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.

Spring Concert

I told you that Jilly had a music concert the other night. It was one of the funniest things to watch. Not that it was supposed to be funny but Jilly made it be so. Jilly was on the back riser of the bleachers and there were two younger (2nd grade) girls in front of her. Well, the younger girls started to goof off and not "perform" the songs correctly. They weren't just having fun but really being distracting. The funny part was that the REALLY bothered Jilly. She spent the whole time glaring at this girls. You could tell that she was pissed that they weren't taking things seriously. I thought it was hilarious. Poor thing takes things so serious.
Steve said that this really proved to him how correct the idea of homeschooling is for us. He said that if those two girls could totally distract Jilly from something that she loved doing how easy is it for one kid to distract her during class time. We know she is always sitting by the "troubled" kid because they both have to sit in the front of the classroom. Jilly because she can't see and the "troubled" child because they need to be withing grabbing distance. Well, she won't be distracted for much longer.

School Update

It's now almost 3pm and we have put in a full day of learning. I think the day was a success. We did lessons in every subject. The only one that seemed to be a little thin today was Science for Drake. I found a quiz site online; I let him choose a quiz from the 7th grade choice. Well, 10 questions and like, maybe, 2 minutes later, he answered the questions, about plant/animal cells, and got them all correct. Now I know better than to do the quiz before I make him review a topic.

We even had a music lesson today. Drake showed Jilly how to play the piano. He has done the first two pages of a beginner manual. She now knows where middle 'C' is, how to hold her hands, whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes. He even showed her how to play the opening bit of Jurassic Park, for fun.

Now we will see how it goes from here on out. Maybe we will be lucky and get another snow day tomorrow.

Snow day = Homeschool day

Today is our first 'snow' day of the year. I put snow in quotes because there is very little snow involved. We have 'ice' days here. The roads are terrible. The kids got out of school yesterday at noon. Since this was an extra day at home I thought it would be a good time for a trial run at homeschool.

We'll see how it goes. It has already started with Drake saying "I want to play Call of Duty" and me saying "DRAKE!" So, I guess we will need patience with each other.

I have a good plan for Jilly for the day. Drake I have an OK plan. I'll try to add a post at the end of the day to share our success or failer.