Unschooling Foreign Language for preschool and lower elementary

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!



We of course are in an English speaking household.  I took a couple Spanish classes in high school and college and if I hear it spoken enough, I start to pick up certain words or phrases, but I'm far from fluent.  My husband on the other hand took Spanish to another level.  He took classes in high school and college, but then lived in Chile for 2 months during undergrad to do research and he became somewhat fluent in Spanish.  He also learned some Thai in grad school and is aware of some resources for learning southeast Asian languages.  So we have some foreign language abilities between the 2 of us.
 

My son showed interest in learning Indonesian when he was 6 years old, so his Dad found some resources on a Northern Illinois University website called www.SEAsite.EDU that helped with teaching a language he did not know.  So my son knows some Indonesian which will come in handy when he heads out on his adventures to save Orangutans when he is older.  Dora books and videos were nice introductions to Spanish for the children.  Now they like to watch their favorite videos in Spanish, French and Scooby Doo has a Portuguese version.  The children have seen their favorite videos so much that they have them memorized, so this is a great way for a young mind to learn a new language.  I figure as they get older, we can add subtitles to this too.  As they move into their preteen and teenage years, we have plans to do some oversea travelling, so I'm sure this will help dramatically with their foreign language development. 



With the amount of free time we have available, there are so many opportunities for learning.  I am so happy we have chosen this direction for our children.  I can hear Scooby Doo playing in Portuguese in the background as I type this.  :)