Review of Speekee Instructional Program for Children

There is an abundance of Spanish instructional materials made for adults, but not much that is particularly suited for young children. Speekee is a delightful exception. Using fun characters and much, much repetition, Speekee will have young children understanding and speaking simple Spanish in no time. Speekee would be especially good for home-school parents who want to give their children an early start at another language. A package licensed for sitewide school use is also available.

Speekee is everything that a language instructional tool for young children should be: fun, repetitious and with plenty of catchy tunes. Give your children or your young students enough time with these DVDs and some assistance outside of "class time," and before you know it they'll be singing songs in Spanish and maybe even telling you the Spanish names for everyday objects.

The Speekee package is made up of three DVD discs containing a total of 10 lessons, a bonus DVD with all the songs and an audio CD you can take in your car or elsewhere to reinforce the lessons. There's also a colorful 68-page booklet made for parents or teachers that includes English translations of the DVDs as well as a glossary and pronunciation guide.

The "lessons" will look vaguely familiar to anyone who has seen "Sesame Street" or similar shows. The main character is Speekee, a friendly purple-faced creature, who gets help from Spanish children, a cast of sock puppets and an adult named Jim. The DVDs are entirely in Spanish, so these lessons would be suitable for youngsters (or adults!) of any native language.

The lessons start out simple and pretty much stay that way. Almost from the beginning, Speekee invites youngsters to start speaking. His favorite saying: ¿Y tú?, an invitation for the student to repeat what has been said. There are plenty of gestures and body language going on here, so children who are uninhibited might be able to figure out things on their own. If not, though, the instruction booklet makes things very clear (at least to parents or teachers who can read English) to parents or teachers what is going on.

Vocabulary covered includes basic greetings such as hola and adiós, some common foods, articles of clothing, family members, zoo animals, the basic colors and counting to 10. The lessons are meant to be done sequentially, so many of the basic words from the beginning are repeated frequently.

There's not much grammar instruction here, but at this level there doesn't need to be. All the verbs are either in the indicative present tense or are simple commands (such as ¡mira! (look!) and ¡escucha! (listen).

There's not much negative to say about this materials, except that if you use them as intended you won't be able to get the songs out of your head. Not only are they on the DVDs, but your kids will want to take them on CD in the car as well. The CD includes even karaoke versions.

The instruction booklet includes plenty of good tips on how you can use the materials even when you don't have them with you. For example, you can extend the lesson on grocery shopping by teaching kids the names of other types of foods. Or, the booklet suggests, you can use the vocabulary to play "I Spy" when traveling.

Because this product comes from Great Britain, the Spanish here is of the variety you'll hear in Spain rather than Latin America. But that shouldn't be of any concern even if you're more interested in Latin American Spanish. None of the vocabulary here would be out of place wherever Spanish is spoken. And the pronunciation differences are so slight that if the children can understand what's in these lessons, they'd have no difficulty understanding the same things said with a Mexican or other Latin American accent.

Speekee can be ordered directly from the publisher, which offers a money-back guarantee of satisfaction.