Product Description

A unique learning experience geared to the way children learn best.

The biggest hurdle young children face when learning a new language is stringing words together into coherent sentences. Developmental psychologist and veteran language teacher Maurice Hazan has created an ingenious new way to help kids over that hurdle. The I Can Read and Speak series makes learning fun with an exciting combination of dramatic action, pictures, sounds, symbols and learning activities including flash cards and stickers. Kids are introduced to 60 new words that are used in simple illustrated stories. Learning activities at the end of each story encourage kids to re-create the sentences and create new sentences of their own, using specially designed flash-card symbols. Each book includes:

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #246882 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-28
• Format: Abridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 64 pages

From the Back Cover

Kids learn to read and speak—immediately!

The biggest hurdle kids face when learning Spanish is stringing together individual words and phrases to make complete sentences. Now I Can Read and Speak Spanish gets children, ages four to nine not only reading and understanding complete sentences in Spanish but creating their own—from the very first lesson!

An exciting combination of dramatic action, pictures, sounds, symbols, and learning activities, I Can Read and Speak Spanish is a unique learning experience that makes getting the hang of Spanish fun and easy with:

• Colorfully illustrated stories that introduce kids to fifty new words
• Activities to help kids recreate story sentences and make new ones of their own
• Flash cards and stickers that make sentence and story creation fun and easy
• Lively storybook narration (on audio CD) that provides correct pronunciations and step-by-step guidance that lets kids work with little or no help from a grownup

About the Author

Maurice Hazan has been teaching languages in St. Louis for more than a decade. He developed the Symtalk method, featured in this book and used in schools across the country, based on his teaching experiences and his studies in developmental psychology.

Customer Reviews

Great for Beginners and those starting to make sentences in Spanish
My 5 year old and I started learning Spanish together. We tried multiple books, CD's, etc., which did not help. This book is one that actually taught us a lot, and we retained what we learned. Since the same picture is repeated every time a particular Spanish word is used, there is visual reinforcement of the word. I would highly recommend this book for beginners.

From a teacher, this is pretty neat!
As a Spanish teacher and Spanish curriculum author (Flip Flop Spanish), I'm always looking for great tools to pull out in my classes and keep things fresh and interesting. This is a neat book! You cut out all the little cards inside, and then use the cues to put together your own sentences. I haven't yet used the CD.

My own children did not jump at the chance to use these cards, but once I sat down and made a few examples by tossing cards out like a poker player, they joined in, especially when we were al making silly sentences. I am bilingual, and so this was a fun event in the household, and I believe in the class, it will prove useful as well. But if you are a beginner, get a foundation with another book first, then add this in to build confidence and usefulness in your language learning.

The best age for these cards is five and up. Younger than that, the children are more focused on just looking at the picture rather than using them to communicate and speak in Spanish. -Being able to read fairly well might also be a prerequisite for your child too, to cut down on frustration. I will listen to the CD this week and update the review soon.
Sra. Gose
Author of Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 1 & Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 2

MAKES LEARNING SPANISH EASY!!!
For those just learning to speak spanish from ages 8 to 80 this book, CD and flashcard package makes learning spanish extremely easy. My 11 year-old daughter was struggling in her 6th-grade spanish class and this combo really helped. Very soon you'll be prepared to buy another program to get to the next level.