Have you been looking for the best foreign language software for kids? Well, I am super excited to show you exactly what you need. I am talking about Middlebury Interactive. We have done a review for Middlebury Interactive’s Elementary Chinese (K-2) and we loved it so much that we wanted to review the next level, which is Elementary Chinese (Grades 3-5).
This Mandarin Chinese course is fantastic and we have all enjoyed having it as part of our homeschool. It includes so many interactive activities that it will be hard to NOT learn the target language! Come and take a look at how it works.
Middlebury Interactive offers courses in Spanish, French, Chinese and German. I felt it was important to point that out, although we will focus on the course we have used, which is Elementary Chinese (Grades 3-5).
It is fun that this course includes a set of at least a dozen units that focuses on a different topic like Food, Parts of the Body, Colors, Numbers, etc. Each unit is divided into 6 lessons and each lesson has a set of about 6 activities, including a story, a video of Chinese culture, games and, among other things, a quiz and calligraphy practice.
Can you see why Middlebury Interactive is, indeed, the best foreign language software for kids? Let me tell you more!
What I love the best is that using this software encourages reading, writing, listening and even speaking Mandarin Chinese! There is one part of each lesson that has a recording ability where the student records him/herself saying the vocabulary words and they can hear the recoding and their own recording for comparison.
As a former Mandarin Chinese tutor, it is important to me that students learn both the calligraphy and the Pinyin forms of the language. Middleburg Interactive teaches both! I couldn’t be happier! You can see both in the pictures below.
There is the online portion of the studies and there is the paper and pencil portion. The paper and pencil portion is all in the account and they are printable for the website once the student is logged in. We can print out the stories that are in each unit.
We also printed out the vocabulary lists for each unit (see above) and the special calligraphy paper for practice (see below). In calligraphy writing, each stroke has an order and it is important to learn how to write it correctly. It is fantastic that they even teach that to kids! Learning a language right from the beginning!
This is such a complete and amazing software that can be used on a desktop, a laptop and even a tablet! Middlebury Interactive is definitely the best foreign language software for kids to use at any age. They offer courses from kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade. Here is the list of different language courses they offer.
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