Chinese and French

Well, I never would have thought it possible, but yes, we are learning French and Mandarin. My husband and I begin Mandarin classes tomorrow, I've signed up to a couple of internet sights for Mandarin learning. I also found a reasonable used copy of Rosetta Stone. (I'd still love to find a copy of Pimsleur cheap, but I've settled for borrowing a copy from the library.)
I've found a wonderful, very comprehensive curriculum for my children. I may still use some of the resources I mentioned in the previous post, but after a LOT of Googling, I found Better Chinese. It's an incredible interactive curriculum including songs, stories, rhymes, games, animations, character and oral learning. It's simply wonderful, and the kids LOVE it.

So far, we only have access to the online segments. Since shipping from the U.S. to Toronto can be expensive, I've had some of the things shipped to my very accommodating parents while they are in Florida on vacation. It'll be like Christmas when they get home!
The Better Chinese program is brilliant because it has programs specifically designed for four distinct age groups, and uses so many different kinds of input, no child could ever be bored with it. It's so good, it's being used in some immersion programs.
I'm thoroughly impressed. My kids can already say, "I love my daddy/mommy/big brother/big sister/little brother/little sister/family." We're working on "grandma" and "grandpa" and they can recognize the words and characters for all of these as well as "cat" and "dog."
I'm really excited about what I'm seeing in my kids. First, they're doing all of this, and still speaking French around the house. And what's especially exciting is there seems to be much less resistance about learning Chinese than there seemed to be in the initial stages of learning French. That could be a lot of things--maybe because we've borrowed a ton of books from the library about China. Maybe because the anticipation of being there is starting to kick in (our flights are booked now--we leave May 19!). Whatever it is, I'm delighted.