It’s time to face up to the facts: the school year is cancelled. It may not have been announced, and unsurprisingly, most officials will not cop to it (not yet at least). But the writing is on the walls. The threat of COVID-19, and the resulting quarantine, has effectively shut down everything — schools are certainly no exception.

Here’s a little equation for you: no school + nothing to do = CHAOS. Admittedly, things are not that grim, but it would be worth your time to consider some activities your kids can do while being stuck at home all day.

It’s no surprise that you’ve considered homeschool options as a way to deal with this situation. Due to the preventive measures imposed in several regions, we’ve been flooded with rising demand from parents who want their children to learn a foreign language.

So, how about doing it yourself?

There’s no way to sugarcoat it: homeschooling your child is hard work. It’s no wonder that school teachers are so revered — they’ve got to multiply the workload by at least 20! Let’s just say you’ve got quite a long and arduous road ahead.

Luckily, you live in the age of the internet and we’re here to help!

Check out our article on the 7 Best Online English Classes for Kids in 2020 [Apps & Courses]

Should I Homeschool My Child?

The quick answer is: YES.

Eventually, this whole ordeal will pass and your kids will have to go back to school. However, they shouldn’t be deprived of an education in the interim! In this day and age, almost everything you’ll need is available at your fingertips.

Although homeschooling your kids may seem like a difficult undertaking, you don’t need to do it all on your own. There’s a wide assortment of resources and tools out there to make amazing homeschool foreign language programs from the comfort of your home.

What’s the Best Age to Start Learning a Foreign Language?

I don’t mean to alarm you, but time is true of the essence here!

According to several experts, the best age for a child to learn a language with native-speaker proficiency is 10. Children 10 and under are far more susceptible to absorbing new information, and therefore, better equipped for foreign language study.

But you shouldn’t be discouraged if your child happens to be older. Even if you were to homeschool the 8th grade, the time to start is now!

No matter how old your child is, It’s always easier to start with the help of a professional. At Preply, children of all ages learn languages with our qualified tutors. Whether they’re learning English, Spanish, or everything in between, Preply will have tutors to help you along the way.

Can You Homeschool Toddlers?

You might be asking yourself “why should I homeschool at 2 years old?” A better question is “why NOT?” This a great opportunity to not only bond with your toddler but also start them off early.

Age is irrelevant here. It doesn’t matter if you’re homeschooling a 4-year old or a 13-year old, children of any age can (and should) learn a foreign language. However, younger children learn differently. That’s just a fact, and you need to account for it.

If you’re thinking of homeschooling a 3-year old, you’ll need to consider a preschool homeschool schedule. At such a young age, kids aren’t used to any kind of intensive workload. Consider a balanced schedule that includes learning, play and rest. This is the optimal way to homeschool toddlers.

You are no doubt thinking “but what do I need to homeschool my child?” The answer is patience!

All jokes aside, there’s a whole lot more that goes into making good homeschool foreign language programs than just patience (although you’ll need a lot of that too). What you need to consider here is your course of action. How will you get from point A to B? Which practices will you follow to effectively homeschool a foreign language?

Ultimately, what you’ll need is your very own homeschooling schedule. Like with any goal in life, you need a schedule to hold you (and your children) accountable. A schedule is how you can ensure that you make incremental progress. It also allows you to productively allocate time to a variety of different topics and activities.

But for you to make a schedule, you must first have a foreign language homeschool curriculum!

How to Prepare the Best Foreign Language Curriculum for Homeschoolers

This question often boggles the mind of any would-be homeschool teacher. After all, a curriculum is a map of sorts, always there to help guide the direction of your course. Without one, you run the risk of wandering aimlessly with no goal or focus in mind.

At the end of the day, there are only two ways to prepare a foreign language homeschool curriculum: adopting a pre-existing one or creating your own. No amount of homeschooling tips will change this.

So, what’s the difference between these two options and which one will produce the best homeschooling curriculum for you?

Choose From Existing Ones

This is the easiest option. There are several resources out there (which we will discuss later) that can effortlessly provide you with a full curriculum to teach your children virtually anything. You’re simply given lesson plans and work, and it’s up to you to administer this fleshed-out course to your children. Naturally, this option is more expensive and it also limits your autonomy to an extent.

Create Your Own Foreign Language Curriculum for Homeschooling

Although cheaper, and certainly more open-ended, this alternative will require some extensive planning on your part. You’ll need to delve deep into the subject to discover what needs to be taught and how to teach it. However, if you’ve got a lot of spare time on your hands (which you very well might) and some lofty homeschooling ideas, then this is certainly a far more rewarding and hands-on approach.

