My 4th grader was able to do most of Books 1 and 2 of W&R relatively independently this past year...but she is quite the independent type when it comes to schoolwork anyway. She and I would work together on the first day -- I would read the story, she would narrate back and we would do some of the questions as oral discussion. She would do the work in the workbook, and just come to me if she got stuck. I would look over her work or sometimes have her read her stories back to me. Sometimes we would do revisions, correct spelling/grammar/mechanics, write a final draft...but realistically we only did it maybe 3-4 times all year. I didn't like that this wasn't a part of the writing process in the workbook. We're going to go ahead and use Narrative 2 this year along with Paragraph Composing for Elementary (Killagon)...and I am not sure what else, as I don't think that will take us all year. I am not sure I want to continue with W&R, but I am not sure she will quite be ready for WWS even after those two things, or that WWS is even a good fit for her (though I kind of like the looks of it).

I typically plan for 34 regular weeks of our school year, plus two more at the end that are mostly for our standardized testing, field trips, end-of-year things for co-op, etc. This year, due to vacation and other circumstances we only had 32 regular weeks. We still got a lot done in that time. However, we still typically do math over the summer and everyone reads a lot. My kids seem to learn a lot on their own (or perhaps in a bit of an unschooling fashion) on summer and other breaks...so I don't feel so bad about our short "formal" school year. I am generally a "do the next thing" sort of a planner. I did my own thing for American History for the last two years though, which did require some planning on my part to decide how to break up our year into various time periods/units and what books to request or buy. But generally, I just take a look at each curriculum we are using and figure how how many chapters/sections/units need to be done per month or week on average to finish in 34 weeks. If I know, for example, that I need to average 3 science chapters per week to finish by the end of the year, I can keep that in mind and try and do 4 one week if we have a week where we only do 2. But generally I am pretty relaxed about it and I won't stress out about not finishing something, or having one or two things left to slowly finish during the summer.

Cute! Thanks for sharing. I might get a few for my 5 year old DS.

This is a great topic...I have been thinking about this as well. I have pondered quite a bit about my own public school writing experiences. Other than one memory of being told not to use "you" in a paragraph I was writing in 5th grade, I really have no memories of writing instruction before 8th grade. I always got good grades on writing assignments in high school and I found writing papers and literary essays in college a cinch. But I can't for the life of me figure out how I developed those skills that led to easy A's on college writing assignments. We've "dabbled" in variety of methods so far, partly because I am not finding myself convinced of any one particular path.

Thanks so much...this is a nice format to have these stories in. DS5 has been working on reading through them, and this should be really nice for him!

I will completely agree with the others that you need to research, pray and develop your own convictions. I've seen a number of ladies in church or elsewhere who chose a curriculum based on a friend's recommendation without really thinking through it for themselves -- sometimes just thinking, "Well so-and-so uses xyz, so I guess I will use it too" -- without even thinking about if their situation is the same is their friend's situation. It doesn't always work out very well. I attend a church that would be considered conservative by many (though probably considered liberal by others...LOL!). I feel like it is so, so important to see out your own path before the Lord. Even among conservative Christians there isn't agreement on what is most Biblical. The things in Sonlight that bother your friend might not bother you when it really comes down to it. Seek e counsel of other families too, and ask what they think. Don't reject a curriculum you might like based on one person's advice. Even if you find a few things objectionable, you might be able to use it with just a few modifications.

I had that once....and sold it. LOL...I feel like I could put something together if I was really motivated. I have history and science I like, it is really just the writing/grammar piece I am looking for. But I am not sure i am quite motivated enough or have enough free time to put together my own science related copywork, writing assignments, etc. It's more of a "wishful thinking" sort of thing, wishing that there was an equivalent to ELTL with pre-selected science passages for copywork/grammar instead of lit. (Not that we don't read lit...it's just that I think DS7 would find LA work to be more interesting if he was copying sentences about snakes or identifying the nouns in sentences about habitats or whatever.)

I was just day dreaming a bit (while I was supposed to be working on something else...ahem...). I feel like I see language arts skills (grammar, writing, etc) paired with history fairly often. Is there anything out there that uses science topics and texts and models for learning language skills? While I suppose some aspects of writing must be taught with fiction models, it seems like most skills can use non-fiction models. If history, why not science? This would be my DS7's dream curriculum. He keeps telling me he loves to write, but only if it about something he is interested in (which is sometimes a fictional topic/story and occasionally a history topic, but is MOSTLY science topics!).

Is the a drawing component to both levels 1 and 2? I don't feel like I saw this at all in the sample lessons.

LoE has an ebook that explains the dolch list, if you want to look ahead and see how LoE explains common sight words. You could teach a few phonograms out of order to gain a few more common words. There is also similar info available free here: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html That site doesn't explain things quite the same way as LoE will, but it would give you the idea and tell you which words are the true exceptions. I didn't start out either DD or DS7 in reading with LoE, but with my DS5, I taught him a few extra phonograms so he could do the "I See Sam" books, and the level 1 Nora Gados books.

