Have a Spanish Tutor but Need Some Educational Materials
I am looking for recommendations for resources/educational materials for a high school Spanish tutor to use in sessions with my 9 year old daughter. My daughter has been begging to learn Spanish for about 6-8 months so we finally set her up with Duolingo. She does about 15-30 mins most days after school. I recently got in touch with a high school senior who normally tutors math but is willing to give Spanish a go with my daughter. The tutor speaks Spanish fluently and learned in her immersion program, kinder-8th grade (English is her first language). She was hesitant about tutoring at first because she said she never took actual Spanish lessons and learned only through immersion. My main goal is for my daughter to have a human being who speaks Spanish and English fluently to help her get comfortable saying words out loud and conversing. I told the tutor I didn’t expect her to provide any lessons or materials and she and my daughter could just go through lessons on Duolingo together and I would try to get my hands on some other resources for lessons. I’m hoping for some recommendations on materials that can be used by the tutor to go through with my daughter. I’m open to any kind—workbooks, videos, etc. I’m also open to ideas/opinions about other resources my daughter could go though independently without the tutor. Thank you BPN community!
Parent Replies
I was in the same boat as you, had a tutor, but had no materials. I spent DOZENS of hours searching. The majority of the stuff that's out there for kids only scratches the surface: numbers, colors, numbers, animals, shapes, but it's almost impossible to find anything out there that would string together words to help a kid make a phrase or sentence.
If you want text books, you can look for those published by Santillana. That is what my Spain Spanish friend says they used back home, and I see it also in the bookstore around me. If you can't find it, try ebay.
For one-off worksheets, this is what I use quite a bit. https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/whats-new-spanish.html . It's $24/year for access to something like 30k different kinds of worksheets for all topics, and they have Spanish versions for some of them.
I've bought storybooks that the Spanish tutor can read to my kid in Spanish, and my kid likes it when it's a story that we already know in English, so something like Green Eggs and Ham, Frog and Toad, go over well.
I bought Beautiful Mundo for $70, which is supposed to be a 36 weeks worth of program. I wouldn't recommend it, it's full of fluff. Each week there are recommended activities to do with your kid in Spanish, and then there are 43 pages of white lines for your kid to write stories, 64 pages of lines for your kid to copy some Spanish phrases, 30 pages of "resources" which are basically the Spanish alphabet letters and dots for kids to count, etc.
I've bought worksheets off of teachers pay teachers, a few dollars each. The teachers I've bought from are Hilda Escamilla, Lectura Para Ninos, Mrs G Dual Language.
I try to keep my kid away from screens. But we've watched videos from "Fabricando" on youtube. It's a channel that shows you how things are made.
I have really appreciated zooming with Spanish teachers from Guatemala. It's inexpensive ($10 - $15/hour). If you tell the school that you are willing to following the suggestions of the teacher. Maybe your kid will want to just have a conversation with the teacher (they are remarkable at facilitating a conversation in Spaish even if it's limited) or games.
I like this school (all of the in-person schools have developed on-line classes, as well). onlineplq [at] gmail.com Proyecto Linguistico Quetzeltenango
Try a class and see how your daughter likes the teacher and zooming.
Hi, take a look at Mama Llama Linguist, Llamitas Spanish Curriculum. I haven’t used it yet, but it looks promising. Hoping to use it in the summer.
Hello! Check out the social organization inoma // https://inoma.mx
they developed games to help kids learn Spanish (Maths, Science, etc) to aid the ones that need extra help. It’s FREE, as it’s main focus is for kids that need help in school, you can choose the ones your kid might get most out of.
the games are in the platform https://m.taktaktak.com/home
you can navigate the games there.
a couple sites i've found resources on are spanishkidstuff.com and spanishmama.com, though I wasn't looking for exactly what you are.
e.g. I love this Spanish wheels on the bus classroom lesson plan: https://www.spanishkidstuff.com/lesson-plans/wheels-on-the-bus-lesson-p… and they have a bunch more.
I haven't used her worksheets, but have consulted her spanish board book lists, and she seems to have a good teaching approach: https://spanishmama.com/teaching-spanish/
Reading lots of library books in Spanish has been great -- maybe daughter and tutor can go together to pick out books.