{TOS Crew Review} Great Commission Languages - The Easy French Junior

 

Teaching a foreign language can be a bit daunting to even the most seasoned homeschooling mother. I've been dabbling at it a bit over the years, but I've yet to find something that worked for our family and made it super easy to implement. I find it a bit scary to teach a language to my children - other than English which is my native tongue, but let's face it, even that can be scary at times! The thought of having to correctly pronounce foreign words, teach my boys to not only speak it, but write it with correct grammar is, well, yeah... You know what I mean!

I have been eyeing the products at Great Commission Languages since they first came out. I thought they would be a good fit, but I wasn't sure. I should have taken this book by its cover. It even states it in the title - Le Francais Facile! or The Easy French.

I was thrilled to find out we would be able to try out their new product - Le Francais Facile! Junior - or The Easy French Junior. There are two important reasons I want to teach my boys French. First, I took four years of French in high school. Granted, it has been some time since I graduated high school, but I can still toss out an occasional phrase correctly on occasion. Second, we live only an hour from the Canadian border. Quebec is only about two hours away. I dream of taking my boys there some day since we live so close.

The Easy French is just that - easy! The creators of the product are also a homeschooling family of many children - six to be exact. They understand that homeschooling families do not want to drop a lot of extra money on workbooks for each child. They have made it easy by including two enhanced audio CDs. Before you do a lesson you simply pop it in your computer to print out all the activity sheets you may need. During the lesson, you place the CD in your player and your child has a person who knows how to speak French correctly telling them what to say and how to say it. I love it when a more knowledgeable person on a given subject can help me teach my children.

The Easy French Junior comes with 34 lessons. Each lesson focuses on a phrase or subject. For example, Lesson One focuses on "Je M'appelle" (my name is) while Lesson 25 focuses on "J'aime ma chambre" (I love my room). Each lesson begins with Marie having a conversation with either a family member or her cat, Cherie. The conversation is held in both French and English and, using context clues, the child begins to learn what each French words means. There are lots of fun activities included as well and I love how the author emphasizes not to do them all! This is a three year program so be sure to save some for later!

This level of the program sells for $69.95. It is geared for students in K-3 and is a great way to introduce them to the language. There is a higher focus on speaking the language rather than grammar and writing. If you have older students, you may wish to look at the Level I and above materials.

We really enjoyed this program. My boys had fun doing the lessons and pronouncing the words. They viewed it as a fun game. I know that we will continue using it and will most likely graduate to the higher levels when we finish this course. As I mentioned above, we live very close to Canada. In fact, the highway we drive has lots of Canadian (mostly Quebec) drivers on it and they stop to eat and shop in our area. While Spanish is needful in many parts of the country, here we find French a bit more practical.

I really recommend you check out this program. In fact, you can see samples of all the levels plus a video explaining what comes with the Level I program. The Easy French Junior level also has the table of contents linked up as well as Lesson 1 & Lesson 2 for you to try out. If you are still unsure, you can purchase a sampler CD for $15. The CD includes the first few lessons from each of their programs. Not only does Great Commission Language have a "Easy French" program, they also have The Easy Spanish! If you end up purchasing a level after buying the sampler, you will receive a $15 rebate towards your purchase.

Be sure to head over to the TOS Homeschool Crew blog to see what other Crew members had to say about the language programs from Great Commission Languages. Crew members received various French and Spanish levels.

Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review.  All opinions shared are my own. TOS Crew Members are given the product free of charge in exchange for our unbiased opinion of the product.