Do you desire to teach your children or yourself a foreign language? Timberdoodle Company has some great resources for learning languages! Take a look at Rosetta Stone for your most advanced students, or at Power-Glide for your younger learners, or even Bilingual Baby for your toddlers. For a limited time purchase Rosetta Stone Spanish using the item numbers on the Virtual Curriculum Fair coupon and you will get a free magnet set of 200, 3/8 inch high, double-sided magnets with Spanish on one side and an English translation on the other. That’s a $10.00 value! See our website for more home education resources!

Rosetta Stone

Currently in use in more than 7,000 schools and 55 countries, Rosetta Stone’s computerized foreign language program provides instruction in more than 24 languages including English for ESL students. Rosetta Stone's step-by-step presentation utilizes photos that portray real world situations. By matching the spoken phrase and image correctly children learn a foreign language the natural way, by associating sounds and later written words with objects and ideas. There is no translation, no memorization of vocabulary words, no grammar drills or any of the other dreary methods typically associated with learning a new language.  

Rosetta Stone develops reading skills by having students match written phrases to images, associating the words and the meaning directly. 

Rosetta Stone makes it possible for students to record their voices and play it back for comparison with the voice of the native speaker. A voiceprint analyzes the student's pronunciation in detail.  

Dictation is another hard to find feature that Rosetta Stone excels in. Your child simply clicks on the picture and types what he hears. The program checks the typed work for accuracy, indicates errors and allows your child to make corrections before proceeding. 

With the Student Management System, parents can create lesson plans for each child. You determine program content, language skills, learning activities and proficiency levels. Parents in states that require a paper trail will be delighted to know that the Rosetta Stone program monitors and records each student's time, study and scores, which can be printed or exported to another folder. 

Rosetta Stone is a first-class program, outstanding in many ways. But every program has its warts and Rosetta Stone is no exception. Because the program is based on real-life photos you should expect to see photos of people in various manners of dress, participating in all types of activities. However most children are exposed to more flesh in a simple trip to the grocery store, and the lively pace of the program does not encourage lingering over these types of pictures. Nothing vulgar here, but if you blanche at the sight of a child in shorts, or a woman wearing a sleeveless dress, you should be aware of this potential concern.

The first level Rosetta Stone software program has 92 lessons, and 3500 real-life images. Visual aids plus written text will appeal strongly to the visual child. However with 400 hours of mastery instruction in Listening Comprehension, an auditory learner will do just as well using this program. 

The second level of Rosetta Stone’s computerized foreign language program adds an additional 400 hours of accelerated study, with over 4500 real-life images, video clips and phrases in 118 lessons.