The Homeschool How To
Curriculum Series: Flip Flop Spanish
Unlock the secrets to effective language learning with Senora Gose, the mastermind behind Flip Flop Spanish. Have you ever wondered how homeschooling parents can create a bilingual environment at home? Senora Gose, a former public school Spanish teacher turned curriculum developer and homeschool mom, shares her inspiring journey and reveals how her innovative program helps families learn Spanish naturally. By using flashcards with real-life photos and audio guidance, Flip Flop Spanish replicates the way children learn their first language—making it an engaging and supportive experience for both parents and kids alike.
Flip Flop Spanish
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Unlock the secrets to effective language learning with Senora Gose, the mastermind behind Flip Flop Spanish. Have you ever wondered how homeschooling parents can create a bilingual environment at home? Senora Gose, a former public school Spanish teacher turned curriculum developer and homeschool mom, shares her inspiring journey and reveals how her innovative program helps families learn Spanish naturally. By using flashcards with real-life photos and audio guidance, Flip Flop Spanish replicates the way children learn their first language—making it an engaging and supportive experience for both parents and kids alike.
Flip Flop Spanish
Instagram: TheHomeschoolHowToPodcast
Facebook: The Homeschool How To Podcast
Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Find my Curriculum, a series where we talk all about curriculum. I've been interviewing homeschooling families for over a year now on my main podcast, the Homeschool How-To, but I really wanted to zero in on curriculum. There's so much out there. How do I know what would work best for me and my child? How do I know what works for one child would work for the other? I might like the curriculum I'm using now, but how do I know there's not a better one out there, especially if I don't know all the curriculums? And what about supplemental curriculum? Should I be using that too? This series is to help you decide just that. I'm going to interview parents who are using all the curriculums so that you can decide the absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. The absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey.
Speaker 1:Welcome, and with us today on the curriculum series, I have Suzanne who is going to be talking to us about flip-flop Spanish. Welcome, suzanne. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. So I haven't heard of flip-flop Spanish. I assume it's the subject of Spanish, which I hadn't even thought about teaching a second language to my son because he's, you know, only five, so we haven't had to delve into that yet, but I guess it's never too early, is it?
Speaker 2:That's correct. Yeah, whenever people say when should I start, I say now. So now is the time to start, because the earlier you start, the better the exposure, the better the accent, the better ability to absorb. So now is the time.
Speaker 1:All right, awesome. So where did this curriculum come from?
Speaker 2:So I was a public school teacher back in the day, before babies. I don't know if you remember those days, but we all had them. There was a time when we didn't have children and I taught public school Spanish to middle schoolers and high schoolers. And then, when we were blessed with our first child, I was going to stay home and then go back when he was a five-year-old and do the same thing again. But I met these homeschoolers and I had heard of these crazy people, but I had never met one, and so I was kind of bored, honestly, and so, when he was just barely rolling over, I thought about well, can I teach some classes just to kind of pass the time, really? And since there was no good curriculum out there, I ended up creating my own, and so Flip Flop Spanish came from me, teaching actual classes, finding out what works when you teach the children, not the lesson, and through trial and error. Now we have, you know, 72 products and flip-flop Spanish for the whole family, all the way up to Spanish geniuses for high schoolers.
Speaker 1:So that's what I was going to ask Is it something I could teach my son if I don't speak Spanish, or would it sounds like we would be learning it together?
Speaker 2:Exactly that. It's open and go. It's flashcard based. So you're going to be, you're going to love it, you're going to want, you're going to open it up and go. Oh, I can do this, because all you have to do is pull out the flashcards for the week. There's photos on one side and then the Spanish and the English is on the back. So pre-readers as young as three-year-olds have really had a lot of success with this, all the way up to senior citizens. Because you're looking at an item. The audio talks you through every lesson. So the idea is the parent and the child are the students together. They're touching and repeating the words just like they learned their first language. It's so natural, it feels like a game and you connect together and you build sentences immediately.
Speaker 1:Wow, all right. So what is the approach that makes it different from what you were originally teaching in the public school?
