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Books

• The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language by Kendall King and Alison Mackey. This book has a lot of digestible but solid science to back up what it advocates. It also provides tons of resources.
• The Associated Press study guides and materials available for many languages are good places for a little more advanced study at a cheap price.
• There are many bilingual children’s books, and you can search for them in the target language on any search engine or Amazon. Le Chat au Chapeau, anyone?
• DK Publishing books are brightly illustrated with photographs and high-quality binding—great for early vocabulary. If you are a religious family, it is easy to find religious materials in many languages for side-by-side study.
• There are an enormous number of foreign language study books on the market, and it really is just a matter of personal preference in the style of the book. Don’t be fooled by the oh-so-approachable title of the “Ten Minutes a Day” series – it’s tough!

Websites

• ocw.mit.edu/courses/foreign-languages-and-literatures
  MIT offers open courseware for foreign languages, including Chinese, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese. One wonderful thing about this (besides being free) is that there are culture and literature courses as well, so a student can get a real flavor for the language and its heritage.
• bbc.co.uk/languages
  The BBC has a specialized (and for money) program called Muzzy geared just to kids, but this site works just fine and is free. There are full courses in seven languages and more limited curriculum in others. You can do everything from the word/phrase of the day, to routine and very orderly coursework. Be sure to check out the video on how to use it at the site below.
• freelanguage.org
  If you are trying to decide on a language or want more information on places to go for a specific language, this site offers tips and resources for learning a number of languages for free.
• multilingualbooks.com/online-radio.html
  Find online radio stations in foreign languages at this site. You can search by language and music genre.
• multilingualbooks.com/online-newspapers.html
  Find foreign newspapers online here. There are a number of them available in common and uncommon languages.
• transparent.com/wotd
  You can subscribe to a “word of the day” email in tons of languages here. There are other resources as well, but stick to the free ones.
• chillola.com
  This site offers free activities in many languages. Each language has its own site, and the printing is in the target language, but you don’t need to understand it to be able to tell what to do. This is a beginner activity site—not a program for acquiring the language.
• youtube.com
  Strange, but true. YouTube has lots of videos available in any language your child may be interested in. Going on vacation to China? Here’s a video to practice checking in to the hotel: youtube.com/watch?v=RmwZoYC_RJI&feature=related.
• foreignlanguagefun.com
  A support site for teaching foreign languages, this is an engaging and content-rich site with loads of ideas and links for homeschooling or other families trying to incorporate foreign language study into their home.
• literacycenter.net
  For pre-schoolers, this site offers lessons in four languages: French, Spanish, German, and English.
• ipl.org/div/hello
  Szia! That’s Hungarian for “hello.” Learn to say hello in dozens of languages at this site.
• word2word.com/course.html
  This is a fairly comprehensive list of courses available in a huge number of languages. They make no claim to quality, but if you have an unusual language in mind, this is a particularly valuable resource.