Designing my own Spanish curr. Thoughts?

[robsiew]

Well, I've not found anything I'm willing to spend a lot of money on for Spanish... so I'm going to design my own using several resources. For those that follow a curriculum I'm wondering if I'm missing anything important...

 

1. Use Getting Started with Spanish for a core... (vocab/grammar component)

 

2. Use knowitall.org for conversation/vocab

 

3. Watch Spanish videos for exposure

 

4. Read Spanish children's books (I'm hoping to find some on CD as I don't know Spanish and will be learning along!)

 

5. Listen to Spanish songs using various things from the library

 

I'm not quite sure what to do after GSWS, but I guess I can cross that bridge when I get to it. I'm just not convinced spending hundreds of dollars on software/curriculum will get me any further than doing these things. I'm thinking... why not learn Spanish like we teach our toddlers to speak? Words first, then short sentences all the while reading a lot to them, even watching videos.

 

Is there something huge I'm missing? My ds is 10 and will start probably this summer or fall (he'll be almost 11 then).

[PrincessBride]

Bumping this for you as I'm interested in your plan! :)

[PenKase]

Although I am a native speaker, my dds are not fluent. They were finally eager to learn Spanish and I had the same idea of teaching them like they were littles leaning English-first words, then phrases, then sentences-all through the context of everyday life. We've at this since the beginning of the year and they've progressed very nicely. I think your plan sounds great. I am also in the process of piecing together my own program. I've been approached by some moms to start a Spanish club and I am seriously considering. Maybe you could do something like that in your area?

[AngelBee]

:lurk5:

[Pata]

I'm interested to see how you do this, too! We lived in Peru for a year, so I can speak Spanish fairly well. I found a cool vintage text on Google Books, called Poco a Poco, but if you don't speak Spanish, it might be hard to teach. Hmm, maybe I could make a track for it....Stop....don't need anything else to do!! Seriously, email me if you need some help with pronunciation, español es más fácil!

 

Oh, have you seen Spanish for Children? It looked interesting to me, a bit pricey, maybe it would be an option for you.

 

ETA: I think your plan looks good, forgot to say that :)!

Edited April 14, 2011 by Pata

[linguistmama]

I just want to put in a plug for scholastic. We've gotten some easy Spanish readers and books that come with an audio cd of them being read. Their Club Leo section has the Spanish books. We also watch a lot of Spanish videos on youtube :)

[PenKase]

IF there is a program that I would, I would seriously consider The Fun Spanish. It is written by a homeshool mom and it doesn't receive a lot of mention here, yet it is a simple yet sensical approach to teaching the language. The author aligns it with the CM approach to the study of foreign language. She has it for sale on LuLu.

 

SYRWTS looks good too, but I plan to stay away from a program/curriculum.

 

Some other ideas to consider:

Traditional rhymes (books can be found at the library and lyrics can be found online)

 

Teach everyday phrases (we have a Spanish Phrases for Dummies pocket guide that gets used all the time)

 

Spanish/English dictionary (my little one takes hers everywhere)

 

Speaking Spanish, and only Spanish at specific times during the day (morning greeting, breakfast time, lunch time, dinner time, during nightly routines, etc)

 

CDs by Jose Luis Orozco-any will do....they are amazing. Play and replay one song at a time until memorized. There are many songs on his CDs that mi mama y abuela sang to me as a child (and even made me teary eyed)!

 

FWIW, I'm writing this all down as a reminder to myself of all the wonderful options available.

 

HTH someone

[Pata]

IF there is a program that I would, I would seriously consider The Fun Spanish. It is written by a homeshool mom and it doesn't receive a lot of mention here, yet it is a simple yet sensical approach to teaching the language. The author aligns it with the CM approach to the study of foreign language. She has it for sale on LuLu.

 

I took a look at that program, it's looks really fun! I'm surprised it doesn't get mentioned more often, probably because there's no audio with it, which makes it hard if you don't speak the language.

