The Curriculum Choice

front-cover This past year we finished up The Easy Spanish or El Espanol Facil! Level I. I found the link through the recommendation of a friend and after watching the introductory video explaining how the program fit a Charlotte Mason style of learning, we decided to investigate the book further. The approach is multi-faceted with listening, narrating aloud, and then writing in Spanish. It is also multi-leveled so you can offer Spanish to all your children with one book and one plan.

I was looking for something fresh to try. We had tried a textbook approach and we had started Rosetta Stone Spanish but neither of those options felt like it was a good fit all by itself. I purchased The Easy Spanish and got started with it right away with my boys.

In my package I received a thick spiral bound textbook with two audio CDs. One of the CDs has pages to print out and use with your children as needed.

Personal Dictionary

The textbook is arranged in lessons with corresponding sections on the CD. The textbook is so well organized that my teenagers could work independently and work at their own level of activities. The lessons are written on multiple levels so this plan could be used in a family with children in different grade levels. Their website suggests that with younger children you work through the lessons at a slower pace and take 2-3 years to complete this level. Older students (teens) she suggests 1-2 years depending on how much time each week you take for Spanish.

Each lesson starts with a story that weaves English and Spanish together. You can read it in the text and listen along with the CD. After the story, the CD pronounces the vocabulary and leaves time for your child to respond. There is always a follow-up activity and there is always a time during the week when your child will narrate back in Spanish the general idea of the story from the lesson. There is a special notebook activity that is really a year-long project to have the child tell all about themselves in Spanish. All the notebook pages are included on the CD.

Personal Notebook Page

The program includes scripture memorization as part of each lesson. Most lessons also have cultural notes that teach more deeply about the culture presented in the story. Geography is also a part of The Easy Spanish program.

If your children are older, there is a specific part of the lesson for independent learners. My boys worked with these assignments and I think it has helped them progress more than anything else. The high school age child is also encouraged to start a journal in Spanish. This was difficult at first but as they built vocabulary, it became easier. Each student is also encouraged to make their own Spanish dictionary with the vocabulary words from each lesson.

One of the CDs also contains Spanish songs to sing along with the lessons. See the link to samples below.

The student is given a weekly assignment sheet where he can check off each particular aspect of the lesson each day. I found this to be a great tool for me to use with my boys, helping them to become more independent.

Independent Learners Go Deeper

Links to Samples: Song, Lesson, Lesson 2 in both PDF and MP3. I highly recommend that you print out the lesson and go through the MP3 files to really get a feel for the simplicity of using this Spanish program.

I also highly recommend that you go to their homepage and watch the introductory video. I found it very helpful to understand just what was included in the program and an overview of how it words.
The Easy Spanish -Video

So, of all the Spanish programs we have tried so far, this is the best I have found as far as learning practical vocabulary and encouraging the boys to actually have conversations. Using the independent activities, the Charlotte Mason activity, and the journal activities has helped them with their vocabulary and verb work.

Personal journal for independent learners

We used The Easy Spanish! everyday of the week, about twenty minutes per day.

If you are looking for a Spanish program for your family and you want it to have a Charlotte Mason flair, this program is worth looking into.

Here is what their website says:

Phonetic, incremental, conversational Spanish & high frequency words
Spanish Scripture, songs, games and coloring pages
Great for homeschool co-op groups
Digitally mastered enhanced CD for audio and computer
Printable activity sheets: no purchasing consumable activity books or photocopying.
Teaches language and grammar through literature based entertaining storylines
Does not require prior knowledge of Spanish
Set outline of skills per quarter
3 year program for younger students
1 to 2 year program for older students and 1 year Fast track option for teens
Cultural flavor of Mexico and South America with optional projects
Use of Tomatis and SAMONAS sound theories to facilitate learning
Follows Charlotte Mason Method, Bloom’s Taxonomy and high order theories by Dr. Jeanne Chall
Edited by and featuring the recorded voices of Native Spanish Speakers from Nicaragua and Venezuela

Written by Barb-Harmony Art mom. She also blogs at http://www.harmonyartmom.blogspot.com

Lively Latin or, The Big Book as it is called, covers all the elements of a first year elementary Latin program in a fun and engaging way. These elements include: 1^st and 2^nd declension Latin nouns in their cases, and genders, the use of the nominative and ablative cases; 1^st conjugation verbs in the present, imperfect, and future tenses; the irregular to be verb in 3 tenses; 1^st and 2^nd declension adjectives; sentence diagramming; 175 Latin words with the many English derivatives which come from them.

It also covers Roman history from Romulus’ founding of the city in 753 BC to the end of the 3^rd Punic War in 146 BC, complete with maps, paintings, review puzzles and activities.

