Review: Learning Language Arts Through Literature

I've had several people ask me about what curriculum we use for our home school.  Since we use a hodge-podge of different manufactures, it makes it a bit tough to explain in a short answer.  I thought I'd take some time to give a review of the current books we use.

The English curriculum that we are using is Learning Language Arts Through Literature by Common Sense Press.  It is a comprehensive language arts curriculum.  They have a book for each grade, starting with first grade and ending at the eighth grade.  They do have two high school level books available, also.

How did I choose this curriculum?  I knew I wanted a literature based program.  I'm lucky in the fact that both of my kids are good at English fundamentals, so I didn't need something super in-depth on the basics.  My son had received very good English scores on the ACT after his seventh-grade year, so I thought we would concentrate on literature evaluation and writing.  After reading several reviews and looking at the items to be read, I chose to purchase the Gold Book, one of the two high school level books. 

The Gold Book covers American literature.  It has in-depth discussion over the chapters and several writing assignments over each lesson.  There are 36 weekly lessons per book which makes lesson planning very simple.  I was so pleased with this product that I bought my daughter the Purple Book (5th grade) for this year, along with the Silver Book (English Lit.) for my son.

The younger grade books are structured differently than the high school.  Like the high school books, they are broken up into 36 lessons, and the lessons are based on classic stories.  That is where the similarities end.  The younger versions of the LLATL books cover grammar, dictation, spelling, and writing while studying a book, poem or story. 

I love the dictation part of the program.  At the beginning of the lesson, we read a paragraph.  Then, the student tells you, the teacher, what the paragraph is about.  Lastly, the teacher reads a preselected portion of the paragraph to read out loud while the student tries to write what is being said.  This is something that has really stretched my daughters’ abilities.  I think this practice will be very helpful when she goes to college and has to take notes while a professor is lecturing.

Since we didn't start this program until the fifth grade, I'm not sure if the younger books go into more detail on the grammar.  I feel that by the fifth grade most of the rules are into the review phase.  The purple book does a good job of reviewing the grammar, but I wouldn't want to use this program if my child wasn't pretty solid on it already.

I'm pretty sure we will be sticking with this program for my daughter through high school.  The lessons are interesting and just about perfect on length.  We have enjoyed all of the books and stories that have been  studied so far.  So, if you are looking at a good Language Arts program that is heavy on reading while reviewing grammar, this is a good pick for you.