It has always been one of our family educational goals for the kids to learn Spanish, but we have floundered on how to do it. We have family that speak Spanish, but they haven't been available to teach the kids. I took one year of it in college, and I am very far from fluent.
I tried to put together curriculum for us to use, with the DVD's, coloring books, picture dictionaries, and CD's that I found at our local school supply store. Some of these products are nice, but overall we haven't been successful this way.
So I finally took the plunge and ordered Sonrisa. It is expensive, but it has been so worth the price so far. With just one teacher's guide and one CD of songs, Spanish "class" has now become the kids' favorite lesson of the day. This morning when I called them to lessons, Hypatia exclaimed "yay! Spanish!".
The curriculum is designed for early education, and in many ways it resembles any good preschool curriculum (but my 1st grader is still very happy to do it too). Organized by themes, there is a circle time with songs to sing together and a simple game-type activity, picture books suggestions, and then art time with creative projects related to the theme and the vocabulary words.
With my very limited spanish, I'm still finding myself able to teach this. The recommendation is to try and not use too much English during the "class", and we're sticking with that. Sonrisa gives me questions to ask, and I repeat the questions until the kids understand and give a response. Sometimes they echo the question back, and sometimes we have to do a bit of pointing and "si", "no" guessing, but then they figure out what I'm asking. As the curriculum points out, this is the natural way that people actually learn language.
The right tools make homeschooling so easy.
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