Why Use an Online Homeschool Spanish Curriculum for the High School Years

Does your high schooler need a high school foreign language credit, but are your skills limited? Use an online homeschool Spanish curriculum for the high school years to have them hearing and learning the language.

Once your child enters high school, the number of questions and concerns can expand significantly from what science classes are best to what books to chose for American LIterature.

The number of decisions and the worry many parents feel can be overwhelming. And we can add a foreign language to that long list of decisions and concerns.

• What language should they learn?
• How many years should they complete?
• What if I don’t know the language?
• How will I know if they’re speaking correctly?

The list could go on and on because a foreign language can be so, well, foreign to many homeschooling parents. So how do you find the right foreign language curriculum for your homeschool?

Well, the first decision to make is what language your child will be learning, and I’m definitely partial to Spanish. So let’s first look at why your child should learn Spanish, what is needed to become a speaker of the language, and then find the Spanish homeschool curriculum that will meet those goals.

This is a sponsored post. I received the product to review and was compensated for my time. However, all opinions are my own. This post may contain affiliate links. You can read my disclosure policy here.

Why Should Your Child Learn Spanish?

There are many factors when deciding what foreign language a child should study. My child with dyslexia learned American Sign Language because we thought that would be a better choice for her considering her strengths and weaknesses.

However, my first foreign language choice for all of my children would be Spanish. But why Spanish?

For me, there are so many reasons Spanish is the number one choice. First, there are over 450 million worldwide speakers, and the vast majority live in our hemisphere. Most Americans encounter Spanish speakers in their daily lives, which gives them the perfect opportunity to hear and practice the language.

Second, depending on your child’s life and career goals, knowing the language can be a valuable and highly sought-after skill. From employment to volunteering, Spanish is a needed and valued language to know. We have a family friend who is a retired high school Spanish teacher who now volunteers at her county health clinic. Her ability to communicate in Spanish helps people communicate and receive the help they need.

And finally, learning another language will not only help you understand your own language and grammar better, but it will also make learning future languages a bit easier.

While learning a language can take a lot of practice, hard work, and dedication, it can help develop several mental and social skills. These skills are transferable to other aspects of life, and once you learn one language, the next language can be a bit easier to master.

Vista Academy’s Online Homeschool Spanish Curriculum

Maybe you’re already convinced that your child should learn Spanish, but have no idea where to start. You don’t speak the language and are pretty sure just using a textbook isn’t going to work if you want your homeschooler to actually learn to communicate. Luckily, homeschoolers have a new resource that will provide them with the listening and speaking needed to learn a foreign language.

Vista Academy’s inaugural fall 2021 Spanish courses for homeschooling students is a unique, virtual language school that provides an innovative learning environment with native speaker supervision and instruction. Vista Academy uses the VHL Central platform, which was developed explicitly for online language learning.

Vista Academy‘s homeschool Spanish curriculum aims to optimize student-directed learning and provides a unique learning progression within a clear framework for learning another language. Meaning, VA provides valuable instruction in a manner that makes the learning purposeful. It isn’t simply memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugations.

We agreed to give Vista Academy a try because my daughter had taken Spanish at our homeschool co-op in middle school, and we would like to continue Spanish in high school, but the Spanish 1 class did not fit in our schedule. So our intention is for her to complete Spanish 1 through VA and proceed to Spanish 2 at our co-op

A Peek Inside Vista Academy’s Spanish Homeschool Curriculum

So what does Vista Academy look like and how does it function? What is included in a lesson? Once your child logs in to their VHLCentral account, they are first directed to a welcome page where they proceed to their course that is listed on the left-hand side of the page.

Once they enter their course, you will find the current lesson listed and it is divided into each “chapter” of the lesson. For lesson 1 there are segments on :

• Contextos (Context: this is the vocabulary and usage)
• Fotonovela (A video story to practice listening and understanding)
• Pronunciación (Pronunciation)
• Cultura (Culture)

Along the right side of this page your will see announcements, grades, and the study center where you can review vocabulary and use the digital flashcards for the lesson.

When a child begins a lesson, they start with the Contextos chapter which introduces the vocabulary and conversations for that lesson. As you can see in the image below, there are pictures to help you child with understanding the meaning and proper usage of the vocabulary.

On the right-hand side of each lesson and chapter, there is a checklist that lets your child know where they are in the lesson and what needs to be done next. Having this outline helps them to stay on track and get the most out of the program by proceeding sequentially and not jumping around.

One of my favorite things about Vista Academy’s Spanish homeschool curriculum is that your child gets to practice speaking. My daughter wore our headset with a microphone to complete the Listen & Repeat portions of the lesson. I was impressed with how well it analyzed her speech to determine if she was using correct pronunciation and inflection.

Vista Academy has provided a video walkthrough of the entire learning portal to get you familiar with the course setup and progression.

Why Your Child Needs a Homeschool Spanish Curriculum

You’re probably now wondering why your child needs a Spanish curriculum when there are so many free resources and apps that teach the language. Yes, there are, but many of these are created with an adult in mind who is simply looking to pick up a bit of conversational Spanish.

Learning a language can help develop problem-solving, critical thinking, and listening skills. However, in order for your child to fully benefit from learning another language, there needs to be a bit more depth and thought to the progressions of their learning.

Vista Academy provides that comprehensive framework that will allow your child to excel and benefit from learning a foreign language.

Also, using a homeschool Spanish curriculum with the interactive features of VA can be extremely beneficial if the parent has no experience with the language. My husband and I both had two years of high school Spanish and four semesters of college-level Spanish, so we’re fairly capable of helping a child overcome the difficulty of pronunciation. However, if it’s French or German, I’d be of no help.

So, if your experience with the language is limited, then a Spanish homeschool curriculum may be just what you need to help your child succeed with language learning.

Course Options with Vista Academy

Overall, Vista Academy provides a comprehensive homeschool Spanish curriculum with the depth and practice needed for your child to advance with their language learning.

Also, by offering the self-paced Ole! course, as well as the Bravo! course, VA allows you to choose the best option for your student and homeschool. If your child is self-motivated or doesn’t love live classes (like mine : ), then choose the Ole! course. However, if your child thrives with live interaction and the presence of other students, then the Bravo! course will be a beneficial addition to their foreign language studies.

Give Online Language Learning a Try with Vista Academy

Learning another language benefits your child in many ways beyond their high school transcript. It provides the opportunity to develop their critical thinking skills, as well as gain a better understanding of their own language, grammar, and usage.

If you don’t know where to start and have no experience with Spanish yourself, Vista Academy provides an all-in-one solution to have your child hearing, speaking, and learning another language.

Vista Academy is also offering a 20% discount towards registration through 11/30/21 when you use coupon code SPANISH20.