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Free Tool for Learning Spanish!

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Free Spanish Learning Tools

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Make Spanish Fun

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Learn-Spanish-Fast

Spanish is a beautiful language, and here in the States it is becoming increasingly important for us to have at least a grasp of the language. Teaching it in your homeschool can seem daunting (especially if you don’t know it), but Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn and you can make it fun. I minored in Spanish in college because I fell in love with it, so my boys have been hearing and speaking Spanglish for most of their lives. But it is important to me that they have a background in true Spanish before they set forth in the world. Here are some ways that we make Spanish fun!

We include Spanish in our homeschool in some way every year.

It’s a little easier for me, because I studied it for years. I don’t really need to purchase a program for them to learn from. But sometimes I do anyway. Why? It’s better for all of us to get a new perspective on how to learn a language. One of the best tools I’ve used is the Spanish for Dummies discs. If you have no background whatsoever, these discs are a good place to start. They’re divided into easy lessons. I like them because the boys get to hear correct pronunciations of the words. I’m good, but I’m not that good. I can’t quite lose the American accent. These days we use them for review, but they were a big help to the boys when they were getting the basics down.

No matter what language program you use, there are tons of ways to add a little fun to your Spanish lessons. I found a website called MisCositas that has free teaching materials and (even better) thematic units to help you teach Spanish. When we did the ‘El Bosque Tropical (tropical rainforest)’ unit one year, we turned the whole classroom into a rainforest with paper trees and animals. As we learned new words we added them to our decorations. I think the boys learned more from that unit that anything else ever. Hands-on lessons are so much better than rote memorization and worksheets, don’t you think?

We include lots of other fun stuff, too.

Learning Spanish - Make Spanish Fun!

Games are a big part of our Spanish lessons.

Here are just a few we like to play:

  • Spanish bingo
  • Spanish Scrabble
  • Spanish-English Word Match (it’s like Concentration, but you have to match the Spanish word to the English word.)
  • Spanish hangman

The great thing about those games is that they’re all pretty easy to put together yourself for various lessons. For example, we have a Types of Food Bingo, a Weather Bingo, and an Articles of Clothing Bingo. I made the cards up myself in Word and printed them on card stock. Laminate those little buggers and you have years worth of play to first teach, then to remind, your littles of words they may have forgotten over time. I made up the Word Match cards, too, with similar categories. That game is amazing for helping them think of the Spanish meaning automatically. And even though my boys are supercool teenagers now, they still love to play it.

There are three types of books I recommend for learning the Spanish language.

 

The first should be obvious–a Spanish-English dictionary. Our copy of The Oxford New Spanish Dictionary is well-thumbed and should probably be replaced. We rarely get through an entire lesson without pulling it out.

The second might surprise you, especially if you’re just starting out, but a Spanish reader is imperative. We started out with Easy Spanish Reader by William T. Tardy, and I was so pleased by how quickly it helped my boys pick up the language. The short essays are entirely in Spanish, as are the questions at the end. (This is where the dictionary came in handy.) We started reading from it on the very first day, the boys writing out translations as we read. I was surprised that they were able to answer the questions within a few days and it took a very short time for them to be able to read most of an essay without referring to the dictionary. Within a couple weeks, they no longer had to write the translations down because they could retain what they were reading and answer the questions. It. was. amazing.

The third type of book is any ol’ picture book that is in Spanish but has the English translation. Being able to read the text in Spanish then check the translation in English is a huge help. I would even venture to recommend a book of Pablo Neruda’s poetry. One, he’s a genius, and two, there are scads of books out there that have the poems in Spanish on one page and in English on the next. Seriously, we use Pablo all the time. Thanks, Pablo.

Spanish is easy to learn because each letter only has one sound and, unlike English, each word has one meaning. There are a few exceptions to those hard rules, but they are truly few. So don’t make it hard on yourself. Make it fun, and your littles will learn Spanish easily.

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KT Brison is a former children’s librarian and educator who gave all that up for the most important job in her life—homeschooling her boys.Though she loves the outdoors and rambling around her farm, she can usually be found with her nose in a book. Any book. As long as it has words. You can find her blogging at Lit Mama Homeschool or like her on Facebook for daily updates.

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Is it “all Greek” to you?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Learning a foreign language, or at least studying one for 2-3 years, has been a staple requirement for admission to most colleges, well, almost forever! But even beyond that, there are good reasons to teach language in your homeschool, and it really isn’t as hard to do as you might think. Are you unsure about how to get started teaching foreign languages in your homeschool?  Or maybe even what language to teach?

How to get started teaching foreign languages in your homeschool?

 

Why teach a foreign language?

Language studies are so much more than sitting down with a textbook and memorizing verb conjugations. Creative language studies can help us become open to other cultures and other ways of thinking or doing things.  They can include history and literature studies…trying new foods…styles…geography…sports…whatever and wherever your students’ interests lie may often direct and influence the direction you take!  But don’t downplay the discipline that’s involved in learning a foreign language.  The concentration and focus required to learn those conjugations can be applied to other areas of their lives and studies, as well.

How do I go about teaching a foreign language in our homeschool?

Well, there are certainly pros and cons to language teaching at home – one of the greatest challenges is that most of us don’t even speak another language (I’m speaking to Americans, here; many Europeans speak at least 1 other language besides their ‘mother tongue’).  So, we ask, how can we teach them?  Thankfully, there are many curricula available for language learning at home.

Here are some considerations before you open your checkbook or sign into PayPal…

1) Is your child college-bound?  If you already have an inkling of where your student is headed for college, check with their admissions office and see how many years of study are required in high-school.  If your child is NOT college-bound, you still might want to consider language study, but it might be utilizing a less-formal method.

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2) Has your child already shown an interest or ability in a foreign language?  Students who are interested get engaged quickly!  Work with them to find the way they best learn and don’t waste a second to get started…  If they have not shown any interest, you might want to consider teaching Latin.  Latin is not spoken anymore, so there is no ‘stress’ to learning correct pronunciation.  And, there are many advantages to learning Latin. Among them:

  • Latin provides an excellent grounding for education
  • Latin helps with English grammar
  • Latin helps maximize your student’s SAT scores
  • Latin develops a more-generalized accuracy
  • Latin is the language of the sciences and medicine
  • As Western Literature is “saturated” with Latin, understanding Latin leads to a greater understanding of Literature

source: http://bit.ly/WaX28X and http://bit.ly/WaW9gH

3) Finding your curriculum. Talk to other homeschoolers or those you know from your support group to see what they have used and might recommend, and why.  Google some of the names you hear about, see if they offer sample lessons or have product reviews available, just be aware that all the reviews you read on their sites will be positive.  Get to a curriculum fair and talk to the representatives there about their products.

4) Give it some time. Language learning may be difficult, and you might need to “tweak” your approach or even try a different curriculum.  But don’t rush into it – give it a few months before you decide to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Learning a foreign language takes time, and it can take a lifetime to become fluent.  Sometimes the best you can ask for is that your child completes the requirements to get into college.  But with a good attitude (yours AND theirs), learning a foreign language can add a richness and depth to both your child’s studies and his life…

 

Pat Fenner has been homeschooling her brood of 5 for almost 20 years. With a passion for encouraging moms in their parenting and homeschooling efforts, she shares experience-inspired wisdom with her friend Candy over at PatAndCandy.com. Sign up at their site for free printables and other “members only” materials to help you be the best you can be for your family!  Stay connected with them over at FacebookTwitter and Pinterest, too!