[Joyofsixreboot]

I think it sounds totally reasonable. We do Spanish here with the desire of being able to be understood and understand orally. I'm not going to be worried about written work until middle school here. We do a co-op once a week but I really think all that does is help me;). We've gotten tons of videos and books from our library. Usborne had some particularly good ones we thought. We also use salsa spanish videos on the web and spanish cd's in the car. The kids have learned enough to get along at the playground in a basic way. Just thought you'd like to know you are not alone.

[Mallory]

We do similar.

 

A text for more grammarish studies, lots of using it during our day (including volunteering at a food pantry/pregnancy center with lots of hispanic people to talk to), and lots of reading spanish children's books (or on tape).

 

I've also decided to add in copywork and dictatiation in spanish.

 

Kids Stuff Spanish is a fun book with lots of really useful phrases for around the house ;)

 

We try to focus on a different part of the day to use spanish every month or so. So this month we might be using spanish during lunch and next month we might use it during getting ready for bed or chores.

[robsiew]

Wow, great ideas, Ladies! Thanks so much! I think I'm going to have to print them all out!

 

I SO wish I spoke Spanish, but I took French, German and a semester of Swedish in college... my high school didn't even offer Spanish at the time... weird, huh?

 

Anyway, I do have some experience with French and we've been studying Latin so my hope is that Spanish will be a little easier for me to pick up. I do have an affinity for languages so maybe that will help too. I just can't roll my 'r's'. Any hints for how to do that? My kids have no problem doing it! :lol:

 

Thanks Paige for your offer... I just may email you once in a while! And NO, you don't need anything more to do! I don't know how you find time to do what you do! :lol:

 

I think our key is we need to hear, hear, hear it spoken to begin with. I know my kids will do better than me...

 

I did order a phrase book and a couple other things to help. My plan is to get a little head start on my ds....

 

I think I'll record what we do as we go... maybe that will help someone else in the future... glad to hear others do this too! Although, the RS on sale at the co-op right now is tempting! A lot less work, but not as effective me thinks...:001_smile:

[robsiew]

 

Oh, have you seen Spanish for Children? It looked interesting to me, a bit pricey, maybe it would be an option for you.

 

 

Thank you for this idea, Paige. I'm going to seriously look at this. I know the GSWS won't take us very long to get through. I'll need something to follow that up. This looks like a good option! :001_smile: And yes, you are correct... for me, it would HAVE to have a CD with it! Otherwise we may invent a new language!

 

Oh... and another thing I might mention so others could check at their libraries... our library does a "Spanglish" reading time... I'm going to hopefully take the kids to that and see if that is something that would help us. If nothing else, maybe we could meet some native speakers!

[LolaT]

Not sure where to post this but I've been trying to access the Salsa videos on GPB's archive database website for the past few days and now I get nothing.

 

http://dl.gpb.org/vsx/GPBPro/diglib_search/search

 

???

[robsiew]

Not sure where to post this but I've been trying to access the Salsa videos on GPB's archive database website for the past few days and now I get nothing.

 

http://dl.gpb.org/vsx/GPBPro/diglib_search/search

 

???

 

I wanted to look at these too, but like you, I've had trouble. Have you looked at knowitall? I'm really liking the looks of these... plus I think my 10yo is too old for Salsa...

[Dee in MI]

Do look at La Ropa Sucia before assigning. I think that the Spanish is too sophisticated for young readers, and the content is inappropriate. First Steps Español looks nice, though.

[TC5]

Robyn,

 

Recently, I have been looking into a lot of options for Spanish, and although I wanted a ready-made curriculum at first, I am now leaning toward your plan. I'm not finding anything else I like enough, either. I also found your December thread, in which you seemed to be considering Galore Park's SYRWTLS. I've heard so may good things about it and was wondering why you rejected it. Also, my top pick for several days was CAP's Spanish for Children. But I'm not sure... Have you looked into that much? Does SfC go much further than GSWS?

