Hindi classes for kids, online

The usual way Hindi is taught assumes a child who already recognises the sounds because somebody at home is making them. For a child growing up outside India that assumption does not hold, and it is why so many first attempts stall: the child is asked to attach a shape to a sound they have never had to distinguish.

So it starts at the sound. Short and long vowels first, because the difference between them is what every matra depends on. Only then the shape, then the matra, then words. It is slower to begin with and much faster afterwards, and it is the reason a child who has failed at Hindi once can succeed at it the second time.

This is the practical problem, and it is worth naming: a parent who cannot read Devanagari cannot tell whether a page of homework is right. That makes the usual advice - sit with them, go over it - impossible to follow.

Two things help. Every one of our free Hindi worksheets carries the full answer key on the page, so you can mark work in a script you cannot read. And after every class you get a short note in English saying what was actually covered and where the child got stuck, rather than a tick in an app.

This is the most searched question in this whole subject, and it has a real answer. The order matters more than the material, because each step is only learnable once the one before it is secure.

1. The sounds, before any letter. Can your child hear the difference between a short and a long vowel - between kal and kaal? If not, matras will be guesswork later, because a matra is a written mark for exactly that difference.
2. Swar and vyanjan - the varnamala. Vowels first, then consonants, in small groups rather than the whole chart at once. A wall chart of fifty-two letters teaches recognition of a poster, not of letters.
3. One matra at a time. आ first, because it is the simplest and the commonest. Then इ and ई, which is where most children stall, because ि is written before the letter it is spoken after.
4. Two-letter words. The first real reading. This is the point at which a child stops decoding shapes and starts getting meaning off a page.
5. Sentences, then a passage. Only once words are automatic, because a child still sounding out letters has no attention left for meaning.

Our free worksheets follow exactly that order and every one of them has the full answer key on the page: swar and vyanjan, and the first matras, then the u, oo, e, ai, o and au matras, then joined letters and comprehension. Each also downloads as a printable PDF.

More parents ask about matras than about anything else in Hindi, and it is almost always the same two that cause it.

छोटी इ की मात्रा (ि) is written before the letter it is spoken after. That single rule breaks the pattern a child has just learned - that you read left to right, in order. Say it out loud once, explicitly, rather than letting them work it out: di is written दि, and the little hook belongs to the द even though it sits in front of it.

Short versus long is heard, not seen. A child who cannot hear the difference between इ and ई will never choose correctly between ि and ी, however many worksheets they do. If your child is guessing, go back to saying the word slowly and listening for length - that is a listening problem, not a writing one.

The Class 1 Hindi worksheets take one matra per sheet for that reason, with a worked example at the top of every exercise showing one already done and why.

There is no single right age, but the job is different at each.

Four and five. Sounds and speaking, almost entirely. Reading can wait. A child this age who is read to in Hindi and spoken to in Hindi arrives at the script years ahead, without having been taught it.

Six to eight. The best window for the script, because the child already knows how reading works in English and is transferring a skill rather than learning one from nothing.

Nine and above. Perfectly achievable, and often faster - an older child can be told the rule and use it. What they need is a reason of their own, because at this age the parent's reason stops being enough.

"With fees" is attached to this search often enough that Google completes it, which tells you how many places do not publish a price. Ours are on the fees page in full, including the rate for families paying from outside India.

The first class is free and there is no card taken to book it. If after that class the honest answer is that your child needs something other than what we do, we will tell you.