different languages..english, spanish, french, italian, and german.

[Ophelia]

We will start with Spanish next year.

I would also like the children to learn Latin. I haven't convinced my husband yet.

[JoeSwimmer]

Spanish, English and kidspeak,,,hehe

[Golabfamily]

We are studying the following

Polish
Spanish
German

and are looking into starting these in the near future..

Italian,
Greek,
Afrikaans and
Arabic

All languages the children do you or will use are so they can communicate with Close Family and friends in their native languages

We learn the languages, cook their food and learn about their cultures

So much fun! and the best bit the children can use it with loved ones!

Children are 3 and 8 years old.

Edited to add the 8 year old is also learning XHTML

[rustymason]

Latin, Greek, and German.

I'd also like to study Welsh (Cymraeg) when I get the chance.

Vale

[TheresaHPIR]

I'm working on Spanish and American Sign Language with my 15 month old son.

In regards to Spanish, I'm not a super fluent speaker, but I'm starting to incorporate a few minor phrases and vocabulary words...things like colors, animals, etc.... in our everyday interaction. And then of course, he LOVES to watch his Handy Manny everyday, lol. I would like to find a few simple storybooks that incorporate both English and Spanish, so please let me know if you know of any good ones!

As for the ASL, its something I'm working on myself; it comes in handy where I work. We have a few Baby Einstein and Talking Hands videos that we've picked up second-hand, as well as a few board books and "teacher's manuals" on the subject. My son was signing "milk" at 3 months old...and that's about ALL he signs on a regular basis, lol. He does fairly well at recognizing signs, but would rather just attempt to say the word than make the sign. I was worried about him for awhile because he wasn't waving bye-bye until about 12 months; my mom reassured me that he probably felt he didn't NEED to wave because he could clearly SAY bye-bye, lol.

When he gets older, I'd like to stay with our Spanish studies and hopefully become fairly fluent. However, I'd also like to start incorporating some additional languages into the mix. I think I'll wait and find out which ones HE would like to study, but I'm going to insist that we cover Japanese or Chinese at some point.

[naturalist4]

I'm studying Spanish and used to be studying Latin.

[philipsteele]

more important is German and Latin...