Our Homeschool Summer Spanish Plans, Schedule, and Curriculum (First Grade and Jr. Kindergarten)
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The 2020-2021 school year is a wrap!
Sort of.
We have finished our official first grade bilingual homeschool curriculum and are moving into our summer term. At our house, we school year-round for three main reasons:
So I can avoid stressing out about curriculum timelines;
So my kids don’t experience “summer slide”; and
So we can fit in extra Spanish practice and literacy development.
This year, I have an 8-week long summer session planned, and then we’ll have a two-week break before starting up with our new school year. Here’s what we’ll be doing in that time:
Morning Time: “Living Legends” and Lelu Spanish + STEAM
Four days a week, we will be using the brand-new bilingual homeschool curriculum “Living Legends: Latin America” to dive deep into Latin American culture. It’s a comprehensive resource that covers: history, geography, literature, art, poetry, and music in Spanish and English.
And, who is the author of this curriculum, you might ask? Surprise: it’s me!
I’ve spent the past few months writing this curriculum and beta testing it in bits and pieces with my kids. This summer, I’ll be sharing our experience on Instagram as I go through it with my kids.
I hope to have the curriculum ready to offer to the homeschooling community by mid-July—and if you’d like to know when it’s finally released (and get access to special launch day deals), make sure you’re on my mailing list!
On the days that we’re not doing “Living Legends,” we’ll be doing our LELU Box for STEAM + Spanish learning. Our first Lelu box was such a hit (here’s my full Lelu Box review) that the boys begged me to continue, and so we will!
Lelu’s monthly bilingual boxes provide our family with the kind of hands-on activities that my kids love to do (and that I struggle to prepare on my own) and they’re a great source of Spanish input. We learned a ton of new vocabulary and ideas from our first architecture-themed box, and I can’t wait to see what we’ll learn with their summer program focused on space exploration, the Olympic Games, and carnivals!
If you’d like to check out Lelu STEAM + Spanish for yourself and what they’re offering this summer, you can do so here (and don’t forget to enter my discount code (LANGUAGELEARNING) for 10 percent off the subscription of your choice.
Spanish Language Arts: Independent Reading
In the afternoons, I’ll be spending time with my oldest focusing on reading and writing in Spanish. We’re using the following books for reading practice (in order of difficulty):
Scholastic’s Cuentos Fonéticos
This pack of 36 phonetic readers is great for students who have learned to read in Spanish using the syllabic method (which is how reading is usually taught in Spanish and which we did through the worktext Mi método de lectura). They are short, non-intimidating stories for reading practice, which build in complexity as students learn more and more syllables (think “Bob Books in Spanish”). We’ve already gone through the first half of these, but I expect to finish the rest within a few weeks.
By the way, homeschooling families can save money on this set of readers by signing up for a teacher’s account through Scholastic (I checked that it’s okay!). I did this myself by creating a teacher account, and calling Scholastic to confirm my enrollment; once they put me in their system, I was able to save $70 on the list price of this set. It’s worth the extra 10 minutes of work—truly.
Cinco ovejitas by Andrés and Ana Guerrero
This book is from the early reader series published by Ediciones SM, entitled “El barco de vapor blanca” (the color refers to the level of difficulty). It’s super simple to read, but I’m okay with that—I like that my new reader gets to have some easy wins before beginning the challenging books!
Un beso para Osito by Elise Minark
Did you know that the beloved Little Bear books are available in Spanish translations? Well, they are! I don’t mind using translations as long as they’re well done, and these are. We’ve managed to score all of these at book sales and Little Free Libraries
Días con Sapo y Sepo by Arnold Lobel
We are huge Arnold Lobel fans in our house, so why not read him in Spanish? Reading a familiar book in a second language can be great way to increase a language learners’ reading confidence, and that’s just what I hope to accomplish with this one.
Rafi y Rosi: ¡Piratas! by Lulu Delacre
There are a number of installments in Delacre’s Rafi and Rosi series, which follows the adventures of a pair of sibling tree frogs, and I’m really hoping their a hit with my oldest! These books are the perfect bridge from short stories to longer chapter books and I love that they were originally written in Spanish. It’s not always possible to read authentic literature, but I try to include it in our homeschool whenever we can.
Spanish Language Arts: Writing
Per the recommendation of other bilingual homeschooling families, I’m using the curriculum Yabisí Español from Vista Higher Learning. I honestly need to do some more work to fit this into our schedule, but I’ll let you know how it goes!
Spanish Language Arts: Handwriting
After two years of trying to make Handwriting Without Tears work for our family, we’ve jumped ship. My main issue with HWOT is that it uses only two lines, which proved maddening to both my son and I. He struggled to know where to start “tall” letters, and I hated having to remind him “start at the top” when there was no top!
We’re changing to Zaner-Bloser—which has the traditional three lines and dots to indicate where to start your letters—and will be beginning cursive in Spanish this summer. Here’s the second grade Spanish handwriting curriculum we’re using—we’re two weeks in now, and it’s already been much smoother than HWOT.
Lunchtime Portuguese: TalkBox.Mom
We keep Portuguese lessons going through the summer so that my kids can keep learning in their third language as well. Right now, we’re working on practicing our TalkBox.Mom phrases over lunch (here’s my review of TalkBox.Mom for homeschooling families) and then, my kids watch a show in Portuguese as a reward. Their current favorites are Galinha Pintadinha Mini and O Show da Luna, both available on YouTube.
Math Facts Review
This isn’t in Spanish, but I couldn’t give up the chance to promote the math curriculum we’re using this summer: Kate Snow’s Math Facts That Stick series. We’re using the Addition Facts That Stick and Subtraction Facts That Stick books. I’m not associated with Kate in any way, I just think she’s an excellent curriculum writer who uses the absolute best practices to teach elementary math, and I highly recommend everything she does!
Other Spanish-Language Curriculum Options
If you’d like to see what we’ve used in past years, check out these posts:
If you’re looking for other Spanish-language homeschool curricula for your own children, here are a few resources to consider:
Rod and Staff — complete Christian curriculum available entirely in Spanish for grades K-8
Nobis Pacem — Charlotte Mason-inspired Catholic curriculum available entirely in Spanish
Lemonhass — literature-based Christian curriculum available entirely in Spanish
Educazion — self-directed, online Christian curriculum available entirely in Spanish
What are you doing to keep language learning going this summer? If you’re still searching for ideas, by the way, here’s a blog post I’ve written about keeping summer language learning fun (and consistent!).
