This spring, we were able to try out a review copy of one of Spanish for You!‘s year-long unit studies. We received Estaciones (Seasons), which is a 24 to 30 week program, which teaches your students about Spanish words based on the calendar/school/seasons.
Spanish for You! is geared towards children from 3rd to 8th grades, but there is obviously some leeway here, as the program is based more on teaching around themes, and can be utilized with multiple children of differing grades.
The Estaciones curriculum consists of a printed softcover book and downloads that include 2 MP3 audio files (one of author reading the book, and the other of a native speaker reading through the book), and PDFs of the book, lesson plans, over 200 self-correcting worksheets, and flashcard templates. You can even check out sample pages here.
The 57 page book consists of 5 units: calendar and weather, fall and school, winter, spring, and summer. Designed to be used 4 days a week, with each lesson taking between 20 and 40 minutes (for some of the lessons that took up to 40 minutes, we broke the lesson up between 2 days), the lessons concentrate on hearing, speaking, and writing the Spanish language.
We found this program to be a good starter for learning Spanish. And while I did not care for the amount of printing that the program required (I felt it was much easier to manage the audios/lesson plans/worksheets in hardcopy, but many travelers and space challenged will love that you don’t have to tote all the pages all the time, just print when needed…), I did appreciate that the lessons didn’t take all day, and that the curriculum prints in black and white (much cheaper than color 😉 ). There were lots of teaching suggestions for interactive activities like fun games. I liked that I had the option to do different levels (teaching the same thing, but at different depths) at the same time, and the kids would be learning the same thing so they could ‘talk Spanish’ together.
One of the best things about Spanish for You! is the price! So many foreign language courses are hundreds of dollars, but Estanciones is $64.95 for the softcover book and multiple downloads including all materials for grades 3 – 8. You can also purchase just one grade set (3-4, 5-6, or 7-8) for $39.95. Currently there are 2 programs published: Estaciones (Seasons) and Fiestas (Holidays/Celebrations). Coming in June, is the one that we’re most interested in – Viajes, which is ‘travel’ in Spanish! 😀 (at least I think it’s ‘travel’ in Spanish! LOL! 😉 ).
You can click here to find out what the rest of the crew thought of Spanish for You, including reviews on the Fiesta curriculum!
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