Homeschool Spanish Lessons - Online Learning

Now my homeschool is in its infancy; my kids are nearly 3 and a bit beyond 4, which means I’m doing things like phonics, word building, drawing, and imagination building exercises. But the iPad has exceeded my expectations and is a bit of mind blowing device IMHO.  I’ve installed less than 15 apps for myself; but around 60 so far for my kids. I’m sure I’ll delete some of these as I see what they actually use, and have already found that storybooks which are static with nothing but audio – no matter how beautiful the images – are boring for them. They want to touch everything and make things happen! As an e-learning author I think I’m way behind the eight ball that I’m just discovering how incredible tablet devices are, and more importantly, how they completely change the face of e-learning.

It’s all about the touch – it brings kids into the material in a way that a mouse or pen tablet can’t. It brings material alive and makes the kids feel like they are connected to it.

I agree with several other “mom blogs” that I’m trying to be very careful about not including time wasting things, games being the main thing I’m avoiding. I’ve downloaded a couple of “dress the doll” apps that are probably pretty big time wasters, but my kids love doing the felt storyboard, and we also have a “dress the bears” wooden set that they love, so I wanted to see how that would be on the iPad.

I found a couple of adorable Firemen apps, one that teaches how to dial 911 and give them your address, among other useful things.

The phonics and word building apps are just incredible – I find that my 3 year old is dragging and sounding them out even faster than her older brother…

As I’m trying to teach my kids Italian as their first foreign language, I’ve installed every app and ebook I could find that might be useful for this, but it’s much too early to form an on opinion about how useful these are.  So far flashcard apps seem to be a real bust for kids their age – there is nothing particularly interesting about a static photo with audio, even if it flips over to show something.  Vocabulary learning apps don’t seem to hold much appeal unless they require them to actually do something with the word or letter immediately.

I know that I have to limit the time my kids spend on the iPad, as I don’t want a couple of iPad potatoes  - but I think a 1/2 hour here and there during the day should be about right for now.

I’ve decided to take the plunge and try to port a good portion of our content to mobile devices. Spanish for Android, Spanish for iPad, Spanish for Nook, etc!  This may be a bit ambitious as there is certainly a learning curve in porting your materials to new formats, although Adobe’s new Flex and Flash tools can be a big help, as they contain ways to publish your materials directly to Android and iOs, which is what Apple iPhones and iPads use.

My first endeavor is a simple little app, my Spanish Alphabet for Kids. The first lady who tried installing it on her phone apparently couldn’t, so I do warn you that this is still a bit experimental right now. Users have to have the Adobe Air 2.6 for Android installed, which I fear is still not as widespread as it could be!  You an check this out in the Android Market by clicking here: Spanish Alphabet for Kids. Here is a screenshot:

I recently found myself having to ponder the difference between preschool and daycare, and having to decide which one I wanted for my son.  As a “work at home” mom, it’s always a struggle to try and get a few things done during the day while I watch my 2 toddlers, 2 and 3 1/2.  I’ve actually found that one of the only ways to work at all is to get up 3 or 4 hours before the kids do. But as my son has been asking about going to school, we felt that a preschool environment would be great for him this fall. I visited 7 or 8 places, and registered him at a local Lutheran preschool. Well it turned out there was a large waiting list ahead of me, which I only found out about a few days before school was to begin in September. So I had scrambled a bit, calling some places I had thought about but had not visited. One seemed very nice; a nurturing bilingual environment, in a very clean facility.