Speaker 2:So in the public schools I'm sure you you know anybody that went to high school and had to take a lesson you saw a list of words right, there's a list of words and then they had the English translation and if it was a nice curriculum it might have the phonetic spelling next to it, but typically your teacher would say the words, you would read the word and then you would try to memorize the word, and so we would kind of train ourselves to think through the pronunciation, mispronounce it, be embarrassed and never want to speak, and so that's most of our history with it. With my approach, it's the way you learned your first language. So nobody sat out there they're six months old and held up a ball and then wrote out the word ball. You would show them the ball and say, hey, you want the ball. Do you like the ball Ball? Can you say ball? And then the baby would automatically know that's ball. Same, exact idea.
Speaker 2:So there's photos, not cartoons, not drawings, not icons or emojis, actual photos that are crisp and easy to see, real life, full color. And you're, you're laying out those flashcards and on one side it'll have like a little kid with a thumbs up sign and that's the I like it card. And so you say me gusta, me gusta. And then I might say that means I like it. And then the child immediately gets to put a noun with it. So I like. And then what is it? El perro, the dog, the book, the ball. And so you're immediately building a sentence with a photo rather than trying to read, worry about pronunciation, grammar, all that stuff. So you're listening to the audio, and so the audio is my voice and it's actually like. It's like your mom is talking to you, right, just saying you know la pelota or el helado or whatever, you know ice cream or ball or whatever it is. And so you're associating the sound with the photo rather than trying to decode reading.
Speaker 1:Okay, sound with the photo rather than trying to decode reading. Okay. So, and it's funny that you say about the crisp picture, because I was just thinking back to our reading curriculum for just English this year with my five-year-old and you know it would like have a little game where, okay, put this in the wagon and don't put. You know, if they rhyme, put them in the wagon. But some of the pictures you're like what on earth is this thing? It's like a black and white printout of a cartoon and it's something I wouldn't even know anyway. So that is nice. So, all right. You said it could be any ages. What is kind of the levels and the starting and the ages that it goes up to and down to?
Speaker 2:Right, so it's designed for the whole family. I would say the sweet spot is, honestly, eight, eight years old, all the way to 14, is that kind of sweet spot where the kids are excited, they're grabbing the words, they want to build the sentences and they can pretty much run it on their own. Whenever you have that independent learner, and before puberty is better. After puberty our brains start hardening and so the absorption is more difficult, and so we have that obstacle now of oh, I'm not remembering what this is based on the sounds. They want to flip it over and look at the word On the back. There is the Spanish, the English and the phonetic spelling.
Speaker 2:So you can always flip that flashcard right over. That's the flip flop right. Flip it over, flop it down and look at it, and so you have the reference material there for you. You're not frustrated, you're not like great, I've forgotten it. The information is there for you. But then you flip it right back over and look at the photo and say it again. So you're kind of reaffirming the sound with the item not how do I read Spanish? Everybody knows how to read Spanish, but nobody knows how to speak Spanish, and so this is kind of crossing over that obstacle.
Speaker 1:Okay, so can you walk me through like what a typical lesson would look like, how long it would take, what sort of like? You kind of just explained that a little bit, but you know how long the whole family to sitting down with that. What would it look like?
Speaker 2:So if you can budget a 20 minute from beginning to end. You know so, a lot of times we budget time and we say, oh, there's not even time to start this lesson. I've got to go to the grocery store. So you don't even start. So you need to have 20 minutes because from that time you pull out your binder, you have your flashcards and you lay six cards out on the table. In the manual it tells you the six cards. They're numbered, so you don't even have to know what you know. You don't have to know what this is yet. It's just the numbers on the back. You find the cards, lay them out, photo side up. Once they're in order, you push play on the audio. The audio can be streamed or downloaded, saved to whatever device you want, and so you push play and you sit back.
Speaker 2:At that point your prep is over. You're laying out the cards and now you're a student. And so then the tracks talk you through, touch and repeat I like, me gusta. Everybody at the table gets their finger, they touch the card and they say me gusta. That analytical kid is going to flip it over and go wait, okay, okay, yeah. And they're going to flip it back down and that's okay, as long as they flip it back to the photo side, it's fine. And so you touch and repeat every word.
