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Mari
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| Posted: March 15 2006 at 9:25am | IP Logged
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We have Russian family links although I know hardly any Russian myself. I am thinking of doing Russian with my dds (5 and 7 )so that they can at least have an opportunity to experience this and see if they want to go further.
I would like them to have a Russian teacher for the lessons so that they can hear a proper Russian accent. I have a lady who is Russian but not a professional teacher willing to teach.
Can anyone advise me on how long a duration we could start our lessons at and how many per week?
Also has anyone done this sort of thing as a group lesson (i.e. mom with kids learning together so I can be of better help - or is it the kids who will be helping me  ) or is it better to let the kids have the teacher to themselves as a team or seperately?
We do Montessori and I like the idea of working together even if we are at different speeds. I thought maybe this could work for oral Russian but with each child could working at her level on the reading and writing.
Also does anyone know a language course for children which would be good to use for lessons with a Russian teacher even if we have to order them from Russia! (we already have some listening to tapes for learning on your own).
Any advice would be really welcome!
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Mari, mother of 2 loving daughters aged 8 and 10
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Rachel May
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| Posted: March 15 2006 at 1:03pm | IP Logged
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My friend's kids are learning Spanish in preparation for a move to South America. They have a neighbor teen come over a few days a week for an hour or so (lunch I think) and talk with them all. The teen teaches them "cool" words too like fart and puke, so they all love it. They use Rosetta Stone for their individual work.
We tried Mandarin Chinese last year. I'd say once a week was not enough for us since the language is so different from English. Learning together was great though because we had a common vocabulary about things we were interested in. The kids still pull out a few of the phrases we learned. Good luck!
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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)
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Mary G
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| Posted: March 15 2006 at 1:59pm | IP Logged
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I know that my kids pikced up tons of german becuase we babysat a couple of bilingual children while their mom was in Germany. The little boys speak both english and german (often with mid-sentence shifts) and we played some kids language CDs in the background that had German and english nursery rhyme songs. My littles picked up quite a few words just in those 2 days.....
maybe get someone whose fluent and just have the kids hang out with them whenever possible....
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MaryG
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Donna
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| Posted: March 16 2006 at 5:37am | IP Logged
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Mari,
About seven years ago, our neighbors adopted twin daughters from Russia. They are the same age as one of my daughters, and she so much wanted to learn Russian when they moved in. So we purchased the Power Glide Russian Language Course. It comes with CDs for correct pronunciation.
She did well with it, (I think she was 9 years old at the time) and even asked to keep the program several months ago when I was going through and getting rid of unused curriculum.
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Mari
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| Posted: March 16 2006 at 2:12pm | IP Logged
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Thanks all!
It does sound as if the best thing for children are other children or people who can easily communicate to them in that other language. Unfortunately there are no Russian speaking kids that I know of around us (we are a bit isolated).
Glad to know that your group learning was helpful Rachel. It is fun to try things out together which are new for you all!
Does anyone know if the Rosetta Stone method gets kids to learn to read and write that language? I suppose this wouldn't be an issue with Spanish as it is much closer to English, but Russian is something way off. I was just wondering about this because I understand that it is all on CD-ROM. From what I have just checked out, there are loads of positive comments about RS.
Donna, I looked up your site on Power-Glide. Their children's (and older)courses look a great way to learn an additonal langauge. This mixing of a new language into one that they already know is what I did with our kids. We live in France and French is their second language (well, maybe it is equally their first now) and I just instinctively taught it to them in this way. Well, how else would you do this with two tiny tots??? I am grateful to hear about it! Unfortunately it looks as if they no longer do the Russian (just ESL, French, German, Spanish, Latin). 
I will search for a used copy. Hopefully someone didn't want to hold onto theirs!
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Mari, mother of 2 loving daughters aged 8 and 10
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Rachel May
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| Posted: March 16 2006 at 7:58pm | IP Logged
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Here's and old thread about Rosetta Stone. I don't think any of the posts answer your question directly, but you could PM the people who say they own it!
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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Russian lanugage lessons for kids
