Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Self Education and Language Decisions

    I have wanted to become better educated for a long while. I had a basic highschool education of having a little bit of knowledge in a lot of different things. I wished it could have been more stream lined with deeper focuses on the things that I was drawn to. I had four years of college taking three different things and completing none of them. I think I carried the little bit of a lot of different things theme into College unfortunately. This is a big reason why I want to homeschool. I want to be able the build my daughters schooling around her interests and strengths while forming a solid foundation of knowledge as the basis.
    Over the past year and a half I have been really interested in learning a second language. I have access to Rosetta Stone Dutch, French and German all with levels 1 and 2. I chose to begin with Dutch, but there is not  a lot available curriculum wise to learn the Dutch language so it has been difficult. I have decided that maybe I will set it aside for a bit and begin with French and Latin.  Roo will be starting Song School Latin next year for her introduction and I have decided to start myself with Getting Started with Latin. This should give me a nice headstart to her and hopefully (fingers crossed) I will be able to stay several steps ahead. I also ordered First Start French  to begin my own French lessons. I took French well into highschool and I never could grasp it. I don't know if it was because I couldn't or I didn't really care to at the time. Either way it is unfortunate that I wasted that opportunity. First Start French is modeled after Latina Christiana  so has religious content. I homeschool secularly but I am Catholic and attended Catholic school until I finished highschool, so the religious content won't bother me. I will try to report on my successes with either or both languages I just have to wait for them to arrive. I ordered them with Christmas money but they were backordered on Amazon.ca which is a cheaper way for me to purchase than from the States. I was thinking of having Roo do the French with me. The program I was going to get her is no longer available:( So I thought If I did a lesson of First Start French myself and then went back and did it really slow with her it will help to reinforce what I learned as well. Now if I can get my piano lessons problem solved.  

2 comments:

Angela said...

That's one of the biggest benefits for me personally of homeschooling - learning myself! I took it to the next step this month by purposely going about and educating myself. I'm also using Getting Started With Latin. :) We might use Song School Latin this summer or fall...

Karen said...

Hi there, I'm a fellow Canadian Homeschool mom. My son is 5 and I'm doing mostly Classical content. I have just been trying to decide what to do about french. I hated it(or didn't get it one of the two) and I'm worried about teaching it and messing it up. I have thought about a tutor or a program with a DVD or Cd so I can hear it. How did you decide on First Start??
I found you from Satori smiles.
Roo is adorable!!