 

Have you finalized your plan? I'm interested in how you are going to put everything together and how long you expect it to take each day, especially with the continued Latin, which we're also doing.

 

Thanks for any additional details!

[johnandtinagilbert]

It must be in the air :) I started up spanish again (again, again) last week by reading children's board books to the kiddos. The nearest elementary school in my area is over 50% hispanic in population. I think it's time to get our spanish down!

[robsiew]

Robyn,

 

Recently, I have been looking into a lot of options for Spanish, and although I wanted a ready-made curriculum at first, I am now leaning toward your plan. I'm not finding anything else I like enough, either. I also found your December thread, in which you seemed to be considering Galore Park's SYRWTLS. I've heard so may good things about it and was wondering why you rejected it. Also, my top pick for several days was CAP's Spanish for Children. But I'm not sure... Have you looked into that much? Does SfC go much further than GSWS?

 

Have you finalized your plan? I'm interested in how you are going to put everything together and how long you expect it to take each day, especially with the continued Latin, which we're also doing.

 

Thanks for any additional details!

 

Okay... so here's my plan...

 

I ordered GSWS and SfC. My plan is to start with GSWS and then go into SfC. There is significant overlap, but I think that's okay. This will be totally new for me and my kids so reinforcement is much needed! To go along with GSWS I will do the videos from knowitall. I think this will give the conversational practice that GSWS is missing. I got the DVD to go with SfC.

 

I've also been collecting Spanish children's books on paperbackswap.com. I will also look for spanish CD's with songs on them at the library. We'll also do a spanish video a week... maybe start with Cliffords or something like that.

 

That's my plan right now. I ruled out Galore Park because it was pretty expensive. I hadn't intended on ordering SfC either, but it looked SO good and similar to how we've learned Latin (we use Memoria Press).

 

I'm thinking right now of spanish for 1/2 hour a day. Probably Latin for same amount. Thus, 1 hour a day of foreign language. The other idea I have is Latin 2 days, Spanish 2 days, but I think less time more often is better for learning a language.

 

My schedule to start with is:

 

knowitall video (15 min.) and 15 min. of GSWS. However far he gets that's it. We just pick up where he left off the next day. I'm thinking of having him do the video at least twice during the week... maybe more? Would every day be overkill? I'm just thinking it would take awhile for it to "sink in!"

 

Then once we get to SfC we'll do a lesson each week.

 

I haven't scheduled out Latin yet. We will do First Form and use the DVD's. We've traditionally done 1 lesson a week, but I haven't looked to see what is entailed in a week of First Form. We won't over do it. If it's too much for ds we'll spread the lessons out as needed.

Edited April 26, 2011 by robsiew

[robsiew]

It must be in the air :) I started up spanish again (again, again) last week by reading children's board books to the kiddos. The nearest elementary school in my area is over 50% hispanic in population. I think it's time to get our spanish down!

 

I'm going to have to seek out some spanish speakers! We live in a very diverse town so I know I will be able to find them!

[TC5]

Thank you for all of the details, Robyn! I am going to use a lot of your ideas.

 

I'm in a little different situation because we are going to Costa Rica for 2-3+ months for my husband's job. We went last year for 5 weeks, but I had less than a week's notice so planned to use free internet resources to learn Spanish. Then we didn't have internet access. We still learned a lot -- mostly in restaurants -- but we couldn't capitalize on it because I got very sick as soon as we got home, and we did no school for several months and interest was gone. This time, I am determined that we will learn more.

 

GSWS looks very gentle, and I hope it is enough. I could understand and translate most of the sample sentences I saw online, but I wouldn't be able to form those sentences myself. And I noticed that I understood the language last year better than my children did (because of my limited French and Latin studies, I assume), so this will probably be good for them (and me) to start.

 

SYRWTLS looks too complicated to start with at my boys' ages, although I didn't see an early chapter to see how it begins.

