This was an unexpected request from my children.   One day at the library I found both of them in the foreign language section, looking through books.  They then informed me that they would like to learn French and checked out a mountain of books to do so.  Well, Zander said he’d like to learn Japanese too, but I told him that would have to wait until high school, because I cannot teach that.

French, on the other hand?  I have a basic understanding of.  It’s been a very long time since I spoke or wrote in French.   But let me tell you, once I started reminding myself of all the French I know, it’s surprisingly quite a bit.  AND it felt good to actually be speaking it again.  The kids and I watched a video I had checked out from the library…oh, was it bad! And the pronunciations weren’t even correct! So we stopped watching while I pondered what direction to take for learning French.

I sought out advice from veteran homeschoolers for a respectable curriculum for French.  Rosetta Stone is so highly respected, but also very highly priced, and I was looking for something affordable.  And something that I could use to teach with.  While I was pondering my choices, I was joyfully surprised by a fellow homeschooling mom who offered to send me a French curriculum that was not being used by them.  It arrived today and I’ve had a bit of time to look through it, and I’m very excited about.  As I read through a few things, the thought that came to me was that I can teach this!

It’s a high school curriculum from Power Glide (now known as Power Speak), and four semesters worth at that.  But since I have elementary scholars, we are going to take it much slower.  My initial thoughts are two days a week- Monday and Wednesday we’ll have ourselves a little French lesson time.   We’ll see how that goes.   If they start wanting more, we’ll add more.  If they lose interest, that’s okay too.  I may just keep going at it myself in that case.   But I think the approach will be a good one that won’t bore them at all.

I’m excited!  I had hoped to start adding it in next week, but it just occurred to me, as I look at my calendar, that we are nearing a holiday week.  Maybe we’ll hold off on the French until the new year.  I want to double up a few weeks of our regular core material so that we can take some extra time off over the next few weeks.   That’s okay.  It will give me time to bone up on my own French, and see how I want to use these materials for my students.