Speaker 2:The very next track, you're putting together sentences. I'll say can you put together the sentence me gusta el perro? You're like no me gusta, which is I like it, and el perro, which is the dog. And you're like whoa. And so you're showing everybody by grabbing the me gusta card and the you know. So you're the little kid with the thumbs up and the little doggy and you're putting it together and you're like whoa. I understood a Spanish sentence and I've been studying Spanish for a total of 90 seconds at this point.
Speaker 2:So at the end the lesson is eight minutes long. The kids are putting together their own sentences. Usually they use the word I need and then the picture of the ice cream, so necesito el helado. That's what they always want to build for their first sentence I need ice cream, necesito el helado. And so they lay that out and the lesson's over. You do that same lesson three times and that moves into their long-term memory. So now they know how to demonstrate Spanish. They can see an item and speak Spanish and they're giving an opinion or a desire. So it's motivating them to build their language, not just a list of words to then forget.
Speaker 1:Right, repeat Okay, so you're actually asking them the sentence to build, so they're connecting it with something in their brain. Oh I need ice cream. Okay, so you have options. If I want, I need.
Speaker 2:Yes, I like, I need, I want, can, I, can you do, you need. So all those sentence starters eventually come, but we start with just opinions. You know, I like and I need. Those are sentence starters and you get four nouns and you get to choose. First I tell you build this sentence, then at the end I said what do you want to say? And so that motivates them to go. Oh, I get to choose how to communicate, which motivates them to want to speak, rather than translate the sentence or fill in the blank or make it match. You know, nobody cares. You sound like Tarzan. You know, pencil table, desk floor, nobody speaks that way. And so those kind of lessons make the kid think well, spanish is not useful. But if they're very at the end of the first lesson, they can say I need ice cream, oh, this is useful.
Speaker 1:Right, oh, that is great. So OK, so you do that three times and then your lesson's over. How often a week do you recommend doing it?
Speaker 2:Monday, wednesday, friday would be a perfect setup. So so, eight minutes, like on a Monday, that same exact lesson with those same six cards on a Wednesday and that same exact lesson on a Friday. The transcript is written out in the manual so you can follow along and read it. And I would love it, if you're confident enough, if you would read the transcript and then change it up a little bit on that third time and you make it even more engaging, even more dynamic. If you're not comfortable, that's fine, push play a third time. And then on Monday of the next week you're moving on to lesson two.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's not even 20 minutes a day, it's 20 minutes of the entire week, if that's how you set it up.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm saying 20 minutes because I have five kids and everybody says, oh, the lesson's eight minutes long. Yes, but you have to pull out the binder, find the flashcards, lay it out, push play on the thing. And so I'm saying budget a full 20 minutes for from the very beginning.
Speaker 1:to get the binder out, to packing it up, you only need 20 minutes total, but the lesson itself is only eight minutes for that very first one. Well, I appreciate that because, as we're going through, teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons for 20 minutes a day. Right now I'm like 20 minutes. That was maybe the first 10 or 20 lessons. We're on 50 now, Um, so yeah, I I appreciate the allowance of about two and a half times what you allow for the actual learning part. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:So, okay.
Speaker 1:So say, my son starts it at eight years old, and my husband and I joined in with him when we can. We're learning it too. How long, how many years or how many you know? However long you branch it out, do you provide so level?
Speaker 2:one. Whenever you get the big blue box, it's light blue and it says see it and say it. Whole family Spanish, on on it, flip-flop spanish. And it's level one. That's a two-year curriculum, so that that two years allows you to do six words a week. So if you had like a five-year-old, um, all the way up to like a nine-year-old, then you would definitely want to take that full two years. If you had mostly older kids 10, 11, all the way to high schoolers you could squish it down and do two lessons in a week because that's only 10 cards at a time.
