A team of experts replacing “foreign” with love:
for learners, for stories, for cultures, for Spanish.
Meet the team teaching kids to speak real Spanish. For Life.
Erica Fischer
CEO / Founder
Lives
Mt. Hood, Oregon
Loves
Time with family and friends, hiking, learning, snowflakes
Speaks
English, Spanish, German, learning Finnish
Haylee Ziegler
Curriculum Specialist
Lives
Defiance, Ohio
Loves
Coffee, cooking shows, technology, anything related to Fall
Speaks
English, Spanish, and one day French
Sarah Wakefield
Graphic Designer / Professional Colorer
Lives
Manchester, UK
Loves
Doing anything creative, baking, books, crisp winter mornings
Speaks
English, French, German, learning Spanish
Julia Aliper
Illustrator / Animator / Cartoon Genius
Lives
Ukraine
Loves
Visual arts, handmade things, animals, books, container gardening
Speaks
Russian, Ukrainian, English, learning Spanish
Oleksii Gavriuk
Web Developer / System Administrator
Lives
Odessa, Ukraine
Loves
Family, children, tools, technology, movies
Speaks
Ukrainian, Russian, English
Maksim Belenkov
Front-end Web Developer
Lives
San Diego, California
Loves
Building PCs, Movies, Gaming, Technology
Speaks
English, Russian
Our Journey
Erica wins a Congress-Bundestag scholarship to be an exchange student in Germany, giving her proficiency in German through an immersion experience.
Erica begins homeschooling her children and teaching them Spanish and German. After a fruitless search for quality programs, she begins to create her own; it will eventually become Calico Spanish.
A family trip to a Costa Rican language school for one month confirms Erica’s belief that a strong immersion program for children is needed.
Kids Immersion, LLC is founded and development begins in earnest on Calico Spanish Classic (Level 1).
Calico Spanish Classic is in (Level 1) beta testing.
Erica and family take a second trip to Costa Rica to further explore language learning.
Calico Spanish Classic for Homeschools is released.
Mi guitarrí album is researched, produced, and released.
First YouTube videos are released with 7,000 views.
Calico Spanish Classic (Level 1) for Schools is released.
Interactive Whiteboard Galleries and Quia activities for Classic are created.
Calico Spanish Accelerate for Schools is released.
Calico Spanish YouTube videos surpass 1 million views.
Level A “I Am Special” of Calico Spanish's online curriculum is released.
Level B “I Love My Family” of Calico Spanish's online curriculum is released.
Level C “I Live Here” of Calico Spanish's online curriculum is released.
Calico Spanish YouTube videos surpass 2.8 million views per year.
Calico Spanish views on YouTube surpass 10 million!
First digital Color and Activities book released.
Calico reaches 40,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Full launch of Level D takes the Calico Spanish curriculum and its learners to a farm in Mexico.
Calico reaches 50,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Classic and Accelerate curricula are retired from print production.