First steps towards chinese literacy

I have been getting a little worried about the state of affairs at home with regards to learning chinese. Everyone seems to be doing something or other about this whole learning-to-speak-chinese thing. I speak what I can occasionally at home and the girls love their Chinese story books. But what I speak, I am embarrassed to admit (after 10 years of chinese classes at school and tuition) can only be at best rudimentary and I have come to realise, pre-school level. It doesn't quite go beyond basic single sentences. So whatever the girls pick up at home will remain at that level. My friend C says, "Don't speak mandarin at home, you will teach them the wrong things!" But I figured that some mandarin (albeit bad) is better than none. At least the girls are not averse to learning the language. Oh, they love the cheesy chinese karaoke DVDs.
A good friend J and I have kids around the same age so we are getting a chinese class going and having a native chinese speaker come in to run a weekly class. I really hope this works out with the teacher coming over. Ellie just doesn't like unaccompanied classes and I am trying not to make babysitting arrangements everytime one of the older girls go for classes. And hopefully Ellie and Caitlin will learn to speak chinese on their own, and that I too will get some practice with a real chinese speaker.