Speaker 2:I like the slow grow, I want you to go slow, I want you to really absorb those words. But if you're in a hurry, for whatever reason you have a mission, trip or whatever it is you could do it in a year if you wanted to. But I provided two years of curriculum for that level one. And then level two goes into the past tense, um, other pronouns, you know, third person plural, things like that. And then more grammar, more you know, it's just more vocabulary in general. You're reading stories in spanish, you're making your own comic strips in spanish. Level two is a whole, another three years. So see it and say it provides five years of curriculum for you to really learn to speak in a fun, hands-on, accessible, accessible and sustainable way. Wow.
Speaker 1:That must have taken a while for you to come up with and put together.
Speaker 2:Yes, Well, so I've been teaching Spanish for 26 years now maybe longer, yeah, 27 years, I guess now and so teaching in the public schools teaches you a lot of things, of what not to do. And then, whenever you turn into a homeschool teacher. So I didn't know I was going to become a homeschooler, I was just teaching homeschoolers in my private classes and then, when I met the caliber of student and how different they were from the public school students that I had been experiencing, I became a homeschooler, like that. It was instantaneous, because I went whoa, what do you people feed your children? Or what? What are y'all doing to make these children so bright, eager, appreciative, engaging, what? What is this?
Speaker 2:Because I did not know teenagers came that way. I thought. I thought they just didn't make eye contact and I was cool, I was 24. Why, you know, they did not engage with me and these homeschoolers were phenomenal young humans and I went I want my baby to turn out like this, I'm going to do whatever it is y'all are doing, and they're like we don't know, we just homeschool. I was like, okay, boom. And so, yeah, now I have five wonderful young adults that I know very well and I didn't miss any time with them because I got this opportunity to teach homeschoolers.
Speaker 1:Oh my, because I got this opportunity to teach homeschoolers. Oh my gosh, that's so beautiful how it all just kind of unraveled for you and then so you had to leave. The teaching job Was that hard.
Speaker 2:No, no, it wasn't because it was so replaced with something so much more rich. I loved my students. I loved them. They were my kids. Right, I didn't have any babies, so they were my babies.
Speaker 2:Some of them came from really hard backgrounds. I was in an at-risk area, so I did. It was hard to not advocate for them anymore, like I felt really bad. I felt like I was leaving, leaving them kind of to the wolves, because it was a very dark atmosphere on a daily basis, and so that was sad. But I had a baby, you know. So what do you do? Do you sacrifice your time with your baby so that you can serve these 85 kids that come in and out of your door every single day? And then you know anyhow. So, happily I had a new kind of congregation, a new audience of these young adults who really were eager to learn and their parents couldn't teach them Spanish and they were worried and they wanted they wanted to provide that brain health. Not only is it obviously a second language, but it really is so good for your brain to help with wit and memory.
Speaker 1:Interpersonal communication like everything improves when you learn a second language. Yeah, I, I was listening to someone talk about even the English language and the kind of research that they put into that and how you know, there there were probably ulterior motives when, like, our language came about and what we words, that we spun, and you know, for various reasons. And I was just brushing the surface listening to that. But I'm like, wow, that'd be something to really dive into, especially because most of the languages from my public school education that is what I remember is, you know, we, like things, are backwards from most other languages. As far as, like, the adjective to the noun, you know it wouldn't be like red ball, it'd be ball red, right.
Speaker 2:Right, yes, another part of the flip flop. So once you start studying different languages and you kind of become more linguistic in nature and you realize that English is not the center of the solar system, that you know every culture has its own language and every culture is valuable. Not every culture is moral, but every culture has value and every you know people group have their own system of communication. It's not English with Spanish vocabulary or English with Italian vocabulary, english with Korean characters. It's not. It's its own communication device that has developed in a different way than English has developed.
