Good Books and Resources for Teaching a Second Language?

[rowingboat]

Hi all,
I am thinking about teaching my 6 year old the basics of a second language, probably Italian or Spanish.
There seem to be so many books and CDs aimed at children that my head hurts, I mean look at
this lot
Could anyone recommend a good starter book or CD. In fact would anyone recommend using books or CDs or both?

I've been teaching my boys (now 8 and 6) French for years, and both of them learn from different things, so it is important to think about what your child enjoys. My oldest boy loves television, and will happily watch most any DVD if I turn it on in French. Dora and Diego were great favourites when he was that age, and they are really easy to learn from because there is lots of repetition. He also loves books, and we could get simple ones like Spot the Dog lift the flap books in French from our local library. My younger one is more into songs and audiobooks, which I picked up from www.little-linguist.com, but that of course is a more expensive approach. :-(

A lot of people swear by Muzzy but I found that expensive for what you got - really just a few DVDs that were really out of date. Usborne do a good range of books and flash cards but unless you really set out to teach your child - rather than have them play with the language - they can be a bit dull.

So in sum, if your child is into tv, then pick up a good child's DVD that he'll like and see if you can change the language to Spanish. You might already have some at home. For CDs, my boys preferred nursery rhymes. A good starter one for us was Baby's First Words in Spanish (www.amazon.co.uk/Babys-First-Words-in-Spanish/dp/B003MX6V0A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1309199871&sr=8-2), but that was when they were younger. The French one was so well done, even I loved listening to it. A great one for playing near bedtime.

You might be lucky and have some after school Spanish classes going on near you. If you can convince some of your boy's school friends to do it too, it can be a really fun experience for them.

My two dd's (5 and 8) enjoy Mi vida loca, a spanish course on the BBC site (and its free).

Hi there,
thanks for the input!
ceeb I'm not sure which approach to take with my DS. He loves TV and films too. I will have a look at his DVDs, I'm presuming Disney type films will have another language option? I know there is a theory about different types of learner, where individuals have preferred modes of learning, like visual, aural whatever. My DS is a very keen reader, but he didn't ever seem to pick up on the Spanish on Dora or Diego, whereas my friend's children both learnt the Spanish words from the programmes.
Perhaps I should use a book for my son as he is such a keen reader.
What did you notice were the words which your children picked up, were they from the songs or from the books or films?

Elk I will look into the language course on BBC, off to do that now.