My experience as a primary school teacher has given me first hand insight into how receptive young children learn a language.
They have no inhibitions and as long as the teaching is animated and full of adventure and activities, they will follow you along the road to discovery.
Just remember how your children learnt their first language. They would listen and eventually understand what you were saying to them, then they would experiment with repeating what you were saying, perhaps there were many attempts at repetition. The next step would be to use the language on their own.
This newly learnt language would be used hopefully in context but if your child had problems in this respect, you would help them by repeating and demonstrating how they could use these new words.
At LCF Fun Language Clubs, we use exactly the same method. As the children already know how to acquire a language, we follow the same patterns and the same process.
Introduce the new words, demonstrating their meaning by using a number of resources, looking at pictures, videos, tactile objects and then practising the words. We clarify that the children understand what they have learnt by creating an activity which they can then practise independently, with a friend or a group.
Singing songs is a brilliant way to help young children with a new language. They listen and copy and instinctively repeat the sounds and nuances of new language.
LCF Fun Language Clubs has a CD and Song Book to support children in their learning and access to an online learning zone.