 

I really like the structure I see in SfC, with the written work. I love the structure of Lively Latin with lots of reading and writing, which I need and my 10yo seems to do best with. But I have heard the DVDs for SfC are not good and may annoy all but little girls (or was that LfC?). I have boys, so that could be a waste of money. I hope you'll post more about your journey, so I can get a better idea of especially how SfC follows GSWS. Also -- can we use the workbook for more than one child (and me) if we write on separate paper? Or does each child need a workbook?

 

The knowitall.com videos look good, and I have downloaded all of them just in case of internet failure in Costa Rice or a disappearing act similar to Salsa (which I never viewed but read much about here).

 

I recently got an old copy of Kids Stuff Spanish based on reviews here and will look for simple Spanish books when we get to Costa Rica. Assuming we have cable TV like we did last time, we'll have the Disney channel in Spanish and very few English choices, if any. Our library here in California has lots of Spanish books, but with my baby due in 11 days and all the other things we need to do right now, I don't think we'll fit in much of that before we go.

 

I'm also looking into a couple of fun Spanish CDs to take along (Ana Lomba's Hop, Skip, and Sing; and either one by Jose-Luis Orozco or Joel Valle -- Mi Guitarri).

 

Last year, we had little interaction with Spanish speakers during the week, while my husband was away at work. This time we will be in a much larger apartment complex, so I am hoping to see some children around. We also should be able to go to church more regularly than we did last year, which should help with immersion.

 

I asked my husband to find a tutor, and that may still be possible once we get there. But for now, he arranged to have a co-worker's girlfriend just come chat with us in Spanish every week or so.

 

My plan is to get in as much Spanish instruction and exposure as possible without burning us all out. That will be our academic focus while we are there. I want to take the best advantage of this trip and learn as much as we can while there but also build a strong foundation (not too fast through GSWS) to continue our Spanish studies when we return home. Any advice?

 

Any games you've come across that I can make or buy to help reinforce the language learning in a different way?

 

Thank you again, Robyn, for pointing me in what feels like the right direction for now! I am going to need to add some structure, but I am liking the variety you've inspired me to try.

[robsiew]

Teonei, what a great adventure you'll have! I'm jealous! I would love to have an opportunity to be immersed in the language/culture!

 

At this point we haven't started anything, but I will keep my eyes out for games. That would be a good addition!

 

I did read something about the videos for SfC (I think I read the girl comment too), but only after I ordered them. I know for sure I need a DVD/CD with any program I use as I don't speak Spanish. So, from the programs I've seen SfC seemed to fit the bill on most everything I was looking for. I guess my ds will just have to deal with the format if it's not great. I have only one girl so I may have struck out where that's concerned. Then again, he may not care???? I haven't really studied the DVD's so I can't give much more info on those.

 

When do you go to Costa Rica? I fear if it's soon I won't be a lot of help... I'm thinking we may ease into Spanish over the summer... I'm getting more and more excited as the pieces come together! :D

 

Oh, and congrats on your new little one to arrive soon! Hope everything goes smoothly with your delivery! Your house will certainly be busy with 5 boys!

[TC5]

Thanks, Robyn! I am excited to have another boy soon! Although my husband would like us to go sooner, as he'll be going back and forth (and has been since February), we are planning to go to Costa Rica as a family in July sometime -- when the baby is 2 months old. Mid-July maybe. It's nice to have some time to plan this time. :)

 

I'll be interested in your ideas even after I return home, though. I am leaning toward getting GSWS to take along. I'll wait until we return to buy SfC or something else.

 

I agree that the DVDs are needed -- for us, too. And I'm sure my boys could get over it if they're annoying. If the program overall is what we need, then we will probably be OK even with them.

 

Now I just need to find a way to keep track of your posts while were gone and when we get back. :D

[Haiku]

And yes, you are correct... for me, it would HAVE to have a CD with it!

 

Just an FYI ... you can plug any Spanish word or sentence into Google Translate, click the "listen" button, and hear the word/sentence pronounced. It's a real voice, too, not an electronic one.

 

Tara

[WTMindy]

That is pretty much how dh taught our kids Spanish.