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Last year, my ever-changing 9 year old decided she wanted to learn a foreign language. Not just ANY foreign language, though. My girl, she’s an overachiever. She wanted to learn them ALL.
After talking her down off her crazy-cliff, she narrowed it down to only Spanish. I was ecstatic. Spanish lessons couldn’t be that bad. I started my search locally. Surely there was someone nearby who could teach my daughter Spanish. But I turned up with nothing. Foreign language lessons for kids weren’t as readily available as I’d hoped. And the price of one-on-one lessons was out of my budget. Still I knew we needed a solid foundation to build on.
I received this product for free and was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own.
Luckily, I found PandaTree.com. It was everything we had been searching for!
PandaTree.com offers live, one-on-one, online foreign language lessons for kids in Mandarin and Spanish.
It’s simple to use: Simply decide which tutor would be the best fit for you. Then you can easily schedule your session on a date and time that works for you. With so many high quality tutors available, you’re going to have plenty to choose from!
We chose to work with Erika for our Spanish lesson and couldn’t have been any happier!
We later worked with Shu to try Mandarin and Miss Manners loved her!
Once you’ve scheduled your session, you can do a quick video and microphone check. The site walks you through the process to make sure you’re ready for the session. In under a minute, you’ll know if your device is compatible with PandaTree.com. Once you’ve completed the tech-check, you can opt-in for text reminders for your session, so you don’t forget! {Trust me, you’ll want to take advantage of this because life can get hectic and it’s always nice to have a friendly reminder!}
On the day of your session, you’ll want to sign in about 5 minutes early, just to make sure everything is working correctly. While you wait, there are interactive games to play, while getting you ready to learn. Once your tutor arrives, they will quickly introduce themselves and then get started. Kids will fall in love with the simple games and teaching tools the tutors use.
For our first Spanish lesson, Miss Manners learned colors, animals and numbers. The tutor encouraged her to speak in Spanish, repeating what she had just heard. After only a few minutes, she had also learned sayings like “Very good!”
The tutors are gentle and encouraging, making learning fun for the students. The real magic happened after our first lesson.
Miss Manners knew that she would need to work on her Spanish words before the next session and she got straight to work. Having one-on-one lessons with a tutor she admired kept her motivated. Each day, she logs in to her PandaTree.com account and plays the free games. She studied her words for the week, as well as additional words and phrases that were provided during the games and quizzes. By the end of her first week, she was ready to move on to harder words.
After she’s done studying, she loves to play in the Student Hub. There, she can find more ways to interact, play with her pandas and check out the badges she has earned. She can also view a summary of her session, a word list and watch videos.
As a busy mom of 3, my favorite part of PandaTree.com is that I can use her session time to get stuff done around the house. I know she is safely learning from an educated tutor from the comfort of our home. No longer do I need to sit and help her struggle through flash cards and pray that I’m teaching her the correct pronunciation of her words. Now, she can learn from tutors she admires while I do the laundry. She actually looks forward to her weekly lessons because she enjoys spending time with them.
Foreign language lessons for kids are a great investment! To know that my daughter will someday not only know the basics of a foreign language but will be able to converse using it, makes me proud. The opportunities and income that will open up to her due to being bilingual far exceed the price of her one-on-one private lessons.
PandaTree.com is offering a FREE 25 minute trial lesson in Spanish or Mandarin for our readers!
Simply sign up and use the code iHNFree17 at checkout. Offer is good through November 30, 2017. Limit one free session per family.
