If your children are being educated at home, you have a lot of options for what you plan to teach and how you plan to teach it. It has been well documented that the earlier a child starts to learn a second language, the easier it is for them. Moreover, once a child has learned a second language, they will find it a lot easier to learn a third. People who speak two or more languages have a higher earning potential than those who speak only one. They can make more than 20% more. Planning your childrens homeschool Spanish curriculum, is a lot like planning your other lesson plans. Here are some tips to making it successful.
- Consistency is the key. The first thing you need to know about teaching children to learn a new language is that you have to be consistent. When you are planning your lessons for the other subjects you teach. You need to treat your language lessons the same way you do your math and science lessons. The more you get your children into the habit of studying and speaking a different language, the more they will learn.
- Speak Spanish at different parts of the day. You can have your lesson plans all laid out and finished the way you planned them but you still need to make sure they practice. You can help their leaning along by having your kids speak Spanish at the dinner table and elsewhere in your home. You can speak it in the car or just when you are around the home. The more they speak it, the better they will get at it.
- Make it fun. Watch movies in Spanish. Sing Spanish songs. Play games in Spanish. There are a number of great Spanish story book sets that you can use to make learning the language fun. It is often easier for people to remember songs, this is a bit reason the “School House Rock” series was both popular and helpful in the 1970s. The songs were catchy and taught scores of kids how to use conjunctions correctly. You can do the same thing with leaning a foreign language like Spanish. Make fun a big part of your childrens homeschool Spanish curriculum and it will have a better chance of being successful.
- Pace yourself. Not all children learn at the same rate. If you are starting your children off with the childrens homeschool Spanish curriculum when they are different ages, your younger kids may pick up on the language sooner than the older kids (this is one reason it is such a good idea to start them off early, kids under the age of five are much better at learning new languages). Tailor your childrens homeschool Spanish curriculum to the learning pace of your children. This is one of the benefits to homeschooling, you can move kids along at their own pace without hindering the learning of the other kids.
- Commit to teaching Spanish to your kids. Leaning a new language requires a commitment from your children and from you. When you are teaching preschool Spanish, you can make the process much faster by committing to the process and speaking the language all of the time around the house. If you really commit to this process, you will see your children speaking, reading and writing in the new language in a very short amount of time.
- Do you speak Spanish? Learn it with your kids. If you already speak Spanish, speaking with your kids will not be an issue for you. If you do not speak it and try to learn it along with them, you can make the whole experience a family endeavor. This will show your kids that you really think learning a new language is an important and valuable thing to do. This will also make it fun for everyone. It will help everyone learn the language faster when you speak it and sing it a lot.
You are homeschooling your kids because you want what is best for them. The same can be said of teaching them to speak a second language.