One of the areas I feel least confident in as a homeschooling parent is foreign language. Sure, I had my two years of French in high school, but that hardly makes me an expert.
Because of this, I know that I will lean heavily on solid foreign language curriculum throughout school. And while my girls are learning, I will learn, too.
R.E.A.L Homeschool Spanish, by Dr. Karen Williamson-Coria, is designed to teach Spanish to the whole family. The goal is to allow the parent to learn alongside the child. Created for use with multiple ages, the curriculum provides a flexible framework for foreign language learning.
Built on a conversational framework, Homeschool Spanish teaches practical Spanish vocabulary and language skills. The goal of the program is to enable you to incorporate Spanish throughout your day, with “Home Educator Tips” and “Ideas” to use Spanish in an immersion environment.
The unit lessons are made up of vocabulary clusters and phrases. There are a total of 33 vocabulary clusters and 15 sections of ideas (3-4 pages each). There are fun and practical ideas for incorporating Spanish into your day.
The company’s website has an excellent selection of online resources, including puzzles, games, songs, recipes, videos, history and culture, and much more. The activity sheets for each lesson make learning and reviewing the vocabulary and grammar fun. This, combined with the practical vocabulary and language selections of the lessons creates a great mix for learning the language.
My biggest struggle in teaching and learning a foreign language is pronunciation. I must rely heavily on the audio portions of the program to ensure correct pronunciation. Unfortunately, this is where Homeschool Spanish fell short for me. I received the downloadable MP3 version of the audio. The introduction and short music interludes sound fine. The vocabulary sections were recorded in a manner that is hard on my ears. For ears unfamiliar with Spanish pronunciation (particularly children), it is hard to get the exact pronunciation. It also moves very quickly through the vocabulary list. The conversation sections of the audio are even more difficult. They are recorded with an effect on the voices that makes it very hard, especially for my children. For my family, the most important part of the curriculum, learning to pronounce the words properly, is the weakest part because of the recording itself. I was very disappointed by this.
There is always a chance that there is something strange about the particular files I received, or that it isn’t playing properly on my computer. However, I am using iTunes on my Mac, and everything else works fine. As I mentioned before, the introduction to each track sounds fine. It truly sounds to me (and my husband who has experience with professional audio & video recording) that it is an issue with the way the recording itself was done.
Because of the audio issue, I think R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish would be a great program for a parent who already speaks Spanish to use with their children. They key components of vocabulary and learning activities are all there. But for our family, with no background in Spanish, it unfortunately is not an effective learning tool. In our case, it would be a great supplement to another language program.
Homeschool Spanish is available as a download or hard copy purchase:
You can purchase the program and read more about all it has to offer here.
You can also read more reviews at the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.
Disclosure: I received the download package of Homeschool Spanish for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received, and the opinions expressed are my own.
- Erin
