Books for teaching Italian to 7 yr old?

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We visit Italy two or three times a year to visit SIL, her Italian husband and our niece. DS is 7 now, and although his cousin is fluently bi-lingual, I think it's time for him to learn Italian so he'll be able to play with her friends and talk with her Italian family.

Can you recommend a book/CD/DVD course? DS says he doesn't want a tutor, he wants me to teach him. I'm thrilled he wants that, and languages have always been my strength, but I want him to learn properly.

Thanks.

Hmm its a lot to ask a 7 year old to pick up another language through books and CD's. Do you speak Italian fluently? If so it might be easier, but tbh I think you're asking a lot.....

I think a language course might be easier for him. He would get real conversation with an Italian person. You could then practise together. And it might be more fun. He would have to be very motivated to persevere with books and cds.

learning a language is such a valuable thing to do, so it's great that he's keen.

You could have a try at Busuu.com www.busuu.com, and it could be something you can enjoy together every night. Or you may want to browse these sites www.lepointdufle.net/cours_de_langues.htm or www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/italian/italian.htm.

Youtube is great as well Oliver and Benji, or Barbapapa,

Thank you for the suggestions. Just signed up to busuu and will try out the others. Barbapapa excellent idea - has watched in Italy a few times already!
Will see how we get on and if it's difficult, I'll look into a tutor.

I used Italian for Children from Mcgraw Hill with my dd. She was 8 I think and I thought it was fine to make a start. We also had a couple of DVDs which I think were from Language Tree and she liked those.

Still this only gets you to a certain point and to get further you need some kind of structured book. Is your Italian fairly fluent? If so maybe the ambarabà series. It is a course designed for German native speakers in the very north of Italy to learn Italian at school from their second year on - or a reader based series (I have come across a couple but I cannot remember the titles offhand)?

btw those books I mentioned were written for German speakers but don't have a single word in German in them, they are entirely in Italian, so you would need to be good enough to figure out the instructions and how to teach with them IYSWIM.

Thanks ZZZ. I'll look into them!