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Childhood Adventures - Set 1 in Spanish

Our Spanish language program is unique because it is whole – easy for teachers to teach, fun for children to learn, proven academically to administrators, and shown to parents to have immediate results they can see and hear right away. Sing ‘n Speak Spanish® gives children a bilingual foundation for their futures.

• Sing ‘n Speak Spanish® is an interactive, music-based Spanish Elementary Curriculum - a proven, complete, five-year curriculum – perfect as a continuing Spanish program starting as early as kindergarten or as late as 8th grade. Continually developed and refined, it has been taught as an after-school enrichment program in over 65 elementary schools to over 8,000 students in San Diego, California (List of San Diego Schools). It has also been chosen as the in-school Spanish program by numerous Spanish teachers nationwide.

• This five-year curriculum is quite versatile - it can be taught to a range of ages and adapted to a variety of in-school, home school, or after-school environments. The Scope & Sequence Chart (K-5) illustrates how perfectly this program fits into a once a week class at elementary schools. The program works equally well if students begin their Spanish education in 4^th grade (Scope & Sequence Chart 4-8) or even in 6^th grade (Scope & Sequence Chart 6-8). In any of these instructional settings, the curriculum can easily be stretched to be a twice a week class by adding cultural themes, crafts, videos, more songs, more reading, and more writing.

• This ready-to-use program has everything you need to begin teaching. The teacher manuals contain 28 to 32 simple-to-follow, detailed, hour-long lesson plans, each with its own dedicated set of colorful laminated teaching aids – making it easy to teach different lessons to different groups of students and still stay organized! Pack your manuals, the teaching aids for the lessons you will be teaching, the music CDs, and any specified puppets – and you are ready to teach! The teaching materials are an excellent investment, as you can use them year after year and save hundreds of hours of prep time.

• Hand TPR (total physical response) is used extensively in vocabulary introduction, sentence building, the teaching of songs, and even in games. With hand TPR, hand signs and gestures are used to represent words - much like in a sign language. This allows teachers to speak Spanish most of the time in the classroom – using English only to ensure the input is comprehensible.

• All activities are highly interactive. The variety of activities in each lesson results in a fast-paced, energetic class that is multisensory and reaches children of all learning styles. Each activity maximizes learning by engaging most of the students actively most of the time. The spiraling-in of previous vocabulary and grammar, so critical for the learning of a new language, has been carefully included in each and every interactive activity.

• Music brings it all together. Spanish is especially beautiful in song, and when children sing the catchy songs over and over again, the repetition they need for long term retention of vocabulary takes place easily – like magic. They also experience a rich part of Hispanic culture, where the lyrics and rhythms communicate images, colors, moods, meanings, and profound emotion. Our program integrates songs into the entire five year curriculum!

• Our adorable puppets play a special role in Year 1 and Year 2 Spanish, bringing a whimsical approach to the lessons – helping children overcome shyness and converse in Spanish with a new-found friend who is often silly and also makes mistakes. The puppets draw attention, relieve tension, and speed interaction. The lessons contain a number of humorous interactive puppet skits that children love. We have carefully assembled a collection of 12 exceptional puppets which children adore and which are available for purchase.

• Each lesson is imbued with humor. The funny visuals, puppet skits, songs, and activities offer a child-like charm that intrigues and tickles children and makes them laugh. When everyone laughs together, it is infectious and welcome. It is a key reason the lessons are so much fun for the students and it makes them come back for more!

• Student materials keep learning alive at home. With a music CD and a companion songbook, students retain the vocabulary and improve their pronunciation as they listen, sing-along, and memorize the songs. An enjoyable workbook keeps all assignments organized in one place, with fun and varied worksheets that allow students to read and write what they have learned in the classroom. The student workbooks are not reproducible. The fun language drilling game, Translation Sensation®, offers additional reinforcement, always with built-in humor to make it fun. The student materials are like having a teaching assistant at home!

• Getting it right is a built-in goal. Through listening, speaking, singing, moving, dancing, playing games, reading or enacting skits and stories, role-playing, and interactive puppetry, the course promotes a feeling of involvement, achievement, and success in children. Children get so absorbed in the variety of diverse activities in Spanish class that time flies by fast! They are a bit startled when class comes to an end. With the Sing 'n Speak Spanish program, children feel good about themselves as they “get it”- and come back for more.

“Sing 'n Speak Spanish® is the only language program, of which I am aware, that fully integrates music into an extensive curriculum that meaningfully integrates vocabulary and idioms as well as language forms and structures."

Norman Léonard, Director of Outreach
Language Acquisition Resource Center
San Diego State University