Jump to content

Menu

Spanish for 8 year old 3rd grader recommendations


JRmommy
 Share

Recommended Posts

I'd love some recommendations for Spanish.  Thus far, my son has done duolingo (free app on the iPad) for about 6 months and loves it!  I'd love to find a curriculum that will help him learn more of the language.  I was thinking about Getting Started with Spanish or Spanish for Children.  I'd love to hear reviews for these or other Spanish resources.

 

Thanks!

 

ETA - I do speak a little Spanish so I am confident in teaching it.  My family is from Puerto Rico but we don't live near those that are fluent in Spanish.  My son seems to be confident in learning Spanish and has a better accent than me!  I'd love something that was either video based or online.  He isn't ready for a writing intensive program, yet.  Hopefully, this will help make it easier to make suggestions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We are using Getting Started With Spanish, but doing this as a family..... We just started it this evening and we went through lessons 1-4. Not far into it, I know, but it seems pretty bite sized and something we can all tolerate. I like that they have free audios of the lessons on their site. This will definitely help with proper pronunciation!

 

I also got each of my children their own workbooks for Spanish. My 3rd grader is working through The Complete Book of Spanish grades 1-3.

 

We are going to go through discovery education's Elementary Spanish this year too for more exposure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest CherylA

My husband is fluent in Spanish, but also very busy.  I'll give my thoughts, but my kids are not yet fluent. 

 

They know a lot of vocab.  They learned it through Rosetta Stone, singing songs, and vocabulary cards.  My 7 & 9 year olds are still in RS level 1 and my 11yo is on to level 2.  We listen to Marcos Witt praise songs online (Yo te Busco is a favorite).  We listen to Frozen songs (that they know in English) like "Do you want to build a snowman".  Last year we took the whole year to learn 175 high frequency words.  I found a word list and we learned them in groups of 25.  Basic memorization.  But we have found when we read a sentence, 5 out of 6 words are these high frequency.  I recommend getting Spanish from wherever you can.

This summer I paid a HS Spanish teacher $10/hr for 25 hours of conversational Spanish.  I asked at the Mexican restaurant we love and we found her.  It helped them a lot to begin to actually speak the language. 

This coming year we will focus on verbs and making sentences with my 7, 9, 11yo's.  I think that once they know present and past tense and a good amount of vocabulary they need to be speaking to a real person along with having a curriculum.  I am hoping to speak more Spanish at home along with continuing RS and verb study this year.

 

I checked out duolingo and I can see why you like it!  My first reaction is that I like it better than Rosetta Stone.

 

If you want books to read, my husband likes the Spanish in a book called "Maria de Guatemala".  It has sweet stories, is from a Christian's perspective.  There is a new Mexican curriculum called Lemonhass (lemonhass.com)  that is a Spanish Sonlight look-alike.  It isn't connected with Sonlight, but suggest a lot of good readers.  Many of which my local library has.

Hope this helps a little.  It sounds like you need a higher level than we do.  Good luck!

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We've been successfully using (almost every week) Getting Started with Spanish and Elementary Spanish through Discovery Education. My 9 year old just started getting into duoLingo once again as well. I have a degree in Spanish and am actively re-learning it and speaking with friends in the hopes that I can talk much more around my daughter so she can practice. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm starting my DD (turns 9 in Spet.) with The Fun Spanish. She's played with the Duolingo app off and on throughout the summer, and we've started to collect Spanish picture books and cartoons.

 

I expect TFS will only last her half the year. After that we're leaning toward Spanish for Children or just using her brother's high school materials as slowly as she needs them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We started doing GSWS together last year, but my older needed to move faster than my younger, so we split off and dropped it with the younger.  I plan to pick it back up with her - at her own pace - at some point during 3rd grade.  But right now, she is doing The Fun Spanish and really loving it!  It's a workbook, but not super writing-intensive, they do one copywork sentence a day, The weekly lessons are set up so that each week introduces one new verb with all its conjugations, some vocab, and they they translate an English sentence into spanish,  then copy and translate a fun, goofy Spanish sentence into English and draw a picture of it.  Morgan loves it, and she's hard to please.  She loves drawing pictures of the goofy sentences.  They are very 8 year old friendly sentences, things like "Yo soy un gato grande y verde, con piernas largas" and "El es una rata naranja con ocho pelos."  It's a hit.

 

My older is using (among other things) the free online spanish at Allinonehomeschool.com.  It has lots of links to videos from other sites, and is independent.  I might plug Morgan into that this year, too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you so much for the replies!

 

Has anyone used Galore Park's "So You Want to Learn Spanish"?

Yes. I have discussed it in a few recent posts, if you'd like to search. Do you have any specific question!

 

I'd say it is a very solid program. My dc heard Spanish everyday and understood it, so I liked that this program really teaches grammar and writing in Spanish. It forced them to improve those pesky mistakes that heritage speakers almost always commit, and their reading level improved tremendously.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since you have an iPad, have you considered Breaking the Barrier Spanish? The iBook is only fifteen dollars and has audio, writing, and cultural exercises built in. I am using it with my son next year (age 10 in Oct.) as a furthering of his Spanish knowledge. It is technically high school, but it does not mean he cannot go half pace or skip some of the writing. We are also watching GPB Salsa! For fun as well. Both allow for DS to be able to be independent, but to really get far better instruction than he did with Rosetta Stone.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since reading this thread, I found The Fun Spanish on Educents (first time ordering from that site) for only $7.50, a PDF download so I was able to print it out and use it right away.

http://www.educents.com/the-fun-spanish-level-1.html

 

We've already been using it a few days, mostly as a verb conjugation review, fast and easy and even kinda fun!

 

I also finally broke down and ordered So You Want to Learn Spanish, I had held back as it isn't easy to find in the states, but I found a new copy on Amazon from a third-seller. That should arrive in a few days, looking forward to checking it out.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...