Spanish --- instead of Rosetta Stone

[AAK]

My dd (grade 6) has been using Rosetta Stone for Spanish this year.  At first, this method seemed great.  She was picking it up easily.  However, once we got to January, her progress slowed significantly and her frustration level grew.  I don't speak Spanish, but could help her a little.  Mostly she gets really confused with the different conjugations of verbs.  I showed her a typical conjugation chart (from my French learning days) and she said, "why can't they just show me that!"  Since then, she has been requesting a more "traditional" approach.  I still want her to be able to hear the language a lot too.  Is there a program that blends the traditional and immersion methods?  She has always been interested in Spanish and has been listening to it since preschool through cds of songs, muzzy, etc. She took an immersion based camp which she loved (I thought immersion would be great for her).  But, she is more of a sequential learner.  She doesn't want to give up Spanish, but she needs either a class (where a teacher can answer questions) or a different program to use at home.  She is all but refusing to use Rosetta stone.  We have also used BBC in the past.

Amy

[2mama]

Look and see if your library subscribes to Mango Language Learning.  It is all on-line and free.  Our ds likes it much better than Rosetta Stone (which is bummer since we own it)..

[AAK]

Thanks!  2mama, how does Mango Language differ from Rosetta Stone.  Our library doesn't subscribe to it, but the Mango website does have personal subscriptions too.   Are there some key differences to why your ds likes it better than Rosetta Stone?

Amy

Edited by AAK - 5/15/12 at 11:20am

[onatightrope]

Tagging a question on to this thread: I've been looking at Spanish for Children by Classical Academic Press.  It has a dvd portion, but it's highly structured and does a lot with grammar.  I'm looking at it because I don't want a curriculum that only teaches a handful of vocabulary the way so many elementary Spanish programs do, but my child who is asking for Spanish isn't ready for high school level work.  

Has anyone used this?  It gets mixed reviews over on the Well Trained Mind forums.  

[EmilyC78705]

I like Spanish for Kids, it's a full Spanish curriculum created by a Spanish teacher for young children! 

http://www.spanishforkids.com/index.php?aff_id=3

[momomad]

We like the DVDs and workbooks from Northern Arizona University.  But we're only in the middle of the Grades 3-4 of Elementary Spanish at Home so far.  They have a program for middle school too (Educacion Espanola) but since we haven't reached that level yet I can't say how good it is.  I like that my DD can watch the DVD and then do the workbook on her own.  They also have it on Dish Network but I like having the actual DVDs so she can watch them again when she wants.  The Elementary Spanish program is about $120 for 50 lessons, so I think it's very reasonable.  The website is http://esp.extended.nau.edu/

Hope that helps someone.