Helpful Foreign Language Resources
Since many people have emailed me and asked for foreign language resources in a Montessori style, I thought I’d put together some helpful links.
Keep in mind that even if the material isn’t inherently Montessori, it certainly can be used in the Montessori classroom or home. I like using a variety of materials when studying a language so that different kinds of learning styles are covered.
Computer Games & Software:
Jumpstart Spanish and Jumpstart Languages (French, Japanese, Spanish, and English)
Rosetta Stone – software available for learning more than 30 languages
CDs & DVDs
Rock n Learn – Spanish and French CDs and DVDs teach through music and video
Muzzy – this highly-regarded language course from the BBC is available for Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Italian, and English (ESL). Includes workbooks, DVDs, and computer games
Cedarmont Kids – Action Bible Songs in Spanish
LinguaFun – card games with CDs in Spanish, German, Italian, and French
Books & Curriculums:
French & Spanish Guides – written by Heidi Spietz, these books cover teaching languages in a Montessori style
TPRS – workshops and curriculums for teaching French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Russian. Used successfully in Montessori classrooms. Emphasizes reading and story-telling as a way to successfully learn foreign language
Children’s Books
There are literally thousands of popular children’s books available in Spanish and other languages. You can go to places like amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and ebay.com and search for “spanish books kids” or “french books kids”, for example, to find titles.
Many of those can be purchased secondhand at low prices, and you can also check books out of your local library. Scholastic Books usually offers foreign language books in their monthly order forms.
Montessori Materials:
Chinese Materials from Montessori for Everyone
Spanish Materials from Montessori for Everyone
French Materials from Montessori for Everyone
Russian Materials from Montessori for Everyone
My Montessori House – Chinese materials, including printable cards, books, and interactive lessons
Alison’s Montessori – Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish materials
Maitri Learning – 3-part cards and booklets for French and Spanish
Miscellaneous:
Spanish Post-it notes – easy to put around the classroom or home to help kids learn words for everyday objects
Usborne Spanish Resources and Usborne French Resources – workbooks, flashcards, books, and sticker books
Enchanted Learning – free and paid printables for German, French, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Swedish. Do a search of the site or use the categories on the left
Anything I left out? Please share!
Hi Lori,
Loved your post above, and can relate to you about learning a foreign language during my teenage years. I took Spanish for four years in High School, and I never thought that I would ever speak it.
Boy was I wrong. Michelle’s family is from Dominican Republic, and for the past fifteen years I have been speaking Spanish with her grandmother
I learned basic Chinese in China. Though I have a lot of difficulty in pronunciation, I can understand people, and do answer them whenever I get a chance. We live in Flushing, NY , where there is large Asian population, and knowing a little Chinese has been very helpful.
The world is becoming a more competitive place, and it’s an advantage for our children to get to know another language. Michelle and I have decided to concentrate on teaching our kids different languages the next few years: Spanish, Arabic and Chinese.
That is a great example of how sometimes, we do end up using foreign language skills in real life. Moving to a different country, marrying someone from a different country – it happens!
What kinds of things are you guys using to teach Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese? Mostly Montessori materials, or have you purchased a curriculum, or both? Sounds like a challenge!
It is a challenge. It’s also enjoyable and fun for all of us. We’ve got a chart set up on the wall for fruit names in English, Spanish and Arabic. It helps to build the vocabulary. We add new words from different sections and build on that.
Chinese needs to be taught from a person who already speaks the language-there are many tones, and so it can get confusing at time.
Of course we are using the materials we sell (movable alphabets, nomenclature cards, label cards, etc..). We find the nomenclature and the label cards help the most. Right now we are all over the place, and are just winging it.
If anyone has any suggestions for us, I would appreciate. Thanks Lori for having this discussion.
Khurram
Alisonsmontessori.com
Oh wait-Michelle has purchased a curriculum for Arabic, which has helped a lot.
Now I understand why you guys have Arabic materials for sale! It all makes sense now.
When I was teaching, I noticed that the Spanish teacher that came once a week mostly taught the kids nouns and adjectives. I don’t think they ever learned any verbs in one whole year!
One thing I am hoping to do is create more Spanish materials that feature verbs, and that teach simple phrases and sentence. I have some, but I want to make more.
An one Montessori school where I taught, the kids studied Japanese. The sixth graders participated in an exchange student program – they spent a few weeks in Japan and then had a child from Japan come here. It was a great way to improve their language skills.
A great post!
Thanks for including the link to our (you and me) Mandarin Chinese Montessori material. We will be posting more soon.
We will also be doing pronunciation and audio work for Mandarin Chinese.
Personally, I find it helpful to simply start enjoying a language by listening to music, DVDs (even if my language skills in a certain language are not yet good enough to allow me to understand the whole thing), reading (or sometimes just trying to read) the newspaper, and pestering native speakers to talk with me. I speak Chinese, Korean, some Japanese, French, and some Spanish.
