Home Schooling Curriculum Part V--Foreign Languages

Throughout the lives of my children, I've spoken to them in 3 languages.  They know English as their first language, of course.  The other two languages are American Sign Language[ASL] and Spanish.

I use to live in San Diego before I married Mr. G and visited Tijuana and Mexicali at various times during the time of my residency in California.  I had been in many situations where the people I spoke with did not know English, so I needed to communicate effectively in order to have simple discussions about a variety of topics.  I took 2 years of Spanish, but now I'm thinking it truly wasn't enough to understand the language as much as I'd like.  Needless to say, I am very weak in conjugating verbs.  Over the years, we've picked up a few W*lM*rt type Spanish workbooks that were very simplistic in nature.  I'm hoping those little workbooks laid a good foundation for the kids.

I learned ASL on my own throughout the years.  I taught my children some basic signs that I could use in church to tell them to be quiet without disrupting things in the service.  As time continued, each of us learned more and more signs for a variety of things--some of which has changed due to the way language is supposed to change--and more things added to our knowledge due to the addition of technology since I purchased my The Joy of Signing (Second Edition) book.

This coming school year we will begin formal "for graduation" Spanish for our 2 older children.  We'll be using Power Glide Spanish.  I know many people who are using Rosetta Stone and they like it for speaking Spanish. However, our goal is not to have them *just* speak the language, but to read, write and speak the language which is what Power Glide does.  I will be doing the work right along with the kids so that I can fully understand what they say and how they say it.  Also, if they start having a Spanish conversation, I'd like to be able to understand what they're saying just in case they plot against their Daddy and want to shoot him with an Air Soft handgun when he comes around the corner.  LOL  (I can actually foresee this happening...in light of yesterday's battle outside.)

If anyone is interested in how things go with this curriculum, let me know and I'll post updates as time goes on.

As for continued study in sign language, we're trying to find something online that we can do to learn together.  We'll see what happens though.  :)