Planning Spanish

As I wrote yesterday, my big focus for this year is Spanish.  I speak at a high intermediate level but have had great difficulty adding Spanish effectively into our homeschool and home, particularly with Bug.  

One thing I want to introduce into our homeschool this year is Spanish skits and short plays.  I am going to try and get my boys to memorize several throughout the year and perform them for their dad (or grandparents, etc).  I think this will be a good way to get them more comfortable speaking in sentences. 

I have some books of short plays by Teacher Created Materials that I hope to use, but they are a little bit long and complicated to start out with.  They are also not really designed for kids learning Spanish; they are intended as Spanish readers for Spanish speaking kids.  They look like a lot of fun though--I am just worried about overwhelming Bug, who is only 7 and can be insecure about speaking Spanish. 

I was delighted to find some great skits at Teachers pay Teachers.  I spent $18 to download 18.  I was nervous about spending that much without seeing any of the skits, but the bundle had really good reviews, and I am very pleased with them.  I think they will be a lot of fun and will surely be enough material for the semester. 

My daily plan will look like this (to be done 3 days a week):

1)  We will sing 3 Spanish songs, rotating songs each month. 
2)  I will read them a short Spanish book (on toddler level).
3) We will do a quick calendar time on the dry erase board. 
4)  We will work with vocabulary cards, rotating themes each month. 
5)  We will practice some Spanish questions, from my Risas and Sonrisas curriculum. 
6)  Journaling (they will illustrate a Spanish sentence in a journal). 
7)  We will work on a skit. 

On Friday we will skip everything but the singing, book, and skit and play a game.  We may possibly also watch a video in Spanish.  

I am not sure if this will be too much, but I want to spend at least an hour on Spanish, and most of the things won't take too long.  If it is too much, I will adjust as needed. 

In addition, we will be listening to Spanish songs in the car, which is something we have always done regularly in the past. 

All of this Spanish during the school day should get me in "Spanish mode" and speaking more to them during our daily life. 

I am really hopeful that this works out.  I'll try and write at the end of the semester about how it went.