Starting Spanish at a young age

Everything we've read about teaching foreign languages is that the younger you start, the better they do. So we're teaching Spanish to our kindergartener and second grader.

There are a number of things we're using, the primary tool being Rosetta Stone. We also picked up Mia's Language Adventure: The Kidnap Caper from the local library. The kids love it.

We're also going to have them start using the Google Translate. It's a really cool service I recently came across that translates as you type. Their first task will be to write a letter to Santa Claus translated into Spanish. Won't that be fun?

Here are a couple of other things they'll do:

• A nouns puzzle
• A crossword of days, months and seasons
• A cycle race
• Some printables from SpanishTown
• L0t's more

Anyone else have some fun, free stuff for young kids to learn Spanish? Leave a comment below.

Easter Kids Activities

The kids have some friends coming over today and we need something to keep them busy. How about Easter printables, crossword puzzles and the like? Here are the ones I printed out for them:

• Easter Printables from About.com: Homeschooling
• Easter egg Dot-to-dot from Printactivities.com
• Easter word searches from DLTK

That ought to keep them from hurting each other for a few minutes!

Buzz Buzz Buzz...

My kids wanted to rent the Bee Movie, so I picked it up from the library today. While we were there, we also checked out four books on bees so that the girls could learn about bees while the movie has their interest. I also came across some interesting videos on YouTube, like this one from PBS:



It adds broad visual context to the topics covered in the books. Another video covers their "waggle dance" in more detail:



We'll also have our kids fill in the colors of a Honey Bee. Happy buzzing!

Education is a family affair

We have three little girls and every day we're trying to help them learn about life, faith, family, friends and themselves. Today, more and more of that education is taking place online. There are so many good sources of information online and this is the place where we can gather them in one place.

It's not always easy. Although they love learning, it's also easy to sit in front of the TV and be entertained. Frequently, we find ourselves asking: Are We Learning Yet? I'm not sure...but we're trying.