Review - R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish

Website:  http://realhomeschoolspanish.com/

Age:  Geared for the whole family - elementary and up

Cost: $49.95 Download, $89.95 Hard Copy

R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish has been an excellent addition to my son’s study of Spanish this term.  He’s been using a conversation based curriculum.  Homeschool Spanish is a vocabulary based curriculum.  I think they complement each other quite well.

Homeschool Spanish comes with an instructional book, an activity book, audio files for both texts, an answer book and a curriculum guide.  The program is setup so that the entire family can learn together.  Numerous suggestions are provided for helping the student learn the words and phrases for the Unit.  This is not a curriculum a younger student would tackle independantly, but it is geared to have guidance and/or participation with the parent.  The format would be excellent in a co-op situation as well.

As a homeschooling parent, we don’t always approach a curriculum from a traditional perspective.  The curriculum guide and added instruction provided allows a parent to establish a pace that is appropriate for her student(s).  The guide provides for forty weeks of content, but alternative suggestions are incorporated.

The text book gives the student the basic vocabulary and basic conversation for each genre covered.  The organization for the course units is the following:

Unit 1 - Greetings
Unit 2 - Colors/Numbers
Unit 3 - Food
Unit 4 - Family
Unit 5 - Anatomy
Unit 6 - Clothing/Weather/Seasons/Months
Unit 7 - Places/Transportation/Days of the Week/Verbs & Minor Grammar
Unit 8 - Animals/Nature
Unit 9 - Sports/Minor Grammar
Unit 10 - Verbs/House
 
Each unit begins with the words that should be learned/memorized along with phrases.  You can see an example here.  I appreciate that the content includes audio files that the student can listen to to understand correct pronunciation.

Next, the student uses the activity book.  Puzzles and games and used to reinforce the vocabulary.  Additonaly, audio exercises are incorporated to help the student understand pronunication, practice proper idenfication of terms or phrases, and learn how to incorporate those into conversation.  You can see an example of the activities here.

It is challenging to learn a new language, but oh so important.  America is one of the few countries where most of its inhabitants are not bilingual.  Speaking another language not only broadens a student's sense of language, but of culture, critical thinking, memorization, and interpretation. 

I feel this program has been a strong addition to our homeschool year.

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*** I received this product free of charge in exchange for my honest review.