Bilingual Spanish preschool curriculum

[cabreban]

Hi,

I am interested in finding a bilingual spanish/english curriculum to teach my 2 year old daughter. Scripted curriculum might work best since I understand spanish, read spanish but I am nervous about speaking spanish (it does not naturally flow or I freeze up). I am sure this will help me as well. Any suggestions? :bigear:

Also do you have any experience with Your baby Can Speak Spanish? Any DVD sets you can suggest to supplement? :bigear:

Thanks,

cabreban

[Cleopatra]

Hmmm ...... possibly Calico Spanish ..... it's scripted.

You can look at it here: http://www.calicospanish.com/

[cabreban]

I would LOVE to use the program but it is so expensive ($250 for level 1). Since the company is so new, no one is selling used curriculum.

[Cleopatra]

I own it. It's a great program but we haven't had much of a chance to use it this year; I'm beginning to think 4 languages is our limit. :tongue_smilie: I just might consider selling it. PM me if you're interested and we could chat about it!

[cabreban]

I sent you a PM. Please let me know about Calico Spanish!

[mom2bee]

Please tell us more about Calico Spanish, I looked at it and it seems really nice but that's a lot of money...

[Cleopatra]

Please tell us more about Calico Spanish, I looked at it and it seems really nice but that's a lot of money...

It's a scripted Spanish program targeted at younger children. I was going try it with my dd for a gentle introduction but with her four other languages to fit in, we just didn't find the time. It includes:

Teacher's Manual: 15 chapters, calendar scripts and appendix. Each chapter includes a number of different lessons and activities. For example, Chapter 3 covers Songs, Calendar, Questions, Numbers, Alphabet, Games, Verbs, Colors, Zoo & Activities. There are lessons plans written out for either 60 min sessions or 30 minute sessions. The instructions for the teacher are in English but the script for when you are teaching the lesson is in English and Spanish. They repeat phrases throughout the lessons so it is easy for the child to pick up what is meant (ie. great review!) During the lessons they use fun items such as milk and cocoa, stuffed animals, magazine with pictures & glue, etc. Very engaging for younger children!

Activity Pack: Song lyrics to Mi Guitarra, activity and coloring sheets.

Bulletin Board Set: contains numerous visual aids, such as a calendar with month labels, an alphabet poster, a poster of parts of the body, how are you feeling poster, colors poster, etc. All the posters are in color and well made.

Flash Cards: 149 cards covering many things: verb conjugations, numbers, colors, nouns, etc.

Verb Flash Cards: 84 cards

CD: Mi Guitarra

Books: First Thousand Words in Spanish
Corre, perro, corre by P.D. Eastman


Yes, it is pricey and I struggled with that at first. If I had a younger child (PreK to grade 5), I'd say that the program was worth it. It's very well put together and easy to use, not to mention well made. Other than time, my problem was that I realized my dd is now getting old enough to learn the material at a higher level. If we didn't do it this year, we probably weren't going to do it at all, which is why I considered selling it. My dd really liked it (and is not happy that I may sell it) but it really is going to be a little young for a grade 7.

Hope that gives you some helpful information! :001_smile:

[danny.tunmore]

Personally I think that the best program is from here (http://www.spanishforpreschoolers.com/). It has lots of activities so that the children have fun while learning. :001_smile: It is not that expensive as well what is always good

[jenbrdsly]

Here's our experience teaching my preschooler Spanish: http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/spanish/

I'm just gearing up with my second child, who is 24 months. Hopefully I'll have better luck this time! I'm going to check out the other ideas on this thread for inspiration.

[dajiherndez]

Rod and staff has a wonderful spanish preschool program that could easily be used right along side the english one. It is very inexpensive but you do need to know how to speak spanish as well as read it because the teachers manuels are written in Spanish.