Those are good thoughts...part of the reason I am not sure I would want to use it a grade behind with DS7 is that I think my DS5 is going to be a bit on the more advanced side when it comes to language -- he isn't reading fluently yet by any means, but I have spent very little time instructing him and yet he is making great progress at reading -- and he would definitely be ready for level 1 in first grade. I am not sure I want to do level 1 two years in a row (mostly for my sanity of not reading the same books two years in a row), but I don't think DS5 will quite get enough out of it yet to be able to get enough out of it this year for it to "count" as his year doing it, if that makes sense. At least if I did level 2 with DS7 this year, I would not be repeating to do level 1 with DS5 next year. I was also pondering whether there would be anyway to combine DS7 and DD10 in this, but I don't think there is. DS7 is pretty average in LA skills while DD10 is a strong reader and has made a lot of progress in writing. I don't think ELTL is necessarily a super great fit for DD anyhow. I was mostly just playing around with the idea of it in my head for her... :-)

For those of you using English Lessons through Literature, how long are the lessons taking you? I'd like to know for levels 1-3. Levels 4 and 5 are pretty new, right? So I am guessing no one has used them very much yet? I'm just playing around in my head with ways I could incorporate this, and possibly do some combination between at least two kids. I am not sure how many levels I could run separately with multiple kids with the lit reading involved. I am most interested in this for DS7 (rising 2nd grader)...it seems like Level 1 would almost be too light for him, but I don't want to miss anything that he could benefit from either.

I picked up the "and" somehow, despite having lived in the midwest USA all my life. Some of the math materials we have used have made a big deal of the fact that you are not supposed to say the "and" (I think this was in Fred and maybe RightStart too?), so now DD corrects me and DS7 whenever we do it. I think i am going to start telling her that I am just doing it the British way so she doesn't need to correct me...LOL. :lol:

I would say most of the bottom 15 or so books on your list will be enjoyed more by your daughter when she is just a bit older -- many of those were ones I read to my daughter in 2nd or 3rd grade. Many of the themes in those books are just a bit more complex or will be better understood with a bit more historical/cultural background. My DD enjoyed the first 4 Betsy-Tacy books in K and 1st (some girls might like to wait just a bit on the 3rd and 4th books, as Betsy and her friends are just a bit older in those books). We read a lot of "series" books in K/1st because that is what my DD wanted to read (boxcar children, anything with fairies). Trumpet of the Swan was another one we did though in 1st grade. I think we also did "B is for Betsy" by Carolyn Haywood in K or 1st, and then DD read the sequels on her own in 2nd grade. We do a lot of audio books in the car (even a 20 minute drive across town is long enough for a chapter or two), and sometimes DD listens to them on an MP3 player while doing chores. I don't find that just having them on in the background while we are doing stuff around the house works very well, as my boys start to make too much noise after a while. :-)

I hadn't thought about those! We did so little of the grammar that I didn't really notice. Definitely everything you need to do the spelling other than some of the game directions are in the TM though. I have the games book, so I may have forgotten about the fact that it was referred to. If you are going for a true bare bones, money saving approach you could make do with the TM and come up with some game ideas (my kids love phonogram tic tac toe and would play that over most any of the the games...or just me calling out phonograms and them jumping up to say the sounds or something like that). But the ebook of the student book is a good deal if you have more than one student, and you just want to print some but not all the pages.

The absolute bare-minimum necessity is the Teacher's Manual. That's it. The student work could be done on a white board or scratch paper (though if you plan to do all the grammar and writing exercises, there would definitely be some work for you to copy the student text for the exercises...however I think the student text is always somewhere in the lesson. If you are just doing spelling it is pretty easy to do that!). You can make homemade phonogram cards, spelling rule cards, grammar rule cards and even game cards. The spelling journal could be replicated on your own or there are free printables out there that are similar. It is really a matter of your time vs. the cost. The time would not be worth it to me, so I purchased everything. It turns out though that we rarely use the game cards. Some families use them a lot, but we prefer active games that don't require the small game cards.

Here's a post from my blog (a blog that I cough...cough...haven't written at in almost a year): http://homeschooldiscoveries.com/2013/05/12/logic-of-english-essentials-a-one-year-later-review/ That describes how we did our first run-through of Essentials. We started when DD was almost 8, and finished when she was just past 9. This past school year when she was 9/turned 10 at the end of the year, we did the advanced lists. Our pattern was Dictate the list on Monday (reviewing phonograms/rules if needed) - Practice the words independently on paper on Tuesday -- Use Spelling City for practice on Wed/Thursday -- Test on Friday.

