How to teach Japanese

Apologies in advance if I'm posting this in the wrong forum... feel free move it if so (or let me know if I need to move it).

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas or experience in teaching Japanese to young kids (say, 7-9 years old)? I was asked yesterday if I would tutor a little girl around 2nd grade age who seems fascinated with Japanese and wants to learn, but while I have 7 years of experience in the language itself with 4 of those being through a college major, I have no experience in teaching and have no idea what to do in terms of a curriculum, even in the loosest sense of the word. I have no idea where to begin or what kind of course to follow.

Also, since this is such a young girl who's probably just fascinated with some anime she saw one Saturday morning, I have no idea how serious she is. I'd love suggestions on ways to start the lessons in a way that grabs her interest and makes her want to learn, and to keep it going in a way that would keep her interested. If she's not genuinely interested now, I'd love the opportunity to change that.

I'm not necessarily looking for teachers' textbooks or full curricula or anything, as I'm sure this will be very informal if it does work out. Mainly I'm interested in suggestions and advice based on experience in this sort of thing.

Many thanks in advance for any input!

Hello, Bekkichan.

I suggest you should teach some greetings and basic nouns, using picture cards. house = ie, dog = inu, cat = neko , desk =tsukue, etc.

If she is also interested in writing Japanese, you can teach her how to write hiragana and katakana.

I think it's hard to teach a foreign language from the ABC. Ganbatte kudasai.

Hirashin

Thanks for replying!

Starting with basic greetings and simple vocab is a good idea. I'm wondering if it would also be wise to incorporate lessons on the syllabary - not reading or writing kana yet, but mainly so she can learn correct pronunciation. Perhaps a chart of the a-ka-sa-ta-na in romaji to review a bit at the end of each lesson?

I thought of this mainly because I know far too many people who tell me they once hung out with someone who taught them some Japanese, so they recite simple words to me (numbers 1-10, greetings, my-name-is, etc), but their pronunciation is so horrible that I can barely tell it's the language I've spent 7 years studying.

I'll continue plotting and see if any more ideas come up! Thanks again!

hello Bekkichan.....
I've the resolusion ......
the first step that you have to do ...teach her hiragana ..
since the pronunciation is hard ,you should use pictures ..... How????
bring apple's picture and in helf write あ and tell her (apple - a-あ )
with this examples she won't forget them

http://www.0zz0.com
this is just example ... you must have all pictures for letters
and she's little girl....so every day teach her 5 letters
good luck ........... bye