Teaching French? Our Favorite Resources.

It's hard to believe we are already entering our second year of homeschooling! Believe it or not, one of my favorite subjects to teach is French. While I spent two summers in France and took french classes in high school and college, I am still a work in progress. Teaching French to my children helps me to continue to hone my skills and has provided some wonderful interactions with my kids.

This past year, We enjoyed using the Mango language program ( subscription free from our library), Usbourne's First Hundred Words in French, and Little Pim videos. This year we will be using Speaking French with Miss Mason and Francois. We will learn vocabulary using Usbourne's First Thousand Words in French. In addition, I am very much looking forward to adding more french songs and stories this year.

For several years we have listened off and on to following two french albums. "Songs in French for Children" is our favorite, partly due to the selections of songs and added humor. "French Songs for Teaching French" has the unique advantage of the singer clearly speaking the words to the songs before singing acappella. In the same way I have recorded songs for Little Songster without accompaniment, I feel it is easiest to learn songs from this album.

In planning our songs for the year, I have enjoyed using Mama Lisa's website for finding songs. I have compiled a working list of songs I want to learn with my children. Some reference recordings I will refer to can be found here - Youtube French Songs

In addition to learning songs we will listen to some french stories/videos this year to hear longer portions of french dialogue. I have a collected the following stories here - Youtube videos with French Stories and folktales in french from The French Experiment.

I love to find new resources - what are some French books, songs, and stories, you have enjoyed?