Speaker 2:Even in the past 15 years, the words on the flashcards have changed. Because I take the Spanish from all 27 nations that are Spanish speaking, I choose the most commonly used words in every nation. It's not Mexican Spanish or Spain Spanish or Puerto Rican Spanish or Cuban Spanish, it's Spanish that can be understood everywhere. And so I developed this see it and say it 15 years ago, and since then I have had to update the vocabulary because language has changed that quickly in less than a decade. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1:Yes, especially a language that has been around for a lot longer than English, that it's still evolving.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:Do you still think that Spanish is the most important language to learn? Besides, you know, as a second language the most popular with the most people speak.
Speaker 2:For Americans, absolutely For Americans. The second most used language in America is Spanish and, like I kind of touched on a little bit, it's not just from Mexicans coming over, or Spaniards coming over or Puerto Ricans I mean, puerto Rico is part of our nation and they mostly, predominantly, speak Spanish. So it's going to make the most sense to use that, because if you just look at it from an industry point of view, economics, if you are bilingual and they're going through downsizing and your child has a career and they speak Spanish, and the guy next to him who is just as adept, just as skilled as him, who are they going to let go and who are they going to keep? And so that by itself becoming, you know, a little bit more integral to a business. On top of that, if you test into bilingualism, you get $10,000 more per year in almost any industry. Your salary is another 10 grand annually, and that study is actually from six years ago, so I'm sure it's more now. Not every industry has a test, but most of them do.
Speaker 1:That's what I was going to ask you. There's an actual test I had never heard of that before where you can test into being bilingual.
Speaker 2:Yes, you can get a certification in most, in most industries, definitely the nursing industry, construction industry, um, not so much the sales anymore, but the sales industry, like in some areas in Florida, if you don't speak a second, if you don't speak Spanish, forget it, you're not getting a job. Wow.
Speaker 1:Wow, so okay, so say, I started today and did the level one at two years and level two at three years, so five years from now will I be completely fluent in Spanish, like I could go anywhere Spain, puerto Rico and know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you, you, okay. So you're not gonna be completely fluent, absolutely not, unless you are giving yourself authentic input. So a lot of people talk about immersion. They're like, oh, my child's being immersed? No, they're not. Unless they're living in a Spanish-speaking nation, they are not being immersed. They're getting a lot of authentic input, but that's not immersion, because they're going home to mom and dad who only speak English and they're going to the grocery store where only English speakers are.
Speaker 2:So if you give yourself a ton of authentic input and you're super eager, yeah I'd say you could become fluent, but at that point you're going to grab the vocabulary much more quickly and so it's not going to be a five-year process for you. If you stay where you are in your house and you're mostly English speaking area and you do the studies and you do the lessons and you do the flashcards and you have fun with your child, you will absolutely honestly, in six weeks or so, be able to converse. And then, if you have more practice listening because that's the thing everybody worries about speaking, which is important I want you to be able to speak, but you also need to practice listening because otherwise they speak too quickly, just like we do. Right, we speak too quickly for people who don't speak English as their first language. For them to understand, they always have to say wait, slow down. There's an audio processing thing that we have to get through. So the more authentic input you give yourself, the better off you're going to be.
Speaker 2:Obviously, and number one key to learning is motivation. So if you're motivated absolutely, if you're not motivated like I mean, of my five children I had one kid that just would not learn. He's just like I don't want to, I'm not going to do it. He sat through the lessons, he did it and kind of against his will, he accidentally became almost fluent, but then he's like forget it. Graduates starts working at a warehouse. He's like oh my gosh, mom, why did I? Why didn't I listen?
Speaker 1:I'm like I don't know he needs it now.
Speaker 2:Oh well, he uses it. The funny thing is it came back Even though he didn't want to do it. He was able to communicate, kind of. He surprised himself. He's like, wow, I really do know this stuff. I'm like, yeah, amazing, right. So. But all that's to say I can't make somebody fluent if they don't want to learn. Okay, make somebody fluent.
Speaker 1:If they don't want to learn, okay, the best would be learn it and then go to a Spanish-speaking country for a while and really immerse yourself in it.
