As home educators, we're always keen to follow our children's interests and facilitate their desire to learn in any way we can. When given autonomy over their education, we find that children can often surprise us with the wide range of interests they have and the differences in the subjects and activities that they enjoy as individuals. It's one of the aspects of home educating that we love the most.
But quite often we'll find ourselves met with a request that's beyond our personal expertise! We had this experience recently when our 7 year old decided that he really wanted to learn to speak Mandarin - something that neither of us are able to teach him! When this happens, we have to seek outside resources - on previous occasions we've employed tutors to help with various subjects, but this can quickly become very expensive. So on this occasion we were delighted when we discovered StudyCat - an online, app-based programme designed to help children to learn a new language in a fun and age appropriate way.
How It Works
StudyCat is an award-winning programme that uses a variety of game-based lessons to teach children languages such as French, German, Spanish and Chinese.
The use of fun games helps to keep children focused and interested, while allowing them to pick up new words and phrases. The games use different tones to help teach children correct pronunciation, and also teaches a mix of spoken and written language skills.
The app is designed to teach children in just 15 minutes per day, making it easy to slot into your daily routine. The first month will focus on basics such as colours, numbers and animals before progressing on to different areas.
It's designed specifically with children in the 3-8 age range in mind, but is often enjoyed by older children and even adults too!
Why My Kids Thought
I tried this with my eldest and he took to it straight away! The programme path is really easy to follow, and the games were fun and engaging for him to play - keeping him interested beyond the recommended 15 minutes per day.
Chinese words are spoken during the gameplay to help the children pick up on the correct names for colours, animals, etc - this seems a good technique as the repetition really seems to help, and hearing the words pronounced is useful too.
I do think we chose the most difficult language of course, and could certainly see that the programme would all the more effective with a more straight forward language such as French but my 7 year old is really enjoying his chosen language so far and it seems to be sinking in.
Our Verdict
StudyCat is an easy and effective way to teach a new language to children in a format that's enjoyable and not overwhelming. It's very user-friendly and fun for little ones, allowing them to learn with minimal supervision.
The 30 day free trial is well worth taking advantage of, as this gives you plenty of time to see how your child gels with the programme and whether it's something that will work for them going forwards.
Personally I'm so glad we found it, and we intend to continue to use StudyCat to learn other languages once we've finished with our Chinese language course.
If you're looking for an educational birthday or Christmas gift, a StudyCat subscription would be a perfect choice.
Grab An Exclusive Discount
Using the code SparklesPromo you will receive 10% off your subscription - the code is valid until 31/03/2020 and will be applied for the lifetime of your subscription.
You can also enjoy a 30-day free trial, too! Sign up today at StudyCat.com
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