It uses the sylubus way of teaching which is the most common way spanish is taught to natives.
MA
ME
MI
MO
MU
So you could pair it with any reading curriculum in english that teaches that way. This is the way we taught both of our bilinguel children to read. This is also what I will use for my youngest that is just now 13 months.

Blessings,
Jennifer

[jenbrdsly]

I just read your blog that was linked to your post and I can relate to your experience trying to get your child excited about learning Spanish.

Starting when my son was 3 1/2 we got the Professor Toto DVDs/CDs. A friend who had used them with her daughter and had some success recomended it. As with many other things, my husband and I had to use a little psychology at first when it came to getting my son interested. We played the songs in the car and he really liked them, but we never made him "do his spanish homework". Instead we treated the DVDs as a treat or reward. "If you don't listen to Mommy, I'm not going to let you watch your Professor Toto cartoons later..." I would put the DVD in and break out the script or coloring book that you follow along with and he would become interested. I would ask him if he was good today and then I would let him watch along for 10 minutes and then turn it off before his attention started to drift. By keeping it fresh and presenting it as a reward we got great results. He was interactive with the DVDs and ended up absorbing vocabulary meaning and sentence structure, and this became a great foundation for Spanish down the line.

Regarding your son, you say that he lost much of his Spanish but the case may be, when he later gets back into a Spanish learning enviornment, he will have a basis for picking it back up much quicker! Hopefully its not lost, just dormant.

I'll have to look up Professor Toto. And yes, hopefully my son's Spanish is just dormant. That's a positive way to think about it!

[jkronrod]

I don't know if this helps (if you are already a native Spanish speaker, it won't), but we've found that the best way to teach our kids Spanish is to have a native speaker work with them (playing) on a regular (several times a week) basis. It DOES work (our oldest, now in college, tested so high on his Spanish entrance exam at the University of California, Merced, that they put him in with the Hispanic kids who spoke Spanish at home), but we have an advantage in that we're in California and near several colleges and universities. We put ads in at the local college asking for a native speaker to come and play with the preschooler for a hour or so each time. It's easy work (we always said "no diapers", LOL, in case there was any concern), and, if you get the right person, the children pick up the language quickly and painlessly. Although we supplement with movies, Rosetta Stone, etc. (and online "live" classes through Edufire when they are older), nothing works as well as having a native speaker play with your kids.

[priscilahoerner]

I'm teaching my daughter, who is two and learning preschool, the exact same things we're doing in English in Spanish. We're just alternating days. One day the lesson is all in English; the next day the same exact lesson is in Spanish. Or later that same day. That seems to work pretty well.

I make most of my own material. I get activity ideas online, my favorite place for them so far is education.com, and make an English and a Spanish set if necessary (for example word flashcards, labels for things around the house, etc...). I also send her to help her grandmother, who speaks only Spanish to her (this could be a trusted friend or neighbor of yours if you don't have a family member), to do chores or any other work that my daughter can do at least once a week.

The best way to learn a language, in my experience, is to speak it, hear it, and read it. And I'm trying to keep it as simple as that in my home. I speak to my daughter in Spanish as often as I remember to do so. She is two years old and already understands and speaks a great deal more than my dear husband!

[priscilahoerner]

I don't know if this helps (if you are already a native Spanish speaker, it won't), but we've found that the best way to teach our kids Spanish is to have a native speaker work with them (playing) on a regular (several times a week) basis. It DOES work (our oldest, now in college, tested so high on his Spanish entrance exam at the University of California, Merced, that they put him in with the Hispanic kids who spoke Spanish at home), but we have an advantage in that we're in California and near several colleges and universities. We put ads in at the local college asking for a native speaker to come and play with the preschooler for a hour or so each time. It's easy work (we always said "no diapers", LOL, in case there was any concern), and, if you get the right person, the children pick up the language quickly and painlessly. Although we supplement with movies, Rosetta Stone, etc. (and online "live" classes through Edufire when they are older), nothing works as well as having a native speaker play with your kids.

:iagree: