LA curriculum for 1st and 2nd grader

[Sunshine89]

Next year will be our first year homeschool. We will have a 2nd, 1st, pre-k to teach and a toddler... I am mostly concerned about picking a phonics program. I want something with scripted lesson (or at least lessons broken down) and an emphasis on phonics.

 

My gut is telling me to go with Logic of English Foundation for the 1st grader because she is very high energy and the kinesthetic activities will hopefully keep her engaged. She is not reading yet and is struggling to learn all the required sight words in school and move beyond CVC words but I think with some 1:1 she get this quickly.  I have Level A foundations that I used with my son before he went to public Kinder and he did well with it but once he learned all the phonograms it didn't really seem to have enough reading practice for him. I don't know if this gets better with levels B, C and D but I have heard this is a concern from other using LOE. I could supplement this but it's more planning on my part. I have some bob books. I also have the McGuffey Eclectic primers that we haven't tried yet and other free readers I have printed offline and basically all the Dr. Suess books. 

 

BUT I have been hearing great things about 1. RLTL and ELTL and of course 2. All About Reading/Spelling (does it cover grammar too?) and 3. PAL reading and writing (from IEW). Which of these do you recommend? 

 

My second grader on the other hand is reading well. He devours the easy chapter books from Magic Tree House and pretty much any easy chapter/I can read book that I give him, but he will need more work on the phonograms, spelling rules and comprehension in second grade. I'm thinking of getting LOE essentials for him and working though that with either lists A or B. 

We are planning to use Bible Heroes from IEW for his writing. 

 

Any down sides to Essentials? It seems like they have made a lot of changes to the 2nd edition and that we could get a lot of longevity out of it (3 levels). What other programs might I consider for the 2nd grader that cover phonics, spelling and grammar? 

Edited April 15, 2016 by Sunshine89

[ExcitedMama]

AAR is awesome! Scripted and fun and super easy to teach. It's straightforward and easy to use at the child's pace. AAS could be a great fit for your son since it reinforces rules for reading like when c say suh like in city. AAS is short and simple and it's just a teacher's book so you can also reuse when your DD is ready. They don't cover grammar but ELTL would be a fun addition for that. Or look into First Language Lessons (FLL).

[Syllieann]

I like the idea of IEW bible heroes plus essentials for the 2nd grader who reads well. I use bible heroes with a different spell-to-read for my voracious reader. It was a good combo for us, though I can't speak to the specifics of essentials vs other spell-to-reads.

 

For the younger kids I would go with aar. It is the sort of thing that is likely to work for many different types of students. IMO it is also an easier way to begin reading/gaining fluency than the vertical method of loe and rltl. I'm speaking of the method here, not those specific programs. With aar you get the readers and the cards to customize practice. It's all done for you. If you are doing essentials with the older, you can move the youngers into that later for the spelling/grammar. I personally found after aar2 to be a good time to switch to the spell to read. For us, it corresponded with good fluency in easy readers and with writing readiness. For others, those correlations might be after level 1 or 3.

 

Since the sight word approach was failing your DD in school, I wouldn't waste my time or money with PAL reading. You can use pal writing with aar if you want. Pal writing includes aas. I think the little letter stories are cute, but I'm sure you could do your own thing successfully too.

[Sunshine89]

I like the idea of IEW bible heroes plus essentials for the 2nd grader who reads well. I use bible heroes with a different spell-to-read for my voracious reader. It was a good combo for us, though I can't speak to the specifics of essentials vs other spell-to-reads.

 

For the younger kids I would go with aar. It is the sort of thing that is likely to work for many different types of students. IMO it is also an easier way to begin reading/gaining fluency than the vertical method of loe and rltl. I'm speaking of the method here, not those specific programs. With aar you get the readers and the cards to customize practice. It's all done for you. If you are doing essentials with the older, you can move the youngers into that later for the spelling/grammar. I personally found after aar2 to be a good time to switch to the spell to read. For us, it corresponded with good fluency in easy readers and with writing readiness. For others, those correlations might be after level 1 or 3.

 

Since the sight word approach was failing your DD in school, I wouldn't waste my time or money with PAL reading. You can use pal writing with aar if you want. Pal writing includes aas. I think the little letter stories are cute, but I'm sure you could do your own thing successfully too.

 

Thanks so much for this... it makes a lot of sense to me. I want to go back and look at the sample pages for Essentials again to see if this is really where we want to go with the 2nd grader. The program is a bit pricey so I want to make sure it's worth it. If you don't mind me asking what other spell-to-read programs are there that are basically open and go?  

 

I think you have convinced me to give AAR and AAS a second look for the 1st grader and down. I have had my eye on it for a while and everyone seems to use it and like it. I was learning towards PAL writing for her so it would nicely. 

[Syllieann]

I use sound beginnings, which is Catholic. It is pretty open and go. From what I understand reading lessons through literature is pretty open and go too, but I haven't used that one. Sound beginnings is available from our father's house. Afaik, I'm the only one on twtm boards that uses it, but you might find a used copy on cathswap if you are interested. It is written to the teacher, not the student, so I think it would be ok for most Trinitarian Christians. The only part I can think of that a Protestant might not like is where they teach the kid to write jmj on the paper.

[Vintage81]

We're currently in the middle of Bible Heroes for my 2nd grade daughter. We started it really late in our school year, but the curriculum we were using was not working at all. My daughter does not like to write, and writing is not really my forte, so I started researching other options.

 

The nice folks at IEW informed me that I didn't need to purchase the TWSS in order to do Bible Heroes, so I decided to give it a try. We just finished lesson 10, doing one lesson per week, and things are going really well. We've been working through each lesson together and she doesn't complain anymore! She enjoys the games and is learning a lot.

 

Next year, I'm switching to AAR (probably level 3) and we'll finish Bible Heroes then move on to the SWI-A.

 

I also have a kindergartener. For 1st grade, again I'm switching her to AAR and we'll do IEW PALS Writing. Of what I've read, PALS Reading is really teacher-intensive, so that didn't appeal to me. The Writing portion comes with AAS 1, but it's recommended not to start that until AAR 1 is completed. I'm actually going to use the AAS 1 for my 2nd grader in the meantime, then work our way up through the levels.