CAP Spanish for Children

[KaceeM]

Can I get some reviews of SFC, and CAP products in general? I've been getting some very mixed reviews and haven't been able to find many current ones online

[Insertcreativenamehere]

I like some CAP products (namely Writing and Rhetoric) but did not like SFC. I have a college minor in Spanish and studied it for years. I bought the whole program and sold it because I just couldn't imagine teaching Spanish like that. It was too much, too fast and not in an sequence that was intuitive. It didn't make sense to me and I knew it wouldn't make sense to my kids. I also watched the videos and found them rather unprofessional. 

 

It's too bad because I loved a lot of things about it: multiple levels, the worktext aspect, video availability (my accent isn't the best) and it was targeted to kids the age of my own ...

 

 

Edited May 6, 2017 by insertcreativenamehere

[wendyroo]

I like some CAP products (namely Writing and Rhetoric) but did not like SFC. I have a college minor in Spanish and studied it for years. I bought the whole program and sold it because I just couldn't imagine teaching Spanish like that. It was too much, too fast and not in an sequence that was intuitive. It didn't make sense to me and I knew it wouldn't make sense to my kids. I also watched the videos and found them rather unprofessional. 

 

It's too bad because I loved a lot of things about it: multiple levels, the worktext aspect, video availability (my accent isn't the best) and it was targeted to kids the age of my own ...

 

:iagree:

 

I want to like it and use it for my oldest for next year, but every time I look at it, I'm just overwhelmed by how gosh darn fast it moves.  I took 5 years of Spanish in high school and 1 in college, so I'm pretty familiar with the language, but it still just seems like SFC throws you into the deep end right from the get go.  My son has spent a year consistently doing Rosetta Stone Spanish, Duolingo Spanish and the book Getting Started with Spanish; I still think the first chapter of SFC would totally overwhelm and frustrate him and turn him off Spanish.

 

Wendy

[2_girls_mommy]

Hated SFC. I have better luck with free online materials for Spanish and find from my library. SFC introduces a whole bunch of tenses all at once without enough review or practice. I agree with learning grammar along with learning a language, but for a modern language, their take just is too much grammar too fast, not enough vocabulary disussion. 

 

I spent a bunch for the whole program and tried to use it two different years with two different kids. 

 

I am having a lot of luck with materials from the library, internet, and from cheap booksales. I have spent less than $10 on Spanish materials that I like a whole lot more. 

[SilverMoon]

It's been a fabulous fit here, but it's not all we're using.  SFC doesn't really have enough review for my kids, but it's fabulous for laying a grammar foundation. Duolingo (free) is fabulous for review but doesn't explicitly teach a lick of grammar. Together, not even attempting to line them up, I am very impressed with the ground they've covered and how sturdy their Spanish is.

 

The kids log onto Duolingo first usually. They play for 20-30 minutes on a mixture of old modules and new modules. Then they complete 1-2 pages of SFC. Most of the vocab has already been covered in Duolingo and they can focus on the technical parts. We use it open book until the actual test. On the test they fill in what they can from memory, mark what they can't, go back and find those answers on their own, and use the marked exercises as points to review more while doing the next lesson. We discuss it as we go along and I don't grade tests. Everyone in the family is working on Spanish at their own speed so it's used and discussed. This method has been low-key, painless, and effective. I had Spanish scholars complimenting how far they were for how long they'd been studying. *shrug*

 

Once the kids finished their Duolingo tree they progressed to working on Memrise daily as well as lighting up old Duolingo modules.

[73349]

It was not a good fit for us. You're supposed to memorize a lot at a time, and then the explanation is... at some point... later. The video lessons don't encourage pronunciation and using sentences; instead, they start with memory chants and then explain grammar, which I could've done myself. (I'm good at languages generally and have done just a bit of Spanish in the past.) Even going at two weeks per lesson, DS was not doing well with it.

 

I far prefer what we're using now (Descubre el español con Santillana).

Edited May 6, 2017 by whitehawk

[KaceeM]

How does Latin for Children compare to Spanish for Children?

[2_girls_mommy]

My guess is that it is very similar. I explained my take on SFC to somebody who had just purchased LFC. She went home and looked at it, and promptly returned it, saying I was right. But that is not firsthand experience, I know. 

 

 

[Bocky]

I've used level 1 of both Latin for Children and Spanish for Children. I liked Latin for Children for the straightforward ease of use, and the slightly goofy videos. I took a lot of Latin in college, and the flow and way the program worked was very familiar, just like how I had studied Latin, but presented fairly accessibly for young students. My two dds were 3rd and 5th when we used Latin for Children, and liked it well enough, but weren't interested in continuing to study "a dead language." They wanted something modern, so we tried Spanish for Children 1 the next year. I loved it because they teach Spanish just like it's Latin. It really made sense to me, but because I had no Spanish background, we soon found we really needed a conversation tutor. I do think Spanish for Children is the Spanish curriculum Latinists wrote.

