Speekee Online Spanish for Kids

Details: Speekee Online Spanish Learning Program.  An online program built in 2006 to help children ages 2-11 learn Spanish, with additional resources that are designed specifically for children, with children.  Very interactive with games, songs, dancing, videos, puppets, Muppets, and challenges.  The Speekee Spanish Challenge is the most up to date, current educational comprehensive Spanish program that is online for children.

Disclaimer: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

My Review: This is such a fun activity for children to use.  My kids were so excited to have online games to help them learn Spanish.  They watched videos with puppets, Muppets, and children speaking in Spanish.  As a home school teacher, I really like the idea behind this website.  Providing children with more ways to learn a foreign language, giving the children more real life instances to practice their new words, phrases and conversations.  The puppets and Muppets sing silly songs and dance for delightful creative fun with learning Spanish.  Aside from the videos, you can take challenges, sing along with songs, play games, answer questions, etc.  Some times the movies are confusing, they try to teach something that you don't really know, but repetition really helps as does an easy English/ Spanish dictionary.  Some of the puppets/ Muppets voices are really quick or their speech is hard to understand, but I love the idea behind the puppets and Muppets.  Even though most of the time my kids don't know what the kids and characters are saying they love it when they get to play Spanish on the computer.  Its a super cute, fun way to encourage children to learn Spanish, and be able to comfortably communicate with other children and adults in Spanish.  With this being said, I think a few adjustments would be very helpful.  My children can't use this sight on their own, because finding the games, the challenges isn't easy, finding the movies is easy.  It would be nice to have a more child friendly website design.  None of the videos or places on the map are labeled so you don't know what you will be learning.  For example I thought I clicked on a library and ended up with a video about kids in a park talking about distance and trees.  That video and whole section of learning Spanish was way over my mind and too hard for my kids.  Having them labeled would have been nice.

Pros: cute, fun, great resource for teachers, parents, home school students

Cons: no labels, nothing in English, not a child friendly website design

Contest:  Would you like to try this program for free?  This company is offering a limited time for a free membership on Speekee!  Please comment on this blog post if you want a chance.  Please comment with the gender and age of the child/ren you want the membership for.  First to comment wins! Contest ends 8/6/14

My Rating: Thumbs up and Thumbs Down.  I love the idea, my kids love playing, I just wish it was a little more child friendly with the games etc.

Learn Spanish on the Go

Details: Pimsleur Approach: Gold Edition: Pimsleur Spanish Level 1( comprehensive 1).  Get started instantly with access to a whole new world of learning a new language via CDs.  This approach to learning a new language has been proven to be the fastest and easiest way of learning.  What to expect: when pressing play you open the doors to the language of Spanish where you will listen in sequence, follow along, speak out loud and it only takes one lesson a day.  Your Pimsleur Spanish package comes with 16 CDs, 2 lessons on each CD, each lesson is roughly 30 minutes.

Disclaimer: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

My Review:  I am very interested in learning to hold meaningful conversations in Spanish as I now have family who speaks only Spanish.  Its not fun being the only one in the room unable to communicate, and sit there looking dumb, at the same time wondering are they talking about you? As a home school teacher I am also interested in giving my children secondary languages as they ask for them.  My children want to learn Spanish, so if this Pimsleur program can work for adults I find no reason to try it with children as well.  But since our current school year is almost over, I will be holding onto this until the next school year starts in the fall before I introduce my children to this program.

For this review I very quickly played the CDs to see what to expect.  Each lesson is a conversation, but with different components of conversations, or speaking parts of speech.  For example, you will learn how to ask for directions;  how to speak to a man or woman, how to be polite while conversing with Latinos, and much more.  I was a little surprised when I first started listening to the CDs because I was expecting to learn numbers, then colors, shapes, simple house hold words, then phrases, questions, answers etc...like how they teach you in school.  but this approach really is different, and more engaging than text book lessons.  I started listening to the CDs as I do my chores around the house, or while cooking dinner for my family.  Because these are CDs I highly recommend that you get a CD player that you can easily carry around with you, because a big one isn't as convenient.

How it works: there are two voices a man and a woman who you hear converse with each other on various topics that would actually be important to learn when speaking to people of a Spanish speaking country, or heritage.  They each take turns repeating specific words, and phrases; in between spaces for you to follow along by saying what they say out loud.  Each lesson builds off the previous lesson, and gives you ample ability to continue to build off what you are learning before moving on.   I know this program will be even bigger or more popular if they go to itune type files that you can have on your ipod, ipad, tablet, or phone as they want this program to be accessible for people who travel via planes.

Pros: handy, easy to engage with, easy to follow along with, lots of recitation and repetition,

Cons: because this is a CD course, you need a portable CD player,

My Rating: Thumbs Up