Courses · Russian · Kindergarten to high school
Russian Ру́сский язы́к
The language of Pushkin and Tolstoy, written in the Cyrillic alphabet that grew from the work of Cyril and Methodius, the missionaries who brought letters and the Gospel to the Slavs. Our courses teach it step by step: sounds and letters first, with a stress mark on every word so the student always knows how to say it; then words for everyday life; then the cases and tenses that make Russian sentences work, read in real poems, stories and Scripture.
Choose a grade · Kindergarten to Grade 8
Ages 5–6
Kindergarten
Приве́т! Hello and thank you, colors, counting to ten, the body and animals, with songs, rhymes and pictures.
Ages 6–7
Grade 1
The family, the house, the days of the week, food, and clothes for the weather.
Ages 7–8
Grade 2
The first Cyrillic letters, school, winter and Christmas, the Russian forest, and the sky and the Lord’s Prayer, О́тче наш.
Ages 8–9
Grade 3
Meeting people politely, numbers to 20, colors and shapes, the family table, and birds and spring.
Ages 9–10
Grade 4
Where things are, what I have with у меня́ есть, seasons and weather, what I love to do, and Russia’s rivers and cities.
Ages 10–11
Grade 5
The whole alphabet and its sounds, stress, he, she and it, the first verbs and adjectives, and asking and answering questions.
Ages 11–12
Grade 6
Plurals, going on foot and by wheel with идти́ and е́хать, telling time, finding the way, and Russian tales and Krylov’s fables.
Ages 12–13
Grade 7
Numbers to 100, the accusative case, the past tense with Pushkin, the future, and Tolstoy’s stories for children.
Ages 13–14
Grade 8
The genitive, dative and instrumental cases, Psalm 23 in Russian, and Easter, Христо́с воскре́се!
High school · Russian I
A full-year course for high-school students beginning Russian: 12 units of 3 lessons, one lesson a week for 36 weeks, four sessions of 40–50 minutes, with unit tests, a midterm and a final exam, and separate answer keys for the parent. A student who finished Grade 8 will know the alphabet and many words already and can move faster through the first units.
Grades 9–12
Russian I
A full-year first course in Russian: the Cyrillic alphabet and stress, greetings, family, school, food, town and directions, clothes, weather, time, Christmas and Easter, the past and future tenses, the accusative, prepositional and genitive cases, Pushkin and Tolstoy, Russia’s land and the story of Cyril and Methodius and the Russian Bible, with paintings by Russian masters, unit tests, a midterm and a final exam.
How every lesson works
Each course from kindergarten to grade 8 is a short course: 5 units of 2 lessons, one lesson a week, about one quarter of the school year, with three sessions a week that grow from 15–20 minutes in the early grades to 30–40 minutes from grade 5 on. Russian I is a full high-school year with four longer sessions a week.
- Warm-up. A few minutes of saying Russian out loud, with a question to think about.
- Watch. A hand-picked YouTube video from an approved teaching channel, with a note on when to watch it.
- Learn. How Russian works, in short sections a parent can read aloud, with a stress mark on every Russian word and an English sound guide for every new word.
- Picture study. A Russian painting in every unit, by Vasnetsov, Levitan, Shishkin, Repin, Kuindzhi, Polenov, Ivanov and others, to look at closely and talk about.
- Activity. The student makes something every week: letter cards, a family tree, a menu, a map, a picture book, a recitation.
- Russian notebook and flashcards. A notebook of words written in Cyrillic with their stress marks, and a flashcard deck that grows every lesson.
- Worked examples and practice. Speaking, reading, writing and translation, easy through challenge, with answers to check.
- For heritage speakers. Every lesson ends with a harder task for a student who already speaks Russian at home.
Every lesson has a Bible verse in the Synodal Russian Bible of 1876, the Bible most Russian-speaking Christians still read, printed beside the exact words of the King James Version. Russian Christmas and Easter are described as Russian Christians keep them, folk customs are described factually as history and culture, and the courses carry no political content.
Nothing needs to be bought. Activities use index cards, paper, pencils, crayons and things from around the house. Each unit also lists optional books and free resources.
Every course can also be downloaded as one printable PDF, with the video links printed in each lesson. Worksheets come with separate answer keys for the parent.
Videos open on YouTube. Every embedded video comes from a teaching channel approved for School Launch, but YouTube shows its own recommendations and ads around them, so parents should preview the videos and stay nearby.