[2_girls_mommy]

I've used level 1 of both Latin for Children and Spanish for Children. I liked Latin for Children for the straightforward ease of use, and the slightly goofy videos. I took a lot of Latin in college, and the flow and way the program worked was very familiar, just like how I had studied Latin, but presented fairly accessibly for young students. My two dds were 3rd and 5th when we used Latin for Children, and liked it well enough, but weren't interested in continuing to study "a dead language." They wanted something modern, so we tried Spanish for Children 1 the next year. I loved it because they teach Spanish just like it's Latin. It really made sense to me, but because I had no Spanish background, we soon found we really needed a conversation tutor. I do think Spanish for Children is the Spanish curriculum Latinists wrote.

Maybe that is why I don't like it. I had a lot of Spanish as a child. It is a modern language and therefore usually taught very differently than Latin. I think SFC is going for the grammar first way, like Latin is often taught, but it misses the mark with the best way to teach Spanish. 

[RenaInTexas]

SfC works for us, but it may be due to my expectations of it. I got SfC to teach my children how to read and write Spanish. I never expected it to teach them to speak or interpret Spanish; for that we use Rosetta, watch TV, and conversations with native Spanish speakers. I also planned to take 2 years to go through Level A. Thus far, Level A has helped the most with reading and speaking (using the correct verb form). Looking forward, they won't start writing sentences until the end of level A.

 

It's working. I am not learning Spanish with them, but will have to soon because they are starting to have Spanish conversations without me ... they also read ~2nd/3rd grade Spanish books.

 

SfC doesn't really teach conversational Spanish. So, depending on your goals, I think the program is fabulous if you pair it with a conversational program and take it at the pace you need. That is, if your desire is to be bilingual AND bi-literate. If you only want to be bilingual, then SfC is not for you.

[ForeverFamily]

It was not a good fit for us. You're supposed to memorize a lot at a time, and then the explanation is... at some point... later. The video lessons don't encourage pronunciation and using sentences; instead, they start with memory chants and then explain grammar, which I could've done myself. (I'm good at languages generally and have done just a bit of Spanish in the past.) Even going at two weeks per lesson, DS was not doing well with it.

 

I far prefer what we're using now (Descubre el español con Santillana).

This Spanish curriculum is intriguing. The website is a bit confusing, where did you purchase it from? I would be curious to know the price? Edited May 9, 2017 by ForeverFamily

[Insertcreativenamehere]

I looked at the Santillana web site but the cost is far too high for my two middle-school age students. I'm going to go with Avancemos from Houghton Mifflin. They have homeschool packages that are bit less expensive at Christianbook. A Spanish-speaking teacher would definitely be necessary, though. 

[73349]

This Spanish curriculum is intriguing. The website is a bit confusing, where did you purchase it from? I would be curious to know the price?

 

I purchased part of the first level I bought (Level C for a rising 3rd-grader who'd done La Clase Divertida as well as about the first half of CAP's Primer A) from their website. The teacher book was $100 and the DVD, $60; but I found the matching student book used on Amazon (around $30, IIRC).

 

Then once I knew what I was looking for and found I didn't use the teacher book much, for next year I found used copies of the Level D student book and DVD on Amazon or Abebooks. They're a bit rare but much less expensive, so start shopping early if you'd like to find them secondhand.

 

We read the student text and do the exercises orally Monday through Thursday and watch the video clip on Fridays.

 

The Descubre student book is colorful and attractive, and the video speakers focus on vocabulary and pronunciation rather than just grammar. We follow the adventures of two kids throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Each level cycles through a similar pattern of contents at a slightly higher level, so we will revisit topics and not forget too much. For next year (level D), my notes say the weekly topics are...

1.1, saludos

1.2, familia

1.3, amigos

1.4, ser y adjectivos

2.1, el barrio

2.2, personas de la comunidad

2.3, ropa

2.4, estar/ lugares

3.1, actividades/ semana

3.2, escuela

3.3, música

3.4, la hora

4.1, mascotas

4.2, animales

4.3, la granja

4.4, veterinario

5.1, comida y poner la mesa

5.2, restaurante

5.3, cuerpo y bailar; adverbos

5.4, sensaciones

6.1, estaciones y clima

6.2, viajes y transporte

6.3, geografía

6.4, tiempo

7.1, profesiones

7.2, tecnología

7.3, trabajadores

7.4, el futuro

8.1, ceremonias

8.2, celebraciones

8.3, independencia y bandera

8.4, tradiciones