FORGOT YOUR DETAILS?

The Old Schoolhouse® Product & Curriculum Reviews

With so many products available we often need a little help in making our curriculum choices. The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine family understands because we are in the same boat! Do you need more information on a product before you buy? With over 5,500 products listed in 52 easy-to-use categories, much of the information you need to know is only a click away! Let our reviewer-families help yours.
Do you want to get the word out about your product or service to the homeschool community? Email Jenny Higgins and share a little about what you´d like showcased, and we can help with that!

CASA Fun Club Spanish Review by Carissa Ruiz

Rita Amador
CASA Fun Club-Rita Amador Publishing
(925) 456-4755
Livermore, CA 94551
http://www.casafunclub.com

CASA Fun Club Spanish is a Spanish curriculum for young children to high school age. It was created to be an inexpensive, fun, interactive way for parents to teach Spanish to their kids.

The levels are from beginning to advanced level, for grades K-12.

Preschool Spanish: Parts I & II

Introduction to the Basics: Parts I-IV
Beginners Spanish Level 1: Parts I-IV
Beginners Spanish Level 2: Parts I-III

Introduction to Intermediate Spanish
Intermediate Spanish 1: Parts I-II
Introduction to Intermediate Spanish 2
Intermediate Spanish 2: Parts I-II

Introduction to Advanced Spanish
Advanced Spanish 1: Parts I & II
Advanced Spanish 2: Parts III & IV
Advanced Spanish 3: Parts V & VI

Spanish for Traveling and Missionary Work
Spanish for Daily Living and the Work Place
CASA Fun Club Review!  

To know what level is right for your child, contact the company.

CASA Fun Club Spanish has a parent guide that explains how to teach the program, provides instructions on how to play the games, shows you how to create a weekly lesson plan, an answer key, and gives helpful tips about Spanish that a non-Spanish speaking parent may need to know.

It also comes with a set of color worksheets for the students, a CD to help with vocabulary and pronunciation of words and phrases, a CD of songs, flash cards for games and building vocabulary, and short story booklets to read to the child in order to expand their knowledge about the Latino culture.

Each week there is a new lesson. It is then recommended that you do four days of review, utilizing the worksheets, songs, games, and booklets for about 10-20 minutes a day.  

This program has many components that many homeschool parents are looking for when searching for a foreign language program that they themselves do not speak. It has songs, games, reviews, and is geared towards the parent who cannot speak the language. Plus, it also has a Christian component geared towards evangelizing Spanish speaking people.

One day this will be a great program, as long as it is more developed. Here are some of the issues I found with it. First, in the beginning of the program, it had a complicated learning curve. It took me a few weeks to figure out how the program was supposed to work. I had to bring my kids in to help me understand how to teach the program, even on the second week of trying to figure it out. The program gives an example lesson plan for week one and two. I wish it would have given a lesson plan and clear objectives for each lesson. Trying to put together how each week was supposed to be taught was complicated and overwhelming to figure out. Next, many of the vocabulary cards need to be redrawn as many looked like it could be the same word, for instance, there were four cards with four different houses, to represent the words house, second story, garage, driveway. And we all kept thinking each picture was for "casa" (which means "house" in Spanish) and when we played the matching games we were constantly mismatching the wrong word for the wrong card because the pictures were confusing to us. Then, there was the music CD which needs to be done more professionally, with less guitar and shakers on the microphones so we could hear the Spanish words more clearly. Also note, the booklet that comes with the Spanish words to the songs is printed out of order, but I can overlook that, as on the next printing I am sure that will be cleared up. Also, on the other CD of vocabulary, it would be helpful if there was an index the parent could follow so we know where to start on the CD. I spent too much time skipping around the CD, trying to figure out where we needed to be. Then, there were the many booklets to flip through to figure out which lesson went with which objective, and it became confusing.

Overall, we liked the idea and prospects of this program. We all agreed the games were fun and continue to play them as we fixed the pictures ourselves. My daughter was the only kid who liked the songs, as the boys whined, "Oh no, not the songs."   They all thought the worksheets were easy and the word list each week was not too much for them to learn. However, they did have to wait on me many times as I was trying to figure out what to do next. At this point I am not sure I would recommend it to a new homeschooling family, or to someone who doesn't know Spanish, but if the problems it has now are fixed, and there is more step-by-step instructions for the parents, and there are not so many booklets to go through, then this will be a great interactive program to learn Spanish. Plus, the whole family can learn it together, and go and minister to Spanish-speaking people.

Product Review by Carissa Ruiz, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, Dec, 2011

TOP