French suggestions wanted...

[Sparrows-Song]

Since my older son (going into 7th grade) is wanting to do a year of Latin, my younger son is wanting to do a year of French. He will be in 5th grade when I plan to start. I told him after the first year, he can decide to either continue with French or move on to Spanish. (We have a lot of Spanish speaking people in the area, so Spanish is something dh and I would like for both dc to do... however, if ds#2 desires, we will let him continue with French.)

All that said, what would be an easy intro into French, preferrably something student-led or with little help from the teacher? Since he will only be in 5th grade, and may or may not decide to continue with French, what I really want is something that will be fun, grab his interest, and help him learn in a gentle way.

Thanks for any suggestions!

[Trivium Academy]

Écoutez, Parlez! French Oral Program. It's at RainbowResource.com, you can be involved with him or let him do it on his own. It's very gentle and easy plus he can move along at his pace.

[training5]

First Start French by Memoria Press.

[Sparrows-Song]

Thank you both! I am looking into these.

[freethinkermom]

First Start French is NOT student led. It requires quite a bit of work on the part of the parent, IMHO. I just returned my copy to Memoria Press for a refund.The student text has no lesson reference material, just questions to answer and the lyrics to the songs. The teacher must read the teacher's manual then teach the material.

We are using a combination of livemocha.com (free), My French Coach for the Nintendo DS, and reading copies of Astrix in French with a dictionary at hand.

Ds11 and I are learning together, but do our work independently. It seems to be working well for both of us. Even dh, who has always claimed to be foreign language challenged has started the Nintendo game and is learning.