Finishing LOE Foundations D...what next?

[kirstenhill]

My 1st grade DS (almost 7) will finish Logic of English Foundations D within the next couple weeks. I'm trying to decide what else to do to fill the year. I have no problems finding books for him to read, and I'm not particularly concerned with doing a lot more spelling this year (and I have plenty of spelling options around the house to add a bit in if needed). I haven't quite decided what to do next with him for spelling, but I will either wait until next year to pick that up again or just start when I decide.

 

I think what we will miss about LOE Foundations is the workbook. DS loves the "Dragon workbook" and is sad to be doing the last one in the series. I like that it wasn't just copywork or spelling words. It often has pages to match sentences with pictures, words to cut out and arrange (yesterday he was matching contractions to the full spelling), games, little writing activities, etc. There is a lot of variety. He is a high energy, short attention span kid...and just doing copywork every day to teach various Language Arts concepts would be a flop.

 

Any other workbooks we should check out to finish out the year? I am mostly looking to fill 12-14 weeks from when he will finish Foundations D until we take a break. If we do nothing, he would only be reading and not writing anything, since LOE has been our complete LA curriculum. I have no idea about next year either for him, but I am not going to worry about that yet...lol

[sunshineslp]

Im in the same boat! My son will finish in about a week. I've considered doing AAS but I want more workbook for him. Explode the Code might also work, it's a workbook. I'm probably going to do spelling you see and next year maybe piecemeal out my LA since I don't love any all in ones.

 

 

Homeschooling mama of 4... Preschool 3, preschool 4, 1st, and 2nd:)

[smarson]

Could you move directly into LOE Essentials?  I don't have it yet, as we're just finishing book C but I hear their 2nd edition has more suggestions for games and such?  

 

Or you could always just do a TON of reading over the next 12-14 weeks, having him do some copywork and dictation every day?  That might get you through until you decide what to do next?

[Coco_Clark]

My son was sad to leave the dragon book as well. It made it esoecially hard that he had siblings still working in it. Sometimes you outgrow stuff, and it sucks.

 

We looked at Essentials but it's not "fun" like Foundations.

 

I ended up- assigning books to read, picking copywork from said books, and continuing playing the spelling/phonics games via the LOE game book to finish out the year. We finished LOE around spring break and had 6 or 8 weeks left.

 

Then this year we do ELTL and Rod and staff spelling.

[kirstenhill]

We own Essentials and I used it with my older kids, I don't feel the need to rush him into it right away. His spelling is pretty decent for a first grader, so I feel comfortable waiting until next fall to do Essentials or maybe something else. I own several spelling (and grammar) options so I am not worried about having something available for him in 2nd.

 

I honestly don't want to focus on copywork and dictation with him. He dislikes it very much...which I know isn't a reason to skip it all together, but I would like to just do it once a week or so. He has a lot of other stuff (non-school related, behavior-wise) going on in his life, so pushing him to do a lot of copywork is not big on my agenda for the rest of this year. It's not a battle I am choosing to fight right now.

 

He likes the other workbook pages (the more creative-writing ones, matching, writing the result when base word is added to suffix, editing pages, games, etc). So I am more looking for that kind of content than copywork, with the goal of making sure he is doing SOME kind of written work every day.

Edited January 28, 2016 by kirstenhill

[VorLady]

I'm in the same boat, we'll be finishing "Dragon Phonics" as the not-quite-7yo calls it, in a week. I love that she's reading so fluently, but her handwriting and spelling (outside of lessons) are atrocious. (My fault for letting her get away with printing instead of forcing her to do cursive).

 

I bought the new Essentials and I really like the look of it. Thinking of using it but taking it super slow - two weeks to do a lesson - and adding in extra handwriting practice. Plus lots and lots of reading. Other than that I really don't know. We tried FLL once and it was, er, not for us.

 

Copywork might be a good idea. I really want to get her practicing her cursive though and her perfectionism is a huge issue there. I'm just not sure.

[rwilk]

I might use something like "storymatic" to adapt for fun writing/other assignments. We play with it a lot, and it could easily be adapted for written assignments.  

 

You could also think about picking up a Spectrum workbook.  We've used Language Smarts from Critical Thinking Company, but I think that's probably more than you would need.

 

 

My DD loves Foundations too---she's going to be so disappointed when we finish out D.  She is so attached to "dragon reading" that she got me a statue of a momma dragon kissing her baby dragon for Mother's Day.  

[smarson]

I love that all of your kids call it "Dragon Phonics" or something like that.  I don't think my daughter has even noticed there's a dragon on the cover of the books!  Ha!  We just call it English around here. :)