TOS Review–El Espanol Facil! Jr from Great Commission Languages

It’s Speak Up Saturday! Time for a review (0r two)…

From the publisher:

Introducing El Español Facil! 

• 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

As I stated at the beginning of the year, I want to start teaching Kahlen Spanish this year, but I don’t really have a good plan about it, so when El Espanol Facil! came available for review, I jumped at the chance. I was hoping for an easy-to-teach, simple Spanish curriculum appropriate for my kindergartner.

I was, sad to say, disappointed with this curriculum. The book was too vanilla and too vague for me. If you are someone who likes to have a basic idea and run with it, you might really like this approach. It’s not what I was looking for, however. I was hoping for something that we could just jump into with prepared activities that were age/level appropriate and some kind of lesson plan or ideas about how to teach the material.

Each lesson has a story that you can read and listen to, a vocabulary list, and a list of possible activities. What it doesn’t have is some idea about what I should do with that information, like a lesson plan, or some idea of a break-down for each day or week. Am I supposed to do the story just once? Multiple times? How do I fit in the other vocabulary words that were not part of the story?

There are two sets of activity pages included on the CD so you can print out just what you want to use, and as many copies as you need for your family. The first is a set of activity pages, generally one for each lesson. The second is a book that you work on throughout the program called Soy Yo! It’s Me! which is designed to relate the lesson to the student specifically. The idea is good, but again, it does not utilize all the vocabulary that is supposed to be learned in that lesson. Also, a lot of the activities involved writing and/or reading, which Kahlen is just not ready for, and I don’t think most kindergartners are.

Great Commission Languages offers the Spanish curriculum in the Jr. level, which retails for $69.95 and Level 1, which is designed with older children in mind and retails for $139.95 as well as several resources to go along with the program. You can view sample lessons and products available on their website. They also offer a French curriculum.

I give this product two stars. It has a few good features, such as the Soy Yo! It’s Me! book, but overall I did not find it useable for me.

See what other crew members are saying here.

~S

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product through The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.