My three DS's currently share a room and the dynamic really only works if all three go to bed at the same time, so the three of them are somewhat limited by the youngest getting tired. Bedtime (when they are actually in bed) is typically between 8:30 and 9pm unless we have been out of the house for a special evening activity. DD is naturally a night owl, and if she doesn't need to be up for anything in the morning I am cool with her staying up until 10pm or a bit later. But if she does need to get up before 9am for any reason (which is most of the time during the school year, since if we don't get started with school by 8:30 or 9am the day does not go very well), then she needs to be in bed by 9:15 or maybe 9:30 or she is super crabby the next morning. My problem with her is that she wants to be a night owl AND an early bird...so she stays up late and then sets her alarm for 6:30am...and then is mad because she couldn't get up or even hear the alarm because she is so tired. :glare: ETA...When DD stays up later than the boys, the "rule" is that she has to be in her room or at least out of our way...because we need that kid-free time too! She usually uses her late night time to read, play with her dolls or make crafts.

We did the first two W&R books and this bothered me as well. I feel like the "writing process" of going back and editing or revising is not addressed at all, at least not that I caught. Once or twice during each book (when I felt like we had some extra time in a given week), I had my DD try and find her own spelling mistakes, then I went back and found more + suggested some other improvements, then I helped her type more of a final/revised copy of an exercise. But we weren't instructed to do that in the text. (I only have the student manual though, so if it was buried somewhere in the teacher text I would not have known). One thing I don't like about using a brand new, as yet unfinished series of books is that there is no way to know for sure where the series is "going" in terms of issues like this. I feel like the process of rough draft/revisions/final draft is important to later writing skills...I mean, who writes a paper and turns it in in high school or college without editing or revising first? And there is no way to know if they are going to address this skill later. I THINK we are still going to do at least book 3 of W&R and probably book 4 as well...but if the series does not start addressing skills like this, I think we may move on in 6th or at least supplement a lot more. I think I am going to add Paragraph Composing for Elementary by Killagon this year, because my DD has NO IDEA how to break her writing down in to paragraphs...everything she writes turns out as one long block of text.

Okay, I am not a "fan" of CC personally (we just have other interests/needs when it comes to co-op type experiences), but I do have to say that I don't think I know a single person who homeschools because they don't "trust public school teachers." Some people may not like the curricula or methods used in public schools...but that is a lot different than not trusting the teachers. Most people I know who homeschool are doing it for religious/moral reasons or they are doing for academic reasons of one sort or another (kids need more challenge in one or more subjects, kids struggling in one or more areas, wanting to pursue different emphasis than public school provides, etc). I also think CC may be overpriced (at least compared with the cost of other co-ops in our area)...but I am still not sure that your reasoning is very valid in the question you are posing,

I guess it is hard for me to picture what you are talking about. For anything that needs precise alignment, I use MS Publisher. It isn't as good as a professional desktop publishing program but it works for most simple things and you have a lot more control of layout than Word. If I had hand-drawn graphics I wanted to insert with text I would scan, save as a jpg, and then import into Publisher as a picture. Then you can make your little text boxes and drag them around as needed. I suppose a table might work too...I am just not quite sure how the table would behave with graphics in it since I don't use tables that way, typically.

MS Word and MS publisher both have options to save as a PDF. If you want to use what you have already drawn and just scan it, your scanning program may allow you to save as a PDF...we just use the scan utility that came with our printer and it has this option.

I use a student planner book more like a daily checklist for DD. We started this in 3rd grade, after spending the last couple months of 2nd grade writing a daily checklist on scraps of paper. DD really likes independent work, and likes to know exactly what is happening each day for our "together work". I open the planner each morning and write down both independent items (for example: Week 5, day 3 of handwriting, Read 20 minutes from history book basket, Practice 15 minutes on Spelling City for this week's word list) and together items: New math lesson, read science book, read a chapter of Fred. She checks each item off as she does them, and I am able to see at a glance how she is making progress on the day's work. We can also look back and see what we've accomplished for the week or what we did the week before when the new week begins.

Here it is: http://www.heinemann.com/products/E04794.aspx I'm curious about it. I see that it has a 2014 copyright, so I wasn't sure if it came out earlier this year or just recently. Last year when DD was in 4th was the first year we really used a formal writing program (CAP W & R books 1 and 2). I am thinking about books 3 & 4 of that series for her next year, but she also desperately needs to learn something about paragraphs. Right now, pretty much everything she writes ends up in one huge, long block of text. When I suggested that she break things down into paragraphs (and even reminded her about the definition of a paragraph), she pretty much looked at me like I had two heads and kept on doing the same thing. I looked at a couple of scholastic e-books about paragraph construction and even tried a few pages from one of them with her and it was not a hit. So I am looking for something else that will fit the bill of teaching DD how to break her writing down into smaller chunks.

I have them as a part of buying the RS curriculum levels, and I would say not worth it as a separate $55 purchase. There are just not enough awesome, unique games at that price point in my mind. That being said, you can buy individual decks from the Right Start site (maybe at RR too?) and I would say that the Corners game is awesome. Another unique item is the fraction/decimal card deck. But most of the other games could be played with just a 0-10 deck of cards (or a regular deck that you decide what is what). There are a couple of scholastic ebooks that regularly show up in the dollar sale with math card games, and I once found this free ebook about math card games (I think from someone's link here)...though I have never actually read it...but hey, it's free. ;-)