Our Bilingual (Spanish/English) Homeschool Curriculum for 2020-2021

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Homeschool Bilingual Curriculum First Grade.JPG

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Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that I now have a first-grader!

Thanks to the Coronavirus, we started this school year a bit earlier than planned. Our initial plan was to finish kindergarten in mid-April and take a month-long break (since early summer in DC is gorgeous), but when our governor issued a quarantine order in mid-March, I decided to just keep trucking instead.

I ordered our curriculum at the start of our quarantine and we’re now about two months into first grade. We’re still hoping to host a kindergarten graduation party once the stay-at-home order is lifted—and I can’t wait to see our little guy all decked out in his cap and gown. Yay, Xavi!

So, what are we using this year for our bilingual homeschool? Here are my curriculum choices:

History and Literature

We are continuing our journey with Sonlight, following a successful kindergarten year with their materials. We’re currently in Core A, and I’m supplementing (and substituting) some of the English language read-alouds for books in Spanish, so that we can (more-or-less) follow the program bilingually. My three-year-old sits in on our Sonlight readings most mornings, so I’ve included classic picture books, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes in Spanish so that he has something to enjoy.

Here are the Spanish language books that we’re including this year:

*These are translations, but I’m okay with that. While I do go out of my way to find literature originally written in Spanish, given that those books can be very hard to find, I don’t turn up my nose at a good translation. And by the way, if you’re looking for more of our family’s favorite Spanish-language books, you’ll find them in the resource library!

Reading

We’re sticking with All About Reading (AAR). After spending our entire kindergarten year on Level One, we are now moving through Level Two at a very nice clip.

At the end of this year, we’ll start reading instruction in Spanish as well. I’ve got a copy of the workbook Mi método de lectura to teach basic phonics rules in Spanish and I’m going to use some of the multi-sensory ideas from AAR to practice them. I’m pretty sure there will be a mutiny if we do too many worksheets here, so I definitely want to keep that element as light as possible. I’m also gathering copies of Scholastic’s Cuentos fonéticos for authentic reading practice (tip: they are much cheaper from Scholastic—Amazon’s prices are crazy!).

Math

We’re continuing to use RightStart Math, moving onto Level B. I’ve also incorporated some math in Spanish into our Morning Time. Specifically, we’re practicing the following skills in both languages:

  • Months of the year

  • Days of the Week

  • Counting to 100

  • Telling Time

  • Naming shapes and geometric solids

Handwriting

We’re chugging along with Handwriting Without Tears in English, but I’ll likely switch to the Spanish language workbooks at the end of the year, as Xavi starts reading in Spanish. It doesn’t hurt to have a little extra reinforcement!

Science

Exploring Nature With Children from Raising Little Shoots

I am so excited to use this curriculum. While we love our local nature center and its classes, I also wanted to do something more formal this year to increase my kids’ understanding of the natural world (and mine!). This curriculum is the perfect introduction to nature study and I expect to use it for the next two years or so. We’re substituting most of the recommended materials with resources in Spanish and although I was initially worried that the curriculum (which is quite comprehensive!) would be too much for me to handle, I’m finding that its pick-and-choose style really works for us.

Indescriptible by Louis Giglio

I’ll be including this book of 100 short devotions (available in English and Spanish) in our Morning Time over the course of the year to help my children learn more about God’s power in the natural world. I suppose I had better start reading it soon, however, since Giglio is publishing a follow-up book (¡Cuan grande es nuestro Dios!) in October.

Religious Education

I have happily outsourced daily Bible study to my husband, who is currently going through the Book of Mark with our oldest two. This is the first book of the Bible that we’ve read to them from an “adult” translation (i.e. not a storybook Bible) and so far, it’s going well.

We’ll also be reading The Young Defenders Series by Melissa Cain Travis—an apologetics series for kids—to round out their religious studies.

* This is the only book of this series currently available in Spanish; I keep hoping they’ll translate the others before we get to them this year!

Morning Basket

We manage to squeeze in a few more subjects alongside our morning read-alouds, including:

  • Portuguese: Talkbox.mom serves as a spine for our Portuguese learning, and I supplement with weekly iTalki tutoring (here’s my full review of iTalki for homeschool—we love it!) and other resources. If you’re interested in using Talkbox.mom for yourself, I’ve got a discount code for you: get $20 off your first Talkbox.mom box by using the code languagelearning20 or $5 off a phrase book with the code languagelearning5.

  • Art Appreciation: Last year, I picked up a copy of Historia del Arte: relatos para niños and it has been worth every penny. Its short stories help bring art history to life and the translation is solid. This year, my husband and I picked six artists to study, and I’ll be using those stories, alongside some prints and picture books from the library, to introduce them to our kids.

  • Music Appreciation: We’ve chosen six composers to study and we’ll be listening to their music during dinner (using my beloved Amazon Music Unlimited Subscription) and reading picture books from the library.

Other Spanish-Language Curriculum Options

If you’d like to see what we’ve used in past years, check out these posts:

If you’re looking for other Spanish-language curricula for your own children, here are a few resources to consider:

  • Rod and Staff — complete Christian curriculum available entirely in Spanish for grades K-8

  • Nobis Pacem — Charlotte Mason-inspired Catholic curriculum available entirely in Spanish

  • Lemonhass — literature-based Christian curriculum available entirely in Spanish

  • Educazion — self-directed, online Christian curriculum available entirely in Spanish

What are you using this year? Let me know in the comments if you’ve found great bilingual resources for your family!