REAL Homeschool Spanish - a TOS review

I was fortunate to try out another Spanish curriculum.  This one is called R.E.A.L Homeschool Spanish and I was duly impressed by its organization. The book is really well laid out.

R.E.A.L  is an acronym for relax, enjoy, aspire, learn Spanish. The program is designed for the whole family to learn together. It is geared toward grades K-8, but according to the website a high school supplement will be available soon.

 
The entire beginning section of the Teacher book includes tips and ideas of how to use the curriculum.  The guide states if there are "35 Vocabulary clusters, and approximately 32-38 ‘school year’ weeks, some highschoolers might be able to comfortably work through the material in one school year...A preschooler and or early elementary school child, could spread the learning out over two and a half to three years."  There is a lot to cover in this R.E.A.L Homeschool Spanish, but there is no rush to get through it. A curriculum planning guide is included to help you spread the material out as best fits your family.

The 35 vocabulary clusters include: greetings, colors, numbers, telling time, food, family, the body, clothes and weather, places, days of the week, transportation, sports, animals, and more.  Grammar and verbs are infused within each unit.

The activity book has a lot of written activities, for which Bear isn't ready, so we simply skipped them; but at least I know I have these to go back to when she is older.

The audio is clear and the speaker is a native Spanish speaker so the accent is authentic. I did find some echo in some of the dialogues.  I didn't end up using the audio because I can speak Spanish and it was more fun to use puppets to act out the dialogues.

There are SO many ideas for ways to proceed with the lesson and introduce the vocabulary.  It isn't scripted.  You can choose which activities will work for your family.  A page or two of ideas follows each unit.  Activities vary for different aged students.  Puppet shows, board games like Candyland but using the vocabulary cards to play, using magazines to find pictures that represent the vocabulary and way, way more.

I like this curriculum so far, but find it challenging to use it off the computer.  I will likely end up printing most of the pages so I can highlight and mark the activities I want to do with the kids.  If I had had to purchase my own copy, I would have opted buy the print version.

R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish is available as a bundle that includes book, activity book, answer book, and audio files.  A download version is available for $49.95 without the daily curriculum guide and $59.95 with the curriculum guide.  A print version is $89.99 w/o curriculum guide and $99.95 with the guide.

Visit the Crew blog to see what other TOS crew members thought of REAL Homeschool Spanish.

Disclaimer: I received this product in exchange for a review.  This is my honest opinion.  No additional compensations were given.