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Language Arts
  
O.K. Teaching kids to read is like labor
without drugs for me. I honestly have to do Lamaze breathing to calm
myself down when this fairly intelligent kid for the 1200th time say
"C--a--t. I don't know what it says."
click on the picture to get to the site
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I use CHC's
Little
Stories for Little Folks. A couple of my kids have learned to
read using just this. It's so inexpensive and the kids like that
each page is it's own book!
Learning to Read with "Little Stories for Little
Folks"
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| While they're learning to read, I use CHC's
My
Very First Catholic Speller for phonics reinforcement. I
don't actually begin to do spelling with my kids until they're in the
2nd grade and reading well. (by the time they're done with CHC's
Little
Stories for Little Folks, they're usually doing well - but not all
of them loved reading at this stage.)
"My Catholic Speller" in use.
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Something else that helps with my little ones is...a movie. When I
realized a movie could teach my kids faster than I could I was crushed.
for a minute. then, this freeing feeling overcame me and I knew my labor
was coming to an end.
| Leap Frog videos "accidentally" taught my boys
all their letters and sounds. There's a story behind it. It
has to do with a guilt-ridden homeschool mom plopping 2 preschoolers
down in front of the TV for 2 full weeks at the end of the school year
just to finish up school with the older kids. She put in an
"educational" video (Leap Frog), but knew that was a
joke...what do kids learn from videos???????? |
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I've had to supplement phonics readers for 2 of my kids. We used Little
Stories for Little Folks as our main teaching tool, but they needed more,
laborious, painful (deep, slow, breaths...exhale) practice. I bought Sing,
Spell, Read & Write for a song at a used curriculum sale. My kids
never took to most of it, but they did like the readers. I can't glowingly
recommend buying the full SSRW full-meal-deal, but if you find it for a
song...the readers are definitely worth a hum or two.
O.K. So, now the kids know how to read.
I move onto one of their all-time favorite curricula. THEY LOVE these
books. I tried several other grammar books - but this has been a favorite
for each of my children.
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My children LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the CHC's
Language
of God books. They contain grammar, punctuation,
capitalization, alphabetizing, letter forms ... lots of stuff.
None of it is kill & drill. It's very gentle. If you're
at all concerned about the academic rigor, you can allow the child to
move a little quicker (as they're able) through the books so that they
finish them a year or so early (that's what we do). |
Once we passed CHC's
Language
of God books, I was in a quandary. I wanted to step up the academic
challenge, but thus far my kids really enjoyed grammar, so I didn't want to kill
that love, either. I looked far and wide and asked lots of people
questions.
| I tried Easy Grammar & Daily Grams. It's
not as exciting to the kids (with the saint stories as the paragraph
sentences to dissect or the black & white drawings of angels to
color in Language
of God), but it worked for the kids who didn't have an affinity for
grammar.
I also tried Rod & Staff. I liked it very much, but the
lack of Catholicism bothered the kids.
I would try Analytical Grammar if it weren't so expensive.
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For spelling through all the grades, hands-down, I prefer
Natural Speller. I
cna't selpl. Neither can my oldest daughter. So I read a bunch of posts and this
was recommended after you've tried everything else - so I decided to try it.
I use it by asking kids to orally spell the words until they have 10 words
they don't know & they study those for a week using the suggestions in
Natural Speller.
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*It is E-A-S-Y to use.
*An inexpensive non-consumable investment for all my kids for 1st - 8th
grade, words by category, foreign words.
*It's the word lists organized by sight/sound patterns so the kids get a
bunch of words that are teaching the same thing at the same time (all
the long 'a' silent 'e' words are together, etc.)
*Spelling Rules (which I don't use, but you could - it's all greek to
me)
*Suggested spelling practice activities / dictionary skills using
spelling / grammar skills using spelling / vocabulary with spelling
*Teaching aids - letter formats for friendly, business & writing
rules of capitalization & punctuation.
I've got a little more information on a blog
post.
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| One book that I will wear out, buy
again, and maybe need buy another time (because we use it so much) is
The Harp & Laurel Wreath by Laura Berquist.
It's a book of poetry divided by ages of appropriateness for
children. In addition it has dictation exersizes & suggestions
on how to get your kids memorizing poetry. Poetry memorization has
been a constant in our school and we may let a lot of subjects slide,
but this isn't one of them.
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Another poetry book that has taught us TONS is Logos
School's Grammar
of Poetry. I considered buying their Poetry Primer, but after
looking at the pages of each, I decided that the Grammar of Poetry
wasn't that much harder, but was more packed with chapters of good
stuff! I recommend getting the Teacher's Edition, too. (I
may just be challenged, but it helped me.) You can view a chapter
if you click on the link. |
| Our latest exciting find in this area is Hillside
Education's Novel
Inquiries. It cooresponds to our history and it's an
ACADEMICALLY EXCELLENT resource. I just can not say enough about how
it has helped streamline writing with history and made it enjoyable and
incredibly educational!!
The other writing resource we use is IEW.
It's taken me quite some time to figure out how to use it in my school,
but I am not sorry I spent all that money on it. (It was a hard pill to
swallow.) |
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