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Thursday, May 3, 2012

All Bilingual Press Spanish Curriculum


Welcome back to Day Three of Spanish Language Learning Week on MommyMaestra!

Today’s Spanish curriculum comes from All Bilingual Press (ABP).

This company was founded by a family of language teachers. Born in Argentina, Rita Wirkala also lived in Brazil before moving to the United States. She has raised three trilingual daughters – also teachers – who have collaborated with her to create the All Bilingual Press Spanish curriculum.

ABP offers three different curricula:


Español para los chiquitos is geared for children ages 4 to 7. This is a predominantly audio-visual course. (More about this in a minute.)

Español para chicos y grandes has two versions:

    • Level 1 is an interactive Spanish course for children and parents. It focuses on audio comprehension and interaction.
    • Level 2 is for elementary and middle schools. It was designed to follow Level 1 and incorporates more culture information.
A while back I contacted ABP and asked about reviewing one of their programs. We settled on Español para los chiquitos since many of the parents who have asked me about Spanish programs are ones with really small children.

This course is probably the most economical one I have looked at. For somewhere in between $50 to $70, you can purchase the books and CDs. (It varies because you can purchase the books separately and leave one out, if you prefer.)

As I mentioned, this curriculum is primarily audio-visual in nature and comes with a textbook, 2 CDs, an activity book, a parent-teacher guide, and an optional (audio)book of poems.

The guide provides minimal instruction. Because the activities are pretty short and self- explanatory, or described on the CD, the guide mostly offers suggestions for presenting the vocabulary or ideas for games and other activities.

There are 12 units covering the basics (days of the week, family members, body parts, numbers, etc.). The textbook comes with 2 CDs that are to be used together with the activities in the textbook. The activity book is mostly made up of flashcards that kids can cut out and color, as well as some bingo sheets.

Overall, I found it to be a nice as an introductory curriculum for preschoolers and kindergartners, or as a supplemental curriculum for elementary students.

Con mucho cariño…