Learning Spanish with Speekee

At one point in my life I actually knew a bit of Spanish. I even taught in a bilingual classroom for a year. But after not using it for years, I’ve lost my confidence in speaking Spanish. I’ve always wanted my children to learn Spanish when they were young, as it is easier to pick up, but I’ve not gotten around to it and my now older kids are  12, 11, and 9. So when I was asked to review Speekee Spanish, I was very optimistic that this would be a good fit for our family.

What it Is:

Speeke Spanish is a total-immersion Spanish program for children ages 3-elementary. Through a series of 10 video episodes, children are introduced to Spanish language through songs, puppets, and skits with native Spanish-speaking children. Each episode also contains downloadable worksheets to go along with the lesson.

What We Thought:

When I first showed the video, my 4yr. old thought Speekee (the puppet) was a little scary. That quickly changed though after watching the whole episode.  In fact, my 4yr. old became Speekee’s biggest fan!

 We made Speekee and Lupi stick-puppets to practice some of our Spanish words.

I had all my children use Speekee Spanish. That is one of the biggest pluses of this program! My children ages 2-12 could be learning Spanish using the same product!  Another plus is that the teacher does not need to know Spanish in order to implement this program. There are 10 videos which make can make a full-year’s curriculum. You can see the curriculum overview here . Now the scheme of work is created for schools, but Jim, the developer of this program is currently working on creating a curriculum plan just for homeschoolers. 

“The 40-wk curriculum is to be made up of 4-wk chunks, each with 16 activities. These include watching the pertinent Speekee episode 3 times in all. One of the activity days is left open for 'free practice'. Almost all the activities involve no more than 10 minutes of teacher preparation time.” – Jim from FB

I can’t wait to see that!

We would watch a video each week (because I wanted to be able to see all of them for this review) and then the older kids would work on a worksheet on days we did not view the video. My younger girls begged to watch Speekee all.the.time.  My 4yr. old even figured out how to accesss it on my computer! What really sold me on this program were two events:

1. One day I walked into the homeschool room and my 2yr. old had two stuffed animals and she was repeating one of the Spanish conversations on the videos with her toys. She was saying the words correctly!

2. While driving, I overheard a conversation between my 11yr. old son and 9yr. old daughter:

son: Soy Luke Skywalker.
daughter: Soy Princess Leia
son: Soy sauce!
(He’s such the comedian!)

In a nutshell---I am so pleased with this program! You can check it out for yourself by signing up for the free 2 week trial.  We used the online videos, but you can also purchase a DVD set which also comes with a parent guide (The DVD’s are in PAL format).

Online for one month: $7.50
Speekee main website
Follow Speekee on Facebook
Follow Speekee on Twitter

Disclosure: I was given a two-month free online-trial for review purposes only. I was not required to give a positive review. The opinions stated in this post are mine.