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.

Spanish Learning Songs for Kids

Details: Whistlefritz offers Spanish Learning Songs for children.  Lyrics and translations are included, all songs are sung in Spanish, Cd comes with 15 fun songs.  Child friendly songs such as Good Day Little Friends, Old McDonald had a farm, Toys, At the Zoo, Clap, Clap Little Hands and more, perfect for children to get up and sing along, and dance along with the great music.  Comes with the lyrics written out in Spanish, so you can learn to read along with the songs and learn the lyrics that way as well as by just listening to the songs.  There is also a Vocabulary section for each song, giving the English translation for each word so you can figure out what the song is about, and what you are learning to say.  You can buy this on Amazon.

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:  As a home school teacher I was planning on keeping this CD a surprise for my children for the new school year this fall.  I was planning on listening to it when they were sleeping or with head phones so they couldn't hear it, but before I could they found it in my pile of school supplies I'm organizing. My children love happy music so much, that they have literally taken control of this CD and listen to it whenever they can. My 7 year old is begging for Spanish lessons, his 4 year old cousin and newest Aunt are primary Spanish speaking, and my son really wants to be able to talk to them better than he does now.  My 4 year old loves learning how to be big like his older brother, and is super excited that he has now figured out how to use the CD player without help.  He switches the CDs around, and sits in bed listening to music once his brother has fallen asleep at night, or he'll get up early and turn the music on to wake his brother up.  With this Whistlefritz CD I have found my kids hiding all around the house listening, singing along as best they can, and dancing when I'm not looking.  Its super cute to see them so excited about music, dancing and Spanish!  I am very impressed with how fun this CD really is for kids.  I love being able to see the Spanish lyrics so I can learn them and teach them to my kids, and I love seeing the English Translations so we can learn about what we really are singing.  I recommend this product for teachers, parents, Home School teachers, and well anyone who loves good music, loves to dance, and enjoys Spanish.

Pros: AWESOME

Cons: none

My Rating: Thumbs UP

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

Bilingual Children's book review

Details:  This book is in a series to help teach children either Spanish or English.  Specifically this is the third book.  With fun bright cartoon characters, easy simple words and easy simple phrases children will want to read these to help them learn a second language.  The website works along side the books with songs, word searches, audio books, games, puzzles and more.  Easy way to help your children become Bilingual between Spanish and English.  You can buy these for your kindle and tablets through amazon.

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:  The Book review: This is really cool.  This is the second book we've been able to test, try and review from this company.  My kids liked that it was actually a story this time, instead of just pictures with words that are more like flash cards in their minds.  They know the story of Cinderella, so that also helped a lot.  But because my kids are boys, they don't love it.  Again, a great book to use for anyone wanting to be bilingual, to learn English or to learn Spanish.  Teachers, parents, grandparents, and also home school parent's will enjoy using this book, and the whole series.  The last book in this series that I reviewed, the author commented that my review was short.  But when you are reviewing a short paged book there isn't a lot of content to review on.  In summary: this is a great book, and series in general.  I find that its helpful, captivating to read together as a family, or in groups of kids.  We look forwards to seeing more books we can use in our school.

The Website review: We love online resources, and helps, so having another one to add to our bookmarks is great!  My 6 year old loves the website.  He is so excited to learn Spanish in school.  The website is really user friendly, in fact it is even broken up into age groups: kindergarten, first grade all the way up to fifth grade.  As the teacher of a preschooler and a 1st grader I really love using the website games and tools along with the kindle (ebook) book.  Having different tools to help teach brings the love of teaching to the children better.  Its always more enjoyable to teach and learn if there are fun ways to do it.

Pros: fun, easy to use, simple to teach

Cons: none

My Rating: thumbs up for super cute, and fun!