Learning French with Middlebury Interactive Languages {Review}

I studied French for many years, so when I started homeschooling, I knew I wanted our kids to learn French as well. I am always on the lookout for great online French curriculum and resources for our homeschool, so I was definitely excited for the opportunity to review Elementary French 1, Grades K-2 from Middlebury Interactive Languages.

Middlebury Interactive Languages is an online language curriculum for Kindergarten through 12th Grade. They offer a variety of languages including: French, Spanish, German and Chinese. The courses help students learn both the language and culture.
Our daughter (age 7) has been using the Elementary French 1 Program 4-5 days per week. We have found that it takes an interesting approach. Aurora enjoys her lessons because they are unique. The lessons include learning through a variety of interactions that are interesting and engaging. Each lesson takes her about 15-20 minutes to complete, though she has completed some in between 10-15 minutes.
What I find really nice about the program is even the instructions can be read (or listened to) in French as well as English. I find immersion is really helpful so I would have her listen to the instructions in both languages. She really enjoyed this because she liked listening to the French language more.

Each lesson has about 6-12 “slides.” The lesson is initially laid out as slides on the left hand side. It starts with an Introductory video and works its way through the individual parts of the lesson. The lessons vary by day so on some days she was learning more about the language and other days she was learning more about the culture. Some of the interactive lessons include: moving the correct word or phrase to the correct picture, listening to and then recording words and phrases, different interactions with maps, fun games to reinforce the language and more.
The lessons have been pretty easy for Aurora to navigate and complete on her own after I first choose the correct lesson for the day. She usually makes it through a whole lesson without needing any assistance though we have found sometimes the recording doesn’t work, so I simply listen to her pronounce it. Unfortunately, though, this means it cannot be marked off as complete, and I found no way to override it.

Although the program does also include a Gradebook, it is a feature I do not use based on the information I shared above since the lessons can’t be graded correctly as they aren’t shown as complete. Because she is Elementary age, though, I don’t worry too much about grades at this point anyway.
Another available feature is the Calendar. Once we completed the sign up, lessons were added automatically to a calendar. I really like the idea of knowing exactly what lesson to complete on a specific day but unfortunately this was another feature of which I couldn’t take advantage. I have found no way to edit the dates. When the Calendar is produced it automatically starts with a lesson every week day until the end of the program. The exception is, of course, the holidays.

Although sometimes we work on foreign language every week day, it is more common that we only do four days a week. Sometimes we only do three days a week if it’s a particularly busy week. So although I couldn’t use the Calendar to rely on which lesson we need to do that day, it was initially helpful as it would check off the lessons that were complete. If we ran into that snag I mentioned, though, those lessons wouldn’t be marked complete, so I decided it was best to simply keep track myself.
Overall, although I found some of the features to be complicated, they were mostly the features on my end as the parent. I found the online French curriculum itself to be a unique and fun way to teach French and a way our daughter has been enjoying. I love that she enjoys the lessons and she wants to do them!
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