Homeschool Spanish Curriculum: Calico Spanish

Before I wrote this review, I had the pleasure of working with Calico Spanish Homeschool Learning Series Level A. What a great program! You can learn more about the curriculum on the Calico Spanish website.

In the years since this review was published, the Calico Spanish Stories program has moved to an online format with 4 levels and 200+ hours of planned lesson content- and homeschoolers still save 68%.

Designing a good homeschool Spanish curriculum is difficult. The content has to be engaging and effective. The structure and presentation must also help parents who are not familiar with the language successfully teach their children.

In other words, designing a quality homeschool Spanish curriculum means building into the materials much of what an experienced teacher does in Spanish in the classroom. That is a complicated task!

Calico Spanish has a wonderful homeschool Spanish program that does exactly that and also makes learning Spanish lots of fun.

See our list of resources with Spanish lesson plans and more elementary Spanish curriculum reviews.

Children Learn Spanish with Calico

• Calico selects and structures the material so that children have enough exposure to master it. There are lots of fun, engaging activities so kids can practice again and again.
• Vocabulary and structures repeat in meaningful contexts and spiral through the program. Kids learn lots of Spanish! Rather than overwhelm kids, Calico homeschool Spanish makes sure they retain what they learn and can use Spanish to communicate.
• With these materials, kids understand and learn Spanish because there is a logical context and pictures. With this comprehensible input, kids learn by associating sound with meaning. This is much more effective than only translating from English.
• Children use Spanish in full sentences and natural conversations. Kids do not simply label pictures. Instead, with this homeschool Spanish program they understand and communicate information.
• Kids hear lots of native speaker audio. This audio makes it easy for children to absorb and reproduce the sounds of Spanish. With Calico Spanish, they acquire correct pronunciation.

Favorite Features of Homeschool Spanish by Calico

You can read all about this homeschool Spanish curriculum on the Calico website. Here, I’ll highlight my favorite features of the materials.

Teacher’s Guide

The teacher’s guide is a fabulously usable set of lesson plans. It has complete plans to teach 89 days of Spanish class in a very easy-to-read format.

Student Activity Book

In the student activity book, kids practice writing in Spanish. There is lots of repetition of each of the basic structures they are practicing. I love that everything they write is a full sentence.

Story Books

These sturdy little books provide the comprehensible input kids need to understand new language. The stories are great for then asking questions so kids use the language.

Songs

The songs teach language and culture, but they are also pretty, singable music. My favorite is La lluvia. It’s just darling!

Video Stories and Dialogs

The video stories and dialogs create a controlled immersion experience. These videos are designed so that kids understand what they hear. The program then provides enough repetition for kids to be able to speak Spanish.

There are additional materials in the curriculum, and you can find supplemental resources at CalicoSpanish.com. I am sure you and your kids will have your own favorite features of this program. There is a lot to love in the Calico Spanish Homeschool Learning Series.

For additional language learning resources and strategies, follow Calico Spanish on Facebook and Twitter. You can also follow the Calico Spanish YouTube channel which has lots of great videos.

Disclosure: The company sent me a copy of this product to be able to write the article. I may have been compensated for my time. All of the ideas and opinions are my own.