Japanese for children

[amy c]

At what age do you think I could begin teaching my children Japanese? They are 3 and 5 now. What books would you suggest we use and should we start with hiragana or just learning how to pronounce vocabulary? I kind it would ben fun for them to learn how to write hiragana. A side note, I am homeschooling them, so we have plenty of time to devote to it.

[I-samu]

First, I suggest teaching them katakana, then hiragana.

[ashitaka]

Start with hiragana, unless you plan on taking them to japan like in the next week (most likely not). after hiragana teach them katakana then work on vocabulary and grammer. then after a while teach them kanji with small stroke counts.
so like this,
hiragana
katakana
vocabulary and grammer
small kanji
harder grammer and fill their heads with vocabulary.

[Tegan]

Hi, I agree with ashitaka, but I also wanted to tell you there was a post on this just a few days ago by a mother of four children, and one of hers was 3 years old too.

http://www.thejapanesepage.com/forum/vi ... rowstart=0

I know you were asking about which age to start, but that also has good places to start when you're ready and such like that.

Hope this helps.