Speaker 2:Yes, and obviously the more often you do that, the better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of homeschoolers are doing the world schooling now and all sorts of new things are popping up. You talk to people who have left their home. They're living on a bus, traveling all around the country, and that's their homeschooling just learning right where they are. So I'm sure that that would come in handy Now where can we find the curriculum and how much?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Flip Flop Spanish is flipflopspanishcom, and for the whole two years all you need is that one blue box and right now it's $145, $144.97 for a whole two-year curriculum At the end of this year, of course we're. You know our inventory is low. We're reprinting all that kind of stuff and unfortunately, just like everything else, printing prices have gone up. So if you're thinking about it, probably end of August I don't know exactly when I don't know when we'll run out. We're running out quickly and we're having to reprint and those printing costs are much higher than they were on the last printing round. So sadly, in order to cover cost, the cost will go up. So if you're thinking about it, this summer is the time to purchase, see it and say it.
Speaker 2:We do have digital app, the digital version, where you can buy the ebook and print at home, and so that'll be obviously cheaper, and then you just you'll just need to buy the flashcards separately. So we have all kinds of options for all kinds of budgets. If you're not ready for a curriculum, you say I'm not ready to devote three times a week, but I just want to start something. I we also sell the flashcard sets separately, so you could just buy one set of flashcards for $15 and get started. We have bilingual readers, we have calendar one word a day. We have all kinds of options to make it accessible. My, my goal is to help families, um, you know, remove the obstacles, the fears, the problems with learning a second language, especially Spanish, and we do have flip-flop French and flip-flop German coming out so, but I want to remove those obstacles and make it where it's, you know, accessible to you, no matter what your budget is, and sustainable. You'll keep on doing it. You won't quit because it's easy and it's simple.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you mentioned the ebook. You can print, but the cards are separate. So what are we using the what you're printing out for? Is there writing with it?
Speaker 2:No, good question. There's no writing. So cause you know, like I said, there's as young as a three-year-old. So I say at the end of every lesson if you're an older student, flip over your flashcards and copy down this. You know, copy down one of your sentences. So I add, in the writing element we do have crosswords and finder words and mazes and things like that in there. That is optional, but a three-year-old, of course, is not going to be doing that. So the idea is the mom knows which child can do which thing and she has the um, the tools for every age and every capability. So the ebook is telling you which cards you need and it has the transcript written out. A lot of people don't print it. They, they, they download it, they save it to their tablet and they just open up the page. They find their flashcards, lay it down, push play on the audio and they never print it out at all and that's totally fine, it's. I'm a paper type of girl. I like. I like things to turn the pages.
Speaker 1:Yep, okay and then. So it's good to note too that this is a curriculum that you can use on multiple ages, either at one time, or if you, you know, have a baby now and you want to start it with your older kids, you can use this again with. You know, barring the language doesn't change too much between the two, but but you can use it again. So you're, you're paying the 149, but it's it's covering a lot of time.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and every age, like you said to the whole family. Um, I've had as many as six different little fingers touching the flashcards at a time. We sit down on the floor and six little fingers all touch the flashcards at once, from ages three all the way up to a 14 year old. I let the 14 year old run it and so he lays out the flashcard, he pushes, play on the tracks and I can sit back and we've done it in classes and co-ops and all different kinds of settings, and every age, no matter what age it is, is excited to touch the word, hear the word and say it. It feels so natural because their brain is hardwired to learn this way already.
Speaker 1:All right, is there anything else that you wanted to make sure we touched upon with flip-flop Spanish before we round up our episode today?
Speaker 2:I guess the only other thing is after you're done with See it and Say it. I do have Spanish Geniuses for your high school students, and that's why it exists. Same thing Everybody made it through the seat and say it lessons. And they said, well, what do we do now for high school? And so I recorded my classes, and so we have that covered as well.
Speaker 1:All right, suzanne. Thank you so much for creating this awesome curriculum and telling us all about it today. I will put the link in the show's description so folks can just click on it if they want to check it out on the website.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that's awesome. Thanks so much, cheryl.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please consider sharing this podcast or my main podcast, the Homeschool how To with friends, family, on Instagram or in your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. The more this podcast is shared, the longer we can keep it going and the more hope we have for the future. Thank you for your love of the next generation.