You’re probably thinking about getting The Cultured Kid program to teach your kid a second language.
This online program is targeted at younger children up to 8 years of age. And it basically utilizes prerecorded video lessons and other teaching materials in order to make kids fluent in a foreign language.
There are several languages available inside the program that parents may choose.
We’ve reviewed everything you may need to know about this program based on the Spanish language.
Here we go;
Brief History
The Cultured Kid was launched in 2014 by Shannon Kelly, an Australian mom of two who has a passion for travel and culture. She has created the site as a way to make learning a second language more fun and interactive for children even if parents are not fluent.
Their program lessons are aimed at kids aged 2-8 years old. This basically includes toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners and young elementary schoolers.
The Cultured Kid website claims to be currently serving over 40,000 families from around the world.
Languages Offered
There are six languages offered by The Cultured Kid to pick from including Spanish, Italian, German, French, English and Chinese Mandarin.
Spanish and French are two of the most spoken languages in the world. On the other hand, the Chinese language does have the second highest number of speakers worldwide but the vast majority of them live in one country i.e. China.
What’s Included
Overall, each language in The Cultured Kid program currently has over two years worth of content inside the membership portal.
For every month of subscription, you receive four lesson bundles. Each bundle covers a specific topic (e.g. animals or food). And it has one week of language activities with step-by-step instructions. A bundle includes the following teaching materials:
1) Vocabulary Videos
You get two vocabulary videos that are each around five minutes long. Each video includes several short clips with music. A new Spanish word that’s relevant to the clip is shown, pronounced and used in a sentence.
Those fun videos are designed to introduce your child to new vocabulary in the target language.
2) Video Scripts
You also have the lesson scripts for the vocabulary videos. You can use these as a reference for teaching the child while/after watching the video.
While reviewing the script files, we noticed they’re organized into several tables that are easy to read. Each table row includes the word(s) in Spanish, its meaning in English and phonetic spelling.
3) Printable Flashcards
There are several printable flashcards inside the bundle. The Cultured Kid has actually done a decent job in creating the designs for those cards. Each one contains a colorful drawing along with a Spanish word that’s related to the scene written at the top.
These cute flashcards help to reinforce the words your kid has learned before through repetition.
4) Play-based Lesson Plans
Lesson plans contain a list of fun step-by-step activities that are meant to engage your kid and teach her the Spanish language. There are several plans available to work with. Each one targets a specific list of core vocabulary (both words and phrases).
Some of the plan activities involve the other teaching materials like watching the vocab videos and saying/repeating the word shown on the flashcards.
During our review, we noticed there are also several interesting games that make use of the new vocabulary. For example, you draw someone running and ask your child to guess the activity in Spanish.
5) Activity Sheets
These are individual activity sheets where your kid can complete some fun writing exercises in order to reinforce their Spanish learning. There are worksheets for the vocabulary and also ones for phrases.
Some examples of the activities include matching words/sentences to images and circling the right word.
6) Song Playlists
A song playlist is basically a roundup of some songs curated by The Cultured Kid team that emphasize the new Spanish vocabulary your kid has learned during the week. You have several different playlists to pick from, each one is around 2-4 minutes long.
You can sing with your child while listening or even let the songs play in the background as you do something else.
After reviewing the playlists, we found out that each song is limited to 30 seconds only. If you want to listen to the full songs though, you will need to have an account on Spofity.
7) Interactive Assessment Games
There are online games that allow you to gauge your child’s progress and reinforce their new vocabulary in a fun way.
For example, you’re shown a colorful picture illustrating a Spanish word from the bundle vocabulary which you need to pick in a multiple-choice question.
8) Read Aloud Video Books
These are video books that introduce visual stories in order to reinforce the target language with ease. A book is around three minutes long.
We reviewed the videos and thought their designs are cute and colorful, which is especially good for toddlers and preschoolers.
They include beautiful images along with the story spoken in Spanish and written out at the bottom. As a word is pronounced in the video, it’s highlighted which helps encourage the kid to read it aloud.
Lesson Schedule
The Cultured Kid program provides you with a suggested weekly lesson schedule to follow. As a result, you save time and are able to start the activities right away without thinking much about creating a plan.
Depending on the free time you have as a parent, you may choose to either complete all the proposed lessons in one sitting (~ 40-50 minutes) or divide them over five days (~ 5-15 minutes each). You can find a sample of each schedule under the section ‘Start Here’ in the dashboard.
You could even do the proposed activities more than once if you have the time. That’s because there are typically more than one item of each teaching material type such as two vocabulary videos and several song playlists.
of course, the provided schedule is just a recommendation, you’re free to modify it if you want.
Program Cost
The Cultured Kid’s subscription for one language (e.g. Spanish) costs $39 per month.
Pros
- Organized language lessons
- Various teaching materials
- Flexible schedule
- Fun video-based lessons
- New content each week
- Lessons cover up to two years
Cons
- Limited language options
- Not suitable for older kids
- $39 monthly cost
Conclusion
There you have it, our comprehensive review of The Cultured Kid based mostly on their Spanish language program.
We hope this review was helpful for you as a parent to decide whether to join the program or not.
While this language program might be decent, we don’t recommend it. In our opinion, it’s just too expensive and doesn’t offer much value for the money paid which is $39 per month. You can easily find other programs that are as good if not better but much cheaper (under $20/month).
