Crew Review: Spanish for You!

A couple years ago, the girls wanted to learn Spanish. We spent a year or so working on it, but then, when we needed to pare down what all we were doing, Spanish is one of the subjects that we dropped.

I was torn when Spanish for You came up to review. On the one hand, we'd decided to take a break from Spanish this year, on the other hand, this curriculum looked REALLY cool! And I do want them to learn Spanish at some point . . . So, we agreed to review, Spanish for You, Estaciones!

Spanish for You is a flexible curriculum that can be used for all your children, grades 3-8. The themed units can be used in any order. Each unit provides lessons for 24-30 weeks, depending on which grade level you are using. The unit, for grades 3-8 is available for $64.95 or if you only need one of the lesson guides (for 2 grades, instead of all 6), that's available for $39.95. You can see a sample here.

As mentioned above, we reviewed the Estaciones (Seasons) unit. I found that some days, we moved through the suggested lessons very quickly, and ended up adding abit from the next day, and other days, we found there was more suggested than we had time for, so some days we split between 2 days. The first day, we listened to the mp3 of how the words are pronounced, then the girls made flash cards for the first batch of words, then the next few days were spent learning those words using games, songs, flash cards, and worksheets, so there was something for all learning styles, and not enough of any one thing to get bored :) And that's the basic approach, learn new words, make flash cards, review said words in  various ways, and move one. The various activities make sure the children can translate the word in either direction, and also that the child hears the words, speaks the word, reads the word, and writes the word.

Overall, I liked this curriculum. It taught the words thoroughly and in fun ways. It can be used with multiple ages/grades. Most days I could spend a few minutes giving instruction and the girls could do the rest on their own. As I mentioned above, Spanish isn't really a subject we're wanting to focus on right now, but MiniMe is enjoying it enough that she asked if we continue using it, at least a couple times a week. Sassy said she'd like to use it if/when we decide to learn Spanish again in the future.

One thing I found frustrating is that there are several different files/ebooks to keep track of. There's the main ebook that lists the vocabulary and such, then the specific "lesson plans" for the various grades, that tells you what to DO with the book information for that day. AND there are other files for the audio files and workbook pages. So to plan a day's lesson it's necessary to flip between multiple .pdf files. It's not horrible, and you could get around it by printing things out, but, IMO the benefit of .pdfs is not having so many books/papers around, so I try to minimize the printing.

To see what others thought of this, and the Fiesta unit, click the banner below.