Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

Tagged: Foreign Language, Spanish

This topic has 5 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 11 months ago by Bookworm.

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

Author
Posts
May 20, 2012 at 3:42 pm
amyjane
Participant
We will be starting Spanish next year and though I am not sure I will start with the Pimsleur lessons for my 6 and 8yo I really enjoyed the sample lesson. Has anyone used this? If so thoughts?
http://www.pimsleur.com/Learn-Spanish/Pimsleur-Spanish-Unlimited-1/9781442346345
May 20, 2012 at 4:07 pm
missceegee
Participant
No help here. I bought it, but we’ve not used it. 🙁
May 20, 2012 at 4:34 pm
BetsyR
Member
I haven’t used it either. I have 6yo & 3yo DDs, and I bought the Whistlefritz DVD set. I play these in the car when going places, as well as let them watch at home. They enjoy them & my 6yo is able to understand what is being said fairly well & repeats words/phrases. The company also has started doing lesson plans for homeschoolers which go with the DVDS. You can download for free from their website. I think it is a nice & easy way to work on language (we are doing Spanish) with younger ones without being too pressured. They meet CM criteria too I believe in that it is having them hear & speak as they would normally learn their native language rather than focusing on learning written language, rules, etc. I know that’s not your original question but thought I’d throw that out there in case you are looking at options.
May 20, 2012 at 5:02 pm
cekfamily
Participant
Here is one more idea to maybe consider. I was so excited myself to find this! I found a copy on sale at our local School Resource store.
It’s called El Espanol Facil! and you can see it and http://www.TheEasySpanish.com What really excited me about this program (besides being CM friendly, and using CM’s own foreign language teaching methods), is that it is Scripturally based, teaches children to be able to evangelize, it uses a story of two homeschooling students to teach it, and you can actually turn the used material in to Wycliffe Tranlators for a rebate from the author to use towards your next level purchase.
It is both audio and printed, with lesson plans and activites listed for all age levels (similar to the SCM module guides). It also incorporates Scripture memory, which I plan to use in both English and Spanish for our memory program. It also incorporates art and notebooking.
Worth checking out!
-Elli
May 20, 2012 at 5:53 pm
MamaSnow
Participant
We tried the Easy French (same as above, but the French version) and didn’t really like it. I wanted to…but found the activities were all kind of twaddly and all we really used was the CD – and it was a lot of money just to pay for a CD. We ended up using The Learnables for French which we don’t love – it’s not super exciting – but my dd does actually seem to be learning stuff from it.
FWIW,
Jen
May 20, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Bookworm
Participant
I’ve tried both the Easy French and The Easy Spanish and didn’t like either one. I agree, they are twaddley, silly, you don’t really learn very much, and when I got the first edition of the Spanish, it was FULL of errors. I hope those are corrected now, but it really bothered me and made me worry about who was doing the writing and editing, if I, with my three years of high school Spanish, could catch 30+ errors. I think they are very overpriced for what you get, which is essentially a little program for the very, very young (like UNDER SIX). I think anyone over six would be embarrassed by the silliness–my kids were mortified and in open rebellion literally in minutes. There IS a connection in that the originators of the Easy programs loosely based it on a series by another researcher whom Charlotte Mason did commend and whose work she did use–but I’m not sure that you can say this is a “CM course” I think SHE would have thought these silly. JMHO. I just want people to really look into these carefully before dropping the money for them–I know a lot of people who’ve bought them and not used them much. Hopefully they are a good fit for some families–but my kids covered their ears and begged me to stop.