How to Fit Foreign Language Into Homeschool Curriculum

If you’re homeschooling, you’re more than likely looking at committing to more than one subject. After all, your kids are already accustomed to learning a variety of subjects in one day and you’ll want to keep brushing up their knowledge on as many as you can.

Including a foreign language in your curriculum is no different from including any other subject. It’s all about committing and making time for it. Simply allocate a portion of your overall homeschooling time to any one of the tools or resources we showcase in this article.

How to Choose an Online Foreign Language Tutor for Your Children

Again, there’s no reason for you to go about this all on your own. It’s always good to defer to the experts from time to time, and this is especially true for something as intricate as learning a foreign language. Unless for some reason you are fluent in a language that your child is not, there’s a pretty big chance that you will have some blind spots. After all, this language is likely just as foreign to you as it is your child!

One way to mitigate this is to find a stellar foreign language tutor to help bring a certain level of expertise to the whole operation. One-on-one private language lessons would be a great asset to your homeschooling endeavour, but how do you choose a tutor?

Well, Preply has devised a very effective system by which you can vet and choose the right tutor for you. Here are a couple of things to look for when picking a tutor:

Qualifications

Depending on your needs, qualifications may be a sticking point for you. However, more qualifications naturally warrant a higher price point. It’s up to you to decide if your child needs a seasoned veteran or someone newer to the industry

Scheduling

You’ve got to remember: many of these tutors are situated all over the world, that’s one of the beauties of telecommunication. With that also comes the issue of different time zones. Yes, scheduling conflicts are normally an issue as well, but most people are stuck indoors now anyway. Always try to find someone located in a timezone that’ll work with yours.

Price Point

Of course, the price point is definitely at the forefront of your decisions making process. As was stated concerning qualifications, the price point should match your necessity. If your child is new to language-learning, you don’t need the most expensive tutor out there. Try to gauge it based on their overall skill level.

Homeschooling Resources Review (Paid & Unpaid)

Platforms

Let’s face it: you can’t do this all on your own. I mean, theoretically, you can. But that doesn’t mean you should.

Always get help where you can find it.

On your journey to developing a great homeschool foreign language program for your kids, it’s important to realize that there are several amazing platforms out there to give you a helping hand. These platforms can provide you with supplemental education techniques that’ll help bring out the best in your child — as well take some of the burdens off of you!

Preply

The internet reigns supreme in virtually every facet of life at this point. So, it’s no surprise that this extends to tutoring as well. If you’re looking for a practical and cost-effective way to find a tutor, you’d be hard-pressed to find it outside of the internet.

Telecommunication has done wonders in this field!

Preply, one of the most prominent online tutoring services out there, runs the gamut of subjects from coding to learning a language. It’s no doubt an effective way to include some one-on-one conversation with a native speaker in your foreign language homeschool curriculum.

Languagenut

Languagenut is another great platform you have at your disposal. It’s also highly regarded by many teachers around the world. Regardless of how old your child is, Languagenut has created programs that are catered to both elementary and high school-age students.

Both provide you with a variety of different languages to choose from with built-in integration to the platform’s user-friendly UI. Here, your kids will be exposed to a variety of games and challenges to help bolster their foreign language skills.

Youtube

So, let’s just get this out of the way now: Youtube is an incredibly powerful educational tool that should not be overlooked. I know it may seem hard to believe, especially considering how rife it is with mindless cat videos and God knows what else!

However, much like any intensely powerful tool, Youtube can be used for good — it’s all about what you use it for. And in this case, there is no shortage of compelling language-learning content out there.

There are several channels dedicated to providing viewers with amazing content to help bolster their skills in another language, like:

Look, we all remember when our teachers would drag in the TV trolley to provide us all with some needed R&R — they needed it the most! Youtube is no doubt the 21st-century equivalent while also being a heavily focused, insightful and wide-ranging teaching tool.

Curriculum Tools

There are many sources out there to help in not only inspiring your homeschool foreign language curriculum but building it as well. If you don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket, you can effectively extract whatever you like from each of these and combine them to make something of your own.

TED-Ed

You’re no doubt familiar with the world-famous TED Talks. They’re an immensely useful and extensive series of long-form talks and lectures, delivered by many renowned experts on several topics.

But did you also know that you can find a wide variety of TED Talks videos that are catered to teaching kids? On top of that, TED-Ed provides you with an intuitive feature that allows you to quiz your children on what they’d just watched.

In essence, this provides you with an excellent multimedia addition to your foreign language homeschool curriculum for when things start to get a little too dry and repetitive.

