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Thursday, September 13, 2012

Speekee TV

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In the Winter of 2011, we were given the opportunity to review an introduction to Spanish course called Speekee TV. Speekee became a favorite at our house fairly quickly. You can read our review by clicking here.

Now it is Fall of 2012. For the last six weeks, we have been reviewing Speekee again.  My kids are about 18 months older than they were when we last reviewed this product. I wondered how they would like the videos, would they still be interested? I am happy to report that, yes, they still like Speekee and have learned from watching the programs.

  • Speekee “The World’s Number 1 Spanish Course for Young Children”
  • Speekee TV – Spanish for Kids online program
  • Designed for ages 2-10
  • $7.50 per month or $60 per year subscription plans
  • Free two week trial is available by clicking here.
  • No minimum subscription periodSpeekee

Who is Speekee?

Speekee is the purple puppet pictured above. She is the main character in a series of 10 videos designed to give kids an introduction to speaking Spanish. Speekee, along with Dino, Lupe (sock puppets), and a group of all age kids, sing and dance while your child does the listening and learning.  Each Speekee video is filmed in Spain using real Spanish speaking children. The Speekee program originates from the UK (Britain) and the Spanish taught is Spanish as spoken in Spain.

The videos were created by Jim Porter and are just the tip of the iceberg for the Speekee program. Jim Porter has broken the videos down into segments and provided a scheme of work with worksheets and activities to cover two years. There are 10 videos in all and each one is broken down into four weeks of activities. To make the program even more user friendly, he has also provided “Fast Track”. 

Fast Track is a weekly e-mail with everything you need to have a week of Spanish learning. It has a link to the video for the week, as well as daily activities. One nice feature of the Fast Track e-mail involves the dialogue from the video written out for you to practice with your child. This helps with planning out using each lesson during the week. From the Fast Track screen, the worksheets for each lesson are also available to print. The addition of Fast Track has made this a very easy to use program.

The music is catchy and the lyrics are fairly easy to learn.  You can have the option to have they lyrics printed at the bottom of the screen or keep them off completely. The action on the screen, along with the hearing of the Spanish are what helps your kids learn. Most of the time we kept the written lyrics off, so the kids were not distracted by the words scrolling along the bottom of the page.

The Speekee program is designed for ages 2-10. We are at the older end of the age group with a 9 and 10 year old using the program. My kids enjoyed it tremendously when we reviewed it before, and once again liked hearing the catchy music. One thing I noticed with my older kids was they wanted to go faster than the Fast Track program had them going. They wanted to do one video per week, instead of stretching each video out over four weeks.  This could also have been a result of having reviewed this program before and the kids knowing which videos were their favorites and wanting to get to them.

I would recommend the Speekee TV program for a great, gentle, and fun introduction to the Spanish language. I think it is ideal for pre-schoolers and early elementary ages. I find my kids and even myself singing the songs from the videos randomly throughout the day.

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Many of my Schoolhouse Review Crew also reviewed the Speekee program. Click on the banner above to read what they thought about the program for their children.

Disclaimer:  As an Independent contractor for The Old Schoolhouse and member of the Schoolhouse Review Crew I received a subscription to Speekee TV for free from Speekee in exchange for my honest review of their product.  All opinions given are mine and/or my children’s.

1 comment:

Jim said...

Hola Jill, This is Jim from Speekee checking in to say a big GRACIAS for your review. Much appreciated!