Mom-ninja. Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 If you do two or more languages such as Latin and Spanish, do you do each daily or alternate? I want to do Latin and German. My kids are young, and I should've been doing German all along. :glare: It's time I want to start Latin as well. I'm trying to decide if both each day would be too much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmoira Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 Both every day. However, our schedule is somewhat flexible: all subjects are scheduled -- and most done -- every day, but DD the Elder has some discretion about where we spend the most time. Latin on an "off" day might be merely reading a short passage or five minutes reviewing a few flashcards, while Spanish might be one exercise from The Learnables Basic Structures workbook, a page or two from a La Casa del Arbol (Magic Tree House) book, or a video while I'm making dinner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 (edited) We alternate mornings, and mornings and afternoons. Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings we do French; Tuesday and Thursday mornings we do Mandarin. Then Hobbes does Greek twice a week in random afternoons and Calvin does the same with Latin. Calvin also does Latin memorisation as part of his memory work each day. ETA: We rarely get confusion between languages. We came across a difficulty today, because 'ta' means 'he' in Mandarin and 'your' in French, but problems are rare. Laura Edited July 8, 2009 by Laura Corin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ibbygirl Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 I hope you don't mind my butting into this thread since I am only teaching Spanish, but I have a friend who lives in Denmark where they learn English and German as well as their own language. Her English is excellent in spite of the fact that she's lived in Denmark all her life and hasn't had the benefit of going abroad and being immersed in English and she is equally fluent in German. She's had nothing but state education all her life and I asked her how the state taught languages so successfully. She told me that they start one language at around 7 years old and teach only that one foreign language until the child is around 12 years old and has quite a foundation in it. At that point they introduce the second foreign language and they study both simulataneously from that point on. Since the child has already been studying one for so long he/she will not be on the same level as in the new language and it helps with confusion. Also the second usually comes even quicker since the child has already well rooted study habits. I dont' know if this will be useful to you or not, but I thought I would pass it along just the same if it would be helpful. My best wishes for you in your endeavors. :) Blessings, Jennifer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 Also the second usually comes even quicker since the child has already well rooted study habits. I dont' know if this will be useful to you or not, but I thought I would pass it along just the same if it would be helpful. My best wishes for you in your endeavors. :) Blessings, Jennifer Having studied Mandarin for four years, the boys are finding French easy. It's not an effect of Latin study, as Hobbes hasn't started Latin yet. Laura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ibbygirl Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 Having studied Mandarin for four years, the boys are finding French easy. It's not an effect of Latin study, as Hobbes hasn't started Latin yet. Laura Oh that's wonderful!! It sounds like you are doing a very similar program in your home. :) Best wishes to you and your children. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ester Maria Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 (edited) We do half of our curriculum in Italian, so basically all of the mornings are strictly in Italian. We don't regard it as a "foreign language", though. So far we did only Latin (will add Greek this year as a subject; so far we did "play" with it, just like before we did with Latin, but it wasn't treated as a fully-fledged subject, they only have the basics), 3 times a week (every other day - we do school Sunday through Friday, Friday being half-day), every other day, during the Italian part of the day (since we do it through Italian textbooks and using the "Italian" pronunciation - though they know classical and ecclesiastical as well). I intend to add Greek exactly that way, to alterate days, though I don't think it matters as much. They do Hebrew about twice a week, on random afternoons, mostly with their father, when they do grammar and reading, and Friday we always have some family "Hebrew time" (we usually alternate between Italian and English at home, and save Hebrew only for shabbat, because we think it would be too much of a headache for all to regularly speak it every day). Our daughters seem not to have any problem with that. Edited July 8, 2009 by Ester Maria . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stripe Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 (Thank you for this thread. I am subscribing to it. My kids are bilingual [from parental languages, not "study"], but we plan to begin another language.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Testimony Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 (edited) I started with Latin for my sons. I was going to drop it totally and go on Spanish, but my older son wants to continue. I am starting Spanish in the fall. We will do two days of Latin and then three days of Spanish. Blessings in your homeschooling journey! Sincerely, Karen http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/testimony Edited July 8, 2009 by Testimony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sagira Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 Interesting thread. I speak a foreign language to my child (Papiamento), am teaching Spanish and in the future will be teaching Latin and in high school Italian or French. Thanks for this info. I'm worried my ds won't have a solid grounding in English if I partially or wholly teach him in another language. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kfamily Posted July 8, 2009 Share Posted July 8, 2009 We have Latin 5 days a week and French 4 days a week. The girls are asking about Greek but this will be very casual. I will probably try to dabble with the Code Cracker and the alphabet for Greek about twice a week. I'm really testing the waters with this one. I'm going to let my girls let me know how serious they are about learning Greek. If they hold onto it, I will start my older dd (12) with Elementary Greek and hmmm...I don't know what I will do with younger dd (6) if she wants to pursue it. I'll wait until I get there.:D HTH:001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom-ninja. Posted July 9, 2009 Author Share Posted July 9, 2009 I hope you don't mind my butting into this thread since I am only teaching Spanish, but I have a friend who lives in Denmark where they learn English and German as well as their own language. Her English is excellent in spite of the fact that she's lived in Denmark all her life and hasn't had the benefit of going abroad and being immersed in English and she is equally fluent in German. She's had nothing but state education all her life and I asked her how the state taught languages so successfully. She told me that they start one language at around 7 years old and teach only that one foreign language until the child is around 12 years old and has quite a foundation in it. At that point they introduce the second foreign language and they study both simulataneously from that point on. Since the child has already been studying one for so long he/she will not be on the same level as in the new language and it helps with confusion. Also the second usually comes even quicker since the child has already well rooted study habits. I dont' know if this will be useful to you or not, but I thought I would pass it along just the same if it would be helpful. My best wishes for you in your endeavors. :) Blessings, Jennifer Interesting. Maybe I should hold off on Latin (or keep it light) and focus on German. Then add a more serious Latin study in a few years. I also want to do Spanish later as well. After establishing a good foundation in German. So I guess German daily, and we'll play around with School Song Latin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swellmomma Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 So far we have done latin and french. Last year I started them both but more in playing with them as opposed to actual study. This year they will study them properly. In addition they know the few phrases in Mandarin and in Spanish and would like to study these further but for now we are holding off. Next year I am adding in Greek at ds's request. I had planned to wait another year or two but he really wanted to start it right away. So we will be doing these 3 all together, my plan had been to do all 3, 4-5 days a week. But now not sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 Interesting. Maybe I should hold off on Latin (or keep it light) and focus on German. Then add a more serious Latin study in a few years. I also want to do Spanish later as well. After establishing a good foundation in German. So I guess German daily, and we'll play around with School Song Latin. We are being forced to start Latin for Hobbes only nine months after beginning French; this is not my choice but I need to start to parallel the curriculum of the school he is probably going to. In other circumstances, I would have left a larger gap. Laura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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