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Charlotte Mason taught her students new foreign language folksongs each term. She recognized this as a way to make language-learning enjoyable and meaningful and to encounter cultural and linguistic aspects of the language by engaging directly with real, primary resource texts.
Before we get caught up in the usefulness of second language study, or the difficulties of vocabulary and grammar, we should consider the sustenance of our language lessons. Repertorios provide our children with living content in the second language, rich with imagery that nurtures their souls. Charlotte Mason recognized the importance of listening to the spoken (or sung) language: "Children should learn [French] orally, by listening to or repeating [French] words and phrases; that they should begin so young that the difference of accent does not strike them, [...]." Home Education, p. 80
In doing this, we give our children the opportunity to regularly encounter complex forms of language as they are found in music, poetry, literature, and speech. Furthermore, instead of learning isolated words, we are feeding them the highest expressions of language that, over time, they will absorb.