Parenting is a constant state of balance. I’m trying to make sure my kids get to dive face-first into piles of chocolate ice cream while they’re young and prime them to have the best opportunities in life.
They’re both under 6, and recently while watching them spin in circles on the playground ’til they fell, I was complaining to a fellow pre-school mum that I wished our school district taught a second language early on. I’d just read an article about the advantages and benefits it can have, like higher academic achievement, higher test scores, better career opportunities, and improved reading ability.
I knew I could never teach them – I was always awful at languages in primary and secondary school.
Luckily my friend told me my language problem was not that I was bad at languages – I just started too late in life. It turns out that there is an ideal window of opportunity to learn a new language and it’s when you’re young—before age 10, in fact.
Apparently, during your first decade of life, your brain is wired to learn languages, so learning a second one just comes naturally and easily for you. The bad news is once this window closes, it gets more and more difficult to learn a new language every year. So in order to give your child an edge in school, it’s best to start them as early as possible.
My friend had read the same article as I did (mummy circles) and was already one step ahead – she was having great success with her two kids using Muzzyto learn French. My curiosity piqued, so when I got home, I did some research.
Created by experts at the BBC, Muzzy has introduced millions of kids around the world to new languages, including Spanish from Spain and Latin America, English, Chinese Mandarin, German, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, and Russian.
The way it works is that children learn a second language by simply watching the Muzzy movies on the telly and playing online games.
That sounded…..way too simple. Even if their brains were ready for languages, how could they learn by doing so little? No repetition, no essays…..
I kept thinking about the window of opportunity thing, and I wondered if maybe it really WAS that easy.
I’d be thrilled if my kids could be fluent in a second language. Plus, they were already getting a little addicted to screens, and this would be guilt-free screen time to replace silly YouTube Kids videos.
I was a little worried they just wouldn’t like it, but with the 30-day money-back guarantee, there was no risk. We paid less than $5 a month!) for a two year online subscription.
Now that we have been using it for the last 2 months, I am sold – my kids love it! I couldn’t be happier. They ask to watch it all the time and they fall over laughing when I imitate the voices. Which means I’m learning a little French, too.
This is such an amazing resource for kids, and I’m confident they’re going to get as much as they can out of this window of opportunity. If you have kids under 10, Muzzyis a must!
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