high school Spanish for a 10yo?

[rutheart]

My oldest will be going into 5th grade in the fall and is fairly bright (started reading before she turned three, etc.). This year she completed Spanish for Children Primer A. For next year, I want something more fun than Primer B. I want to add in the cultural element, in addition to the vocabulary and grammar. I haven't found anything I like aimed at her age level.

I used to be fluent in Spanish (I frequently had dreams in Spanish and almost double majored in Spanish) and will randomly switch to Spanish in my daily conversation to help her practice her expanding vocabulary. I still have three levels of high school textbooks and workbooks from the 1980s that were given to me by my Spanish teacher when the school district was going to throw them out. Help me think this through. What would be some potential problems with using my old high school level Spanish books with my 10yo? Is there something better I could use for now, and wait on the high school books until middle school? I don't want to push her for the sake of pushing her, but I also don't want her to lose vocabulary with a "babyish" curriculum.

Has anyone used high school level foreign language materials on an elementary kid? What was your experience?

Ruth

[chiguirre]

I did this with Trinqueta the summer between 5th and 6th. She went on to take Spanish 2 at Landry Academy this year. I used BJU because that's what LA used (they seem to be changing series because they've added Spanish 4 this year) and I got it for free. It went very well but I could make up sentences on the fly for the listening exercises. If I had had to buy the CDs, it would have been much more expensive. I would only attempt this if your Spanish is fluent. Otherwise I would buy a textbook with the audio portion available on a website or by CD. I was surprised by how much I liked BJU's Spanish book. The grammar explanations are very clear. However, the culture stuff was just bizarre. It wouldn't be my first choice, but it might be the easiest option to find complete package at a reasonable price.

 

Destinos might work, but it goes very, very fast and didn't have enough review for a 10 yo. We really needed a high school level text. Destinos is very inexpensive. You just need to buy the textbook and workbook for pennies on Amazon.

 

The textbook that Sr. Gamache uses for his online classes has extensive online exercises. It's Vistas and it's almost $200 although it covers all three years of Spanish that he offers. That might be a good choice.

 

You could hunt around and see if you can find the audio for the books that you have. You might get lucky but it might be impossible.

[EndOfOrdinary]

We use Breaking the Barrier iBook. Ds really likes using digital materials and the $15 iBook was ideal because everything was embedded. There is a bit of current cultural infirmation about many Spanish speaking nations. Not tons, but some. He also likes various vocab apps. Duolingo was a total bust here.

 

Watching Salsa! Is incredibly fun and though he openly admits that by now he is not actively learning anything new, he still loves it.

 

I am looking for something inbetween Salsa and Plaza Sesamo. Plaza Sesamo is designed for native speakers, so the instruction is fast and not repetative enough. We are still slogging through, but one step down would be ideal!

[rutheart]

I think I've settled on using the first half of the level 1 high school book/workbook for next year, doing one lesson per week. That way we have plenty of time to supplement with readers and videos, and still not be overwhelmed with the amount of work.

So an average week will look like reading 5 pages of text, do 4-5 oral activities with me, then completing 2-3 workbook pages, and finish the week by watching a video or two in Spanish. On the weeks when there is nothing to read in the textbook, she'll read from some Spanish readers I have on hand. I'll continue to randomly switch to Spanish in the car and other odd times to give her conversational practice.

EndOfOrdinary, has your son tried the BBC's adult interactive videos, Mi Vida Loca? I only went through the first one, but it seemed like a fun (free!) way to review and hear a more European accent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/

Ruth

[EndOfOrdinary]

I think I've settled on using the first half of the level 1 high school book/workbook for next year, doing one lesson per week. That way we have plenty of time to supplement with readers and videos, and still not be overwhelmed with the amount of work.

So an average week will look like reading 5 pages of text, do 4-5 oral activities with me, then completing 2-3 workbook pages, and finish the week by watching a video or two in Spanish. On the weeks when there is nothing to read in the textbook, she'll read from some Spanish readers I have on hand. I'll continue to randomly switch to Spanish in the car and other odd times to give her conversational practice.

EndOfOrdinary, has your son tried the BBC's adult interactive videos, Mi Vida Loca? I only went through the first one, but it seemed like a fun (free!) way to review and hear a more European accent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/

Ruth

Cool! I'll check it out. Thanks!

[sportsmom]

My DS10 took Spanish 1 this past year in 4th grade.  Since I stumbled my way through Spanish 1&2 in high school, I knew that I wasn't the right teacher for him.  So I send him to a fellow homeschooling mom who teaches foreign language classes.  Well worth the money I spent and he very much enjoyed the class this year.  At the beginning he was pretty intimidated by all of the high school kids, but after a few weeks he settled in and was fine.  He's currently looking forward to Spanish 2 next year.

[Renai]

I think I've settled on using the first half of the level 1 high school book/workbook for next year, doing one lesson per week. That way we have plenty of time to supplement with readers and videos, and still not be overwhelmed with the amount of work.

So an average week will look like reading 5 pages of text, do 4-5 oral activities with me, then completing 2-3 workbook pages, and finish the week by watching a video or two in Spanish. On the weeks when there is nothing to read in the textbook, she'll read from some Spanish readers I have on hand. I'll continue to randomly switch to Spanish in the car and other odd times to give her conversational practice.

EndOfOrdinary, has your son tried the BBC's adult interactive videos, Mi Vida Loca? I only went through the first one, but it seemed like a fun (free!) way to review and hear a more European accent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/

Ruth

 

You can watch Destinos videos for free on learner.org and they visit various countries with different accents (just in case you are looking for variety).

[Kareni]

You may also wish to take a look at

Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish: A Creative and Proven Approach by by Margarita Madrigal

 

Regards,

Kareni

[rutheart]

Update: my daughter is loving Spanish this year! We're currently in our 4th week, and over the last week, she has mentioned to me several times that she enjoys it much more this year, and feels like it is a more appropriate workload, compared to the Spanish for Children book we used last year.

Ruth

[sportsmom]

Thanks for the update!  That's great to hear!