Spanish

About this course

The language taught here is Spanish. Third grade covers a lot of ground and is where the lessons start looking like a proper language text, with conjugation tables, example sentences, and a written exercise at the end of each one. The vocabulary work runs through colors, numbers to one hundred, animals, food, family, the body, school, weather, seasons, days, months, clothing, household objects, and action verbs. Grammar is treated as its own strand and gets two units: noun gender, plurals, subject pronouns, indefinite articles, adjective agreement, negation, question formation, sentence building, the present tense of -ar verbs, and both verbs meaning to be, with ser taught for identity and origin and estar taught later for location and temporary states. Your student also learns the tener expressions where Spanish says tengo hambre and tengo frio for what English calls being hungry or cold.

The reading unit builds from letter sounds to decoding, then to color and number words, simple sentences, a beginner story, John 3:16 in Spanish, a written prayer, a full Creation account in Spanish drawn from Genesis 1, and comprehension work where your student answers questions in Spanish about what was read. The writing unit moves from copying to filling in blanks to writing original sentences, a list, a paragraph about family, and a paragraph describing a whole day from morning to night. Culture covers the Spanish-speaking countries, food, Navidad, family life, music, greeting and respect customs, money and stewardship, Mexico, Central America, South American wildlife, and the history of the Spanish Bible. One culture lesson is about the Mennonite farming colonies in Chihuahua, Belize, Paraguay, and Bolivia, including the Low German they speak at home and the cheese they sell.

There are 108 lessons in 9 units of 12, and each is planned for about 20 minutes: a short prayer, the new material, a main activity, and review. Units 7 through 9 revisit the vocabulary, conversation, and grammar themes with fresh lessons rather than repeating earlier ones, so estar and the tener expressions arrive in that second pass. Every lesson ends with a ten-question quiz that grades itself, and the standing homework is vocabulary flashcards, which you will need to make yourselves. Pencil and paper are the only materials. There is no audio and no recorded speaker in this course, so pronunciation depends on you reading aloud, and several activities ask your student to read sentences out loud to a listener. It assumes second-grade Spanish coming in, though the first unit opens with a full review, and it assumes your student can write sentences in English comfortably.

What the course covers

• Vocabulary: animals, food, family, body, school, weather, seasons, clothing
• Days, months, and counting to 100
• Greetings, introductions, and everyday question-and-answer exchanges
• Noun gender, plurals, articles, and adjective agreement
• Ser for identity and estar for location and condition
• Tener for possession and for hunger, cold, fear, and sleepiness
• Present-tense -ar verbs, negation, and question formation
• Reading Spanish stories, prayers, John 3:16, and the Creation account
• Writing lists, original sentences, and paragraphs about family and daily life
• Culture: Mexico, Central and South America, Navidad, and Mennonite colonies in Latin America

What your student will be able to do

• Choose correctly between ser and estar in a sentence
• Conjugate ser, tener, and regular -ar verbs across all persons
• Match articles and adjectives to a noun in gender and number
• Read a short Spanish passage and answer comprehension questions about it
• Write a paragraph in Spanish describing your family or your day
• Ask and answer basic questions about name, age, color, weather, and family

Scope and sequence

All 9 units of Spanish for Grade 3, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 108 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 108 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.