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I am thankful to the folks at Classical Academic Press for giving me the opportunity to review their Spanish for Children program.

As a teacher of Spanish 1 and 2 at Veritas Scholars Academy, I was intrigued about the Spanish for Children program. How good it is? How well prepared will the grammar students using this program be for high school Spanish?  I am a Spanish native speaker, and as you can probably imagine, I love to teach my students beautiful pronunciation; so I also wondered about the DVD’s and CD; is the pronunciation clear and accurate?  Let me now tell you what I found.

Spanish for Children is a program recommended for upper grammar students (4th grade and up); their basic bundle includes the Student’s Primer, the Teacher’s Primer (answer key), four DVD and one CD, and a Spanish Language Reader, Tin Bot.

Spanish for Children 1 covers 37 weekly chapters which follow a very good and logic sequence. Starting from the -ar, -er and -ir verbs it covers about 142 verbs; about 150 nouns with gender and number,  adjectives and prepositions; starting to build on a new language in upper grammar stage with this great foundation is just an incredible way to start with the right foot!

Spanish for Children is Classically and Creatively taught, with lots of reviews, exercises and fun phrases that will put Spanish in context. It is a thorough program that will certainly prepare students in an incredible way for Spanish in high school, because it not only teaches isolated vocabulary but grammar structure, which is essential to be able to speak a new language; something that we want our Spanish students to be able to do.

I would say that if  Mom or Dad do not speak Spanish, they would definitely need to get the DVD set.  Believe me (I don’t make money if you buy it), it is important to have the children’s ear trained into listening good Spanish and Mrs. Julia Kraut does a great job; her pronunciation is clear and beautiful. The DVDs do more than teaching good pronunciation, they are a great help into understanding the lessons in-depth.  Mrs. Kraut explains every lesson in a very engaging way, and it is fun to listen to her class; it is not boring or tiresome. She starts each lesson chanting the weekly grammar chart, followed by an introduction to the new lesson, there are images accompanying the new list of verbs and vocabulary and then she goes on to explain the grammar concepts, always encouraging the students to practice what they have learned “even with their Teddy Bear”. I really appreciated that she continually shares her experience with the Spanish language and different cultural aspects surrounding it, because as I always tell my students, learning a new foreign language is not only about learning the language but understanding the culture. If you don’t get the DVDs you will certainly miss this part which I consider very important.

If students are diligent in studying the lessons every day and watching the  DVDs, I would dare to say that they would excel in learning Spanish even before reaching high school!

Classical Academic Press also offers many free on line resources to help students practice what they are learning, such as virtual flashcards, games, and readers. There is also a sample schedule ready for Mom to download and start planing the course. Mrs. Kraut has a blog where you can post your questions and read some more fun facts about Spanish and some teaching tips that the author likes to share.

In all, I highly recommend this program to all those families interested in introducing their children to the beautiful world of Spanish.

Giving your children the opportunity to learn a new language from an early age is a gift that not every one is willing to give because of the difficulties of teaching it, but this program definitely makes the task easier and really fun.

For more information visit Classical Academic Press

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