Great Spanish Workbooks to Use with Kids in Your Homeschool

Many homeschooling parents are interested in teaching a foreign language to their kids. Once the family has chosen the foreign language that they are most interested in learning, they are then faced with the task of finding suitable learning materials. It isn't surprising that many homeschool families are choosing to focus on Spanish as the foreign language to learn, but this homeschooling Mom did find it a bit surprising that finding adequate workbooks for teaching Spanish to kids was not as easy as I'd hoped. In fact, finding Spanish workbooks to use in my home school with elementary aged kids was somewhat difficult. It seemed that most workbooks were really meant for very, very young children, and only taught basic words, such as numbers and colors. Since my children and I had already covered those things, we really needed Spanish workbooks that would allow us to move forward, while still being kid-friendly. I wanted workbooks as opposed to a language program like Rosetta Stone because it is important to me that my children learn to also read and write in a language if they are going to put in all the effort to learn to speak and understand it, and programs like Rosetta Stone don't teach any reading or writing of the language. If you are searching for Spanish workbooks for teaching Spanish in your homeschool, you may want to consider the following workbooks which we eventually decided on.

The Complete Book of Spanish, Grades 1-3, by American Education Publishing - This language workbook really is adequate for kids learning Spanish in their homeschool, and we've found it to contain some pages that can be used with my Preschooler, and others that are great to be used with older kids, all the way up to my 6th Grader. Some of the areas this workbook covers are numbers, colors, days of the week, common animals, as well as vocabulary words associated with school, home, family, clothing, and foods. What I also like about this workbook is that even though it is primarily a vocabulary workbook, it does introduce the concept of verb conjugation, which is a very important aspect of learning the Spanish language. The worksheets are fun and hold a kid's interest. There are word searches, crossword puzzles, and many other colorful, fun activity pages. This is a great workbook to cover the first year of Spanish language in a homeschool environment.

Skills For Success Spanish (Elementary), by Carson-Dellosa Publishing - This Spanish workbook, in my opinion, is great for kids who have already had basic Spanish exposure. For instance, this book will be great for my kids once we finish the book listed first in this article. The Skills for Success Spanish workbook at Elementary level gets more detailed with vocabulary. For instance, rather than just basic home vocabulary words (house, car, bedroom), the vocabulary is more specific to include objects found in specific areas of the home, like the garage and bathroom. This workbook contains vocabulary for specific foods, like french fries and hot dogs, as opposed to generalized groups (vegetables, etc.) I don't see this workbook being very useful for kids in grades lower than 3rd, but that makes it a good workbook to move into after the material in an easier workbook has been mastered.

Skills for Success Spanish (Middle/High School), by Carson-Dellosa Publishing - This workbook is my favorite of the 3 that we purchased, because it focuses a lot on verb conjugation. When I learned Spanish in high school, we studied text pages for conjugation. That was fine for me, because I loved Spanish, but I can see that it wouldn't be all that enticing for a kid who feels only lukewarm about the subject. The nice thing about this particular workbook is that it teaches the same material as a 1st year Spanish text, but in worksheet format that might be a lot more enjoyable for kids. This workbook has stories and games, and as far as I can tell, is, as the title suggests, appropriate for kids in grades 6th -12th.

Each of these workbooks have pages that are easily taken out in order to make copies for all the students in your homeschool. In fact, I'm only giving the kids the copies and keeping the originals clean for now because I will need the pages in the future for my preschooler. All of these workbooks combined really only teach what would be taught in a 1st year Spanish course in high school. I'm still looking for a text and workbooks to move beyond this basic level in our family. But if you have kids in your homeschool who are just starting out in Spanish, these workbooks are the best I've found so far.