It is a big book, if you get the printed 4oo high-quality page version. This is my all-time favorite Latin program! We have completed a year with my 5th grade son, but we have not finished the 400 pg. book. We worked on Latin 3 x a week, at our own pace.

Reasons we love the “Big Book”:

I love the idea of learning grammar and Latin together. Saves me time! Being the history buffs that we are, we love the snippets of Roman history. It has plenty of vocabulary, the organization of the order that you learn things makes sense. The explanations of what and why you learn certain things are excellent (what other Latin programs are missing). The Big Book is a parts to whole program, meaning it starts with the fundamentals and builds up from there to a full understanding of the language. We learn better with this approach as it teaches the patterns of the language. The whole to parts approach forces students to memorize individual words and their meanings without the benefit of the pattern. We have failed to excel in Latin using this approach in the past.

A few unexpected extras that are included:

1. The history of our language
2. Full color studies of paintings depicting Roman history and other artists.
3. Character studies of famous Romans.
4. Lessons on Greek and Roman gods.
5. Plenty of repetition.
6. Choice of Classical or Ecclesiastical pronunciation

Go here to see the suggested timeline for Lively Latin.

Visit the Lively Latin website for more information and for ordering the Big Book 1 or Big Book 2.

Written by Brenda, Classical eclectic mother of 5. She is sold on the benefits of teaching Latin to all her children. She blogs at Tie That Binds Us about her homeschool journey.

Prima Latina with DVD’s prima_web_cd

I got this for my 2nd grader, a handful of years ago. It was my first introduction to Latin and I remember being very pleased with the amount of vocabulary and Latin prayers etc. We worked through several lessons, and then I decided to only work on the vocabulary portion because he didn’t have great handwriting at the time to complete the worksheets. So we did the lessons orally. The next year I brought in child # 2 and we did the program again (a repeat for the 1st child, but it was totally ok). This second year we used the DVD lessons and it went very smoothly. My children still recite some Latin prayers they learned from this program and the vocabulary they learned helped them progress through LFC in the first 5 lessons like a breeze.

I highly recommend Prima Latina with the DVD’s to ALL families starting Latin in grades 1-4th. It is a perfect blend of vocabulary and prayers and is an easy introduction into Latin. Memoria Press has a full range of products for Latin, other languages, classical studies and logic.

Written by Brenda, classically eclective mother of 5. She writes frequently about her homeschooling journey at Tie That Binds Us.

img_greek1set Elementary Greek , year one, by Open Texture is designed to be used for as young as second grade. It is a full year’s course and is written simply for the teacher with little to no experience in the Greek language. It’s 30 weeks of lessons are laid out in daily portions that take around 20 minutes on average. Each child needs their own workbook and everything else is non-consumable. This course would also be great for a student of jr. high or above to complete on their own with little help from an adult.

One of my children took an interest in Greek in kindergarten. How did this happen, you ask? Well, living up to 2 older brothers isn’t always easy. So when my 3rd son saw a chance to do something different then his older siblings he jumped on it. He wanted bragging rights in one area of his life, is what I’m guessing. We began with the first two levels of Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek. Greek quickly became his favorite subject. We really enjoyed Hey Andrew, but the reason why I switched is simply the time factor. I have many children to school and I needed to simplify my day by combining more of my children’s studies together or combining several subjects into one subject. I was not about to ditch Greek with my son – being his favorite subject consistently.

So, along came Elementary Greek and solved a problem for me. It also teaches grammar. The grammar portion is gentler then say Shurley or Abeka, but it is comfortable from a Charlotte Mason perspective having shorter lessons. This is how we worked it into our school. I decided that we would take 2 years to do level one, doing Greek 3 times a week. We do Primary Language Lessons 2-3 times a week also. He drills his Greek vocabulary 5 days a week.

Some things that I have added to Elementary Greek to make it fit our needs better (having a younger student) have been:

notebooking grammar terms such as noun, adjective, verb, article adjective for us to reference in other areas of studies like writing.
played many games with the flashcards like laying them on the floor, throwing a bean bag on them and saying the Greek word in English, or saying the Greek letter’s sound and we’ve played hang man using vocabulary words.
created our own silly songs and chants to remember the declensions and the irregular verb “to be”.
made lapbook elements to remember things like the sounds of diphthongs, eventually we will put these together in a lapbook.

Elementary Greek year 1 teaches the Greek alphabet, basic vocabulary, grammar and translation. The workbook provides practice that is necessary to remembering the lesson. The flashcards and CD are an essential part of the program. We have enjoyed memorizing scripture in Greek also. Click here to listen to some CD audio samples:

Lesson One, Day 3

Lesson One, Vocabulary

Lesson 20, memory verse
Written by Brenda