What is it?
Spanish for You! is a language program developed by a Spanish teacher and designed to teach students to communicate in Spanish, through building sentences and asking and answering questions. The program teaches reading, writing, and speaking skills as well as the basics of Spanish grammar.
Spanish for You! is for grades 3-8 and is offered in themed curricula packages. The packages can be completed in any order and are a full year of Spanish study. The program is meant to be used with students of any age working through the same themed book, just at the appropriate level.
There are currently two themed programs offered:
- Estaciones – seasons
- Fiestas – celebrations
(Click to see samples)
The new themed package, Viajes (travels), will be offered this summer.
We received the Estaciones program which retails for $64.95 for the grades 3-8 package. You can also purchase curriculum packages specific to the grade levels (grades 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8) as smaller packages with each retailing for $39.95.
What is included?
- Book with lessons
- Lesson guide with weekly lesson plans
- Worksheets with answers
- Audio files of the entire lesson book
- Printable images for creating flash cards
Each lesson begins by introducing the new vocabulary words and providing ways to practice using them in sentences.
The next section of the lesson is about verbs. Here there is information about the verbs in the vocabulary list with conjugations listed. There are also sentences and questions/answers for using the various conjugated verbs in conversation.
After verbs, the lesson focuses on grammar and using the correct vocabulary words and verbs in context.
The last part of each lessons puts all the new words and concepts together with a short quiz using questions and pictures to test knowledge of the vocabulary words.
How did we use this product?
Curly and I worked on the Spanish lessons together. We used the lesson plans for grades 3-4 even though Curly is finishing 1st grade. We would work through each lesson while listening to the audio file of the book being read to us, so we could hear the correct pronunciation.
Curly would draw her own flashcards to illustrate the vocabulary words from each lesson. We would use these flashcards to play games like Memory to test our vocab knowledge.
We used Tiger and Bee to help us with our lessons sometimes. They dressed up to demonstrate different vocabulary words and they helped us with some conversations. They were pretty good at asking Curly some questions (when prompted by me).
Each lesson took us more than one week (the first lesson is scheduled to last 6 weeks). This was a good thing because there was a ton of information contained in each lesson and it took weeks to master the vocabulary, grammar, and very conjugations!
The lessons took us about 20 minutes per day but could have easily stretched out longer if we did all the games and spent more time on review.
What didn’t we like?
There is a lot to sort through and organize. I found it difficult to locate the correct worksheets when I needed to print them. However, the author reorganized the worksheets by grade level so it was easier and faster to locate the appropriate worksheet for each lesson. For a while I felt like I was searching through multiple folders on my computer to find all my components. So, this problem is resolved with the author streamlining the process. Since the author was so responsive, I am confident that she will continue to find ways to organize the components and make the product even more user-friendly.
What did we like?
I really liked that the program is based around themes. This allows you to create more of a Spanish unit study while learning all the vocabulary, grammar, and verb conjugations. Each year you can study a new Spanish theme while still learning new vocabulary and grammar basics.
I really appreciated the lesson guidelines because I would not have known how to best break up each lesson into smaller weekly or daily pieces. I found this guide to be extremely helpful!
There is a lot of depth to the lessons and the program covers vocabulary, grammar, and verb conjugation while providing numerous opportunities to use the words in sentences and conversations. There is a lot of practice contained in the books and worksheets and I find daily practice essential in learning a new language!
I was also very thankful for the audio recording with pronunciation. With all the components of this program, we were able to hear the words, see pictorial representation of the words (through our flashcards) and read the words used in context in our lesson book. Spanish for You! engages all the senses to promote learning and teaches to the various learning styles.
What did we think overall?
I think this is a very solid and detailed Spanish program. Curly learned so many vocabulary words and verb conjugations that she was able to ask and answer simple questions within a few weeks. I was really impressed with her ability to learn the language (somehow I had a much more difficult time keeping up with her!).
We are definitely going to keep working on this program and when we’re ready to move on, we’ll try a different themed program. I’m excited to see Curly’s progress!