Speaking Spanish with Miss Mason
This is the issue. My husband and I speak Spanish. Spanish was my minor in college. You would think it would be easy for me to teach Spanish to my kids just by talking to them and letting them “pick it up.” But you would be wrong.
Spanish is not my husband’s nor my native tongue and we didn’t want our kids growing up internalizing bad Spanish – so we’re using a simple curriculum, with several aids along the way, to help them learn to communicate with their neighbors.
Charlotte Mason and Foreign Language
CM encourages French
Alot of CM guides will recommend French as a second language. I’m fairly certain this is because Miss Mason lived in England and their closest neighbors were the French.
I did, in fact, let my daughter try to learn French one year. I bought a simple curriculum and tried to help her along – but…I don’t speak French and did not care to learn. My daughter did not have any French speakers to practice with – so now she’s back on Spanish like the rest of us.
We live in Texas
Applying the CM principles to our own lives, we can look and see who our nearest neighbors are and learn their language.
Our closest neighbor is Mexico and we attend a bilingual church, so Spanish made sense for our family. My kids get to practice with native speakers several times per week.
Many resources available
The truth is, whatever language you pick for your students to learn, there are so many resources available.
Charlotte Mason’s method is meant to mirror the way we learn our first language: hearing, speaking, and then writing.
The easiest book I have found is Speaking Spanish with Miss Mason and Francois.
How we use Speaking Spanish with Miss Mason
Theme Phrase
Me Levanto
For example, on page 9 of our book, the phrase at the top is “Me Levanto” followed by some other phrases about getting up and dressed in the morning.
The weeks we did page, we acted out getting up, brushing hair, etc. while saying the words.
Secondary Topic
Dias de la Semana
The secondary topic for this page is the days of the week, so we practiced saying these days in Spanish.
We spend time reviewing previous topics as well. When we review the days of the week, we will do an art project – making a calendar with pictures of what we do on each day.
You Tube
Senor Jordan and Amigos
My kids learn alot through music and I am not creative enough to make up songs for every subject.
Enter Senor Jordan and other You Tube creators like him. There is great content out there that can help your kids learn.
We spend a week or two on each page and go back to review every so often. I also own several children’s books in Spanish, and we pick one to read once a week or so. Reading the children’s book together is not my kids’ favorite activity, but it is helping them learn Spanish so we are sticking with it.