Interestingly for Mandarin, I always found it hard to study the tones formally. I do much better imitating people’s voices — on the phone now, people sometimes think I’m Chinese, yay! And, a lot of people torture themselves by writing characters… I just use the Mandarin option in Word and type. It’s easier and you get used to recognizing the characters, so you can start reading and that helps kick off a good feedback loop where the characters become second nature.
You can also set a lot of mobile phones to be bilingual, so you can message back and forth (or even do a word a day) with your child.
Another thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is that children should be encouraged or helped to learn any language that appeal to them. A lot of people want to teach their children a certain language because this or that language will be “the language of the future” but it’s hard to really know what will happen and it’s certainly easier to learn a third language or a fourth one than learn that first foreign language. So, start with passion and go from there! If your adopted Chinese daughter really wants to learn Portuguese so she can go to Brazil and study the Amazon jungle, go with it!
I really like the idea of letting kids choose a language – you never know what they might be interested in. And of course we know that anything they choose themselves, they’re going to take more seriously than what’s thrust upon them
I like the idea of using music and DVDs too. Hearing whole sentences and phrases right from the beginning is so helpful.
I had also always heard that once you learn one language, learning another is easier. I guess I’m the exception to that rule, because I didn’t do very well in French after years of German.
I do remember that both times I visited Germany, I could speak German better after a week than after years of study. I think it’s really great for kids to visit places where their second language is spoken.
Thanks for stopping by, Hanya!
Hi Lori,
It’s so nice to see a conversation happening about this. I studied Montessori in Montreal in a bilingual program. I am so fortunate that I got to hear everything twice (first English and then translated into French). It really helped things stick (I speak French).
In Montreal, the standard practice is to have one teacher in a classroom speak English exclusively and the other speak French exclusively. Since the children are a mix of both languages, within a few months they naturally absorb the other language. It is rather remarkable. People who learn a second language before age 6 have the neural network for languages hard-wired into their brain. Then they can learn other languages later in life with much greater ease. What a gift.
Also, I am working with AMI trainers on creating the Japanese and Chinese 3-part card materials for those training courses. I hope to be offering those in the near future. There is such a need!
FYI, we have an audio lesson on using foreign language materials available for free download on our website at http://www.maitrilearning.com/files/foreign_language_cards.mp3
Good luck with your work!
Julia Volkman
Hi, Julia! You’re right, there is definitely a need for more Montessori-style foreign language resources. I get asked about it all the time, which is one of the reasons for this post.
Besides actually living in another country (or hearing it at home), I would think that immersion-style programs like the one you describe are probably the best way for kids to learn another language.
There are many immersion Montessori schools around; I’ve heard Intercultural Montessori in Oak Park, IL mentioned frequently but I think there are a lot around the US and Canada. Hopefully parents can take advantage of programs like that.
Thanks for stopping by!
I too feel that learning a language is important for children and it was an opportunity that I never had. Because of that, I wasn’t in the position to even be able to use a foreign language nomenclature card as I do not know the pronunciation for the words. However, I really didn’t want this to mean that my homeschooled child would not be able to learn another language. So, I bought the Rosetta Stone homeschool edition in French and we LOVE it. It is a very organic way to learn a language it is total immersion and the child learns the second language through asborbing it, just like they did with their first language. Obviously, this is not as good an immersion classroom, but mimics it pretty well for those of us who don’t have the opportunity for that. My 8 year old is loving it and doing really well. We are only a few months in and she is already breaking out into French at the dinner table. My 5 year old, who is in a Montessori primary environment, is also doing the program and picking things up very quickly, though has a harder time manipulating the mouse on the computer and is at a slight disadvantage since there are some places that it is easier if you can read or at least recognize French words. I am doing the program myself and feel that I may actually be able to finally achieve what I thought impossible for me: to speak French! I highly recommend this program!
Hi, Kristina! I’m glad to hear your thoughts about Rosetta Stone. I’ve heard of it but wasn’t familiar with it. I’m going to add a link to their site in my post. Thank you!
I grew up in South Africa, where we all learn a second language from first grade, then add a third local language at 5th grade, and then possibly another once we enter high school. South Africa has eleven official languages, which means that when we watch TV, it is possible to watch programs in 3-4 languages in the space of two hours. As a child I watched programs in a multitude of languages even if I didn’t always understand what exactly was being spoken. About 4 years ago I moved to Japan and began a life here from scratch, including learning Japanese. I’ve been told from a number of people that the South Africans who come over to Japan to work often are the quickest learners of Japanese, and also have better pronunciation than people from mono or bilingual countries. Exposure to other languages at a very young age is important because at a certain point we loose the ability to hear certain types of sounds unless we heard them when we were children.
Spanish Playground http://www.spanishplayground.net/ is a blog with resources for teaching Spanish to children. It has songs, videos, book recommendations, and strategies. It’s a great resource for parents and teachers.
Hi, Jennifer! You’re right, that is a great resource. Thanks for sharing!