Learning Network (NYT)

Since 1998, the New York Time’s Learning Network has been a hub of sorts for teachers of all stripes. It’s estimated that about 1000 teaching resources are published on the network each year.

Here, you can find a wide variety of insightful articles and lesson plans that are completely free-of-charge (although lesson plans are limited to five per month for nonsubscribers).

K12

K12 is a not-for-profit education company that provides you with a wide variety of schooling resources and curricula.

It can be used to pad your already existing homeschool foreign language curriculum, or just be relied upon entirely — it’s completely up to you. In addition to a wide variety of your typical school subjects (math, history, science), K12 also boasts an extensive list of online foreign language courses (including German, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, French, and Latin).

You can also rest easy knowing that all of the courses have been built to meet stringent national standards as set forth by the ACTFL (the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language).

Libraries and Resource Hubs

Another vital thing you must have at your disposal as a homeschool foreign language teacher is an abundance of materials. And by “materials” I mean reading materials. Practically every subject requires them, especially one that’s as intrinsically linked to the text as language!

Fortunately, there are a bunch of free online libraries and hubs to provide you with a plethora of useful texts. Of course, you can opt to look for paid alternatives, but here a few free (and legal) options out there.

Project Gutenberg

Probably the most notable of all the free online libraries the internet has to offer, Project Gutenberg has been steadily building an extensive offering of public domain eBooks (well over 60,000 documents) since its founding back in 1971.

In addition to offering books on practically every subject you could imagine, Project Gutenberg also has a comprehensive “bookshelf” dedicated to language education. Here, you can find an abundance of texts related to Spanish, English, German, and English as well as several lesser-known languages like Esperanto and Lau.

Open Culture

Open Culture is a vast media hub chock-full of a wide variety of resources. The best part is that everything’s FREE. Open culture has everything from textbooks to online courses to podcasts and even movies!

Just think of it as a compendium of free educational resources. Even outside of homeschooling, this is a phenomenal collection of knowledge and culture from around the world.

Gamification Tools

Reading and writing can only get you so far!

At some point, you’ve got to switch things up a bit and prevent your class from getting too stale. One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate some fun and engaging challenges to your lesson structure. Gamification tools (i.e. apps and games) are a great way to put your child’s knowledge to the test in a way that both excites and motivates them.

Duolingo

Duolingo is by far the most well-known and prominent language-learning app out there. It’s been used by millions and is readily cited as an effective tool to help you learn a new language. It’s also just plain fun!

Duolingo is a great way to gamify the learning process and encourage your kids to keep going. It’s no surprise that classrooms around the world have begun to adopt it, with Duolingo even going so far as to create a classroom version of its popular software.

Mind Snacks

Mind Snacks is a collection of fun and colourful minigames that have been fine-tuned by experts to help your kids (or anyone) learn a new language. There are a variety of languages to choose from, including:

Spanish

French

German

Japanese

Portuguese

Plus, each in-game language is built to teach around 1000 different words and phrases!

Memrise

Memrise is another popular language-learning app that relies on flashcards and memorization (hence the name) to help you learn new words and phrases. It offers courses in a wide variety of languages (as well as subjects) and allows you to work your way up.

With a user base of around 40 million, it’s worth seeing for yourself why this app is so relied upon. It’s sure to be a great addition to your homeschooling lesson plan.

How to Make Homeschooling Fun

This component of homeschooling is entirely up to. Whether or not this proves to be both an enjoyable and educational experience ultimately relies on what YOU make of it.

Again, the point here is to craft a fun and educational way to occupy your kids during this slump. In all likelihood, your kids were probably expecting to sit around eating ice cream and playing Fortnite. That’s the last thing you’ll let them do. So, try and do your best to dissuade them from resenting you for it.

There are a couple of different ways to make this experience as fun as possible:

Shakes things up and make lesson plans as varied as you can

Challenge them with games and rewards

Don’t overwork them (or yourself), always make time for leisure

Conclusion

So, are you still baffled on how to homeschool your children the right way?

If there’s one thing we hope that you take away from this article, it’s that there is no shortage of amazing and cost-effective homeschooling ideas to choose from. Even if the homeschool options laid out in this article don’t tickle your fancy, you’re bound to find others that do!

With so much out there, there’s virtually no reason to feel discouraged. Mounting questions like “Should I homeschool my child?” only serve to diminish your aspirations.

Now that you’ve read this extensive primer on how to start homeschooling, it’s high time you put this new information to use and give your kids the best homeschool foreign language curriculum out there!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash