English Lessons Through Literature 1 or First Language Lessons 1

[Guest]

Has anyone used both English Lessons Through Literature 1 and First Language Lessons 1?  Which one would you recommend for an almost 7 year old 1st grader?

[HomeAgain]

I have not used ELTL, but we did use FLL 1.  We weren't happy with it.  It went over proper and common nouns for the first half the book, teaching months, days, parts of the family, address, etc. This is great if your child is just starting out learning these things, but my kid balked at the lessons. 

[busymama7]

I did not like FLL. It was dry and repetitive and seemed pointless. I chose to wait until they were older for grammar and it was fine.

 

I am using ELTL this year with my 1st and 3rd(dyslexic) kids. I love the look of it. It makes me feel happy and peaceful so I'm sure we are going to love it. Quality literature and a bit of copy work etc. just my style but done for me instead of having to do it myself.

 

The two are vastly different.

[Kat w]

I use both. They sort of work together /compliment each other I think.

The ELTL has you listen to a classic book like Alice in wonderland etc then do sentence analysis and other fun things.they do poetry memorixamemorization too, but the ELTL peoms are longer and are harder for my boys. I do the copy work in ELTL BC it's on the book you listen too ( we chose audiobooks, I read aloud alot. It helps)

 

Fll . I love the picture studies and they're scripted. It does grammar in a slightly different way, plus goes into address phone # etc.

I really like aspects of both and the 2 together aren't too much.

 

ELTL can almost be like your lit. And fll the grammar, picture studies and other things.

 

I use them both and I think it's a perfect match to work in unison.

 

Fll doesn't have you listen to a classic book which I think is so important .

That's why I use both.

 

ELTL really to me is like a lit. Program with some grammar thrown in .

 

I use wwe with them. Read a small excerpt to a classic and ask scripted questions knowing what should be drawn out of the child.

 

That's an early writing program that build sequentially.

 

I would really recommend doing g wwe also. It's quick and easy and scripted. Which helps us the mom know what to elicit from the child and get their brains thinking in a writing and important detail type of way.

 

The boys have fun with it too :)

 

You could always chose the wwe story excerpt from the book you are doing in ELTL. Thsts fun too :)

Edited August 16, 2016 by Kat w

[knitgrl]

I have not used ELTL, but we did use FLL 1.  We weren't happy with it.  It went over proper and common nouns for the first half the book, teaching months, days, parts of the family, address, etc. This is great if your child is just starting out learning these things, but my kid balked at the lessons. 

 

 

This was our experience, as well as that of a friend's. It's no good if both the teacher AND student find a curriculum boring.

 

I did not like FLL. It was dry and repetitive and seemed pointless. I chose to wait until they were older for grammar and it was fine.

 

I am thinking of waiting to do grammar until my 6yo is older. I have yet to find a English curriculum that seems suitable for this age. Everything I have run into is either too easy or too difficult.

[HomeAgain]

 

 

 

I am thinking of waiting to do grammar until my 6yo is older. I have yet to find a English curriculum that seems suitable for this age. Everything I have run into is either too easy or too difficult.

 

I don't know where your 6yo is at (reading/writing-wise) but we're using Grammarland and this companion guide. The parts of speech take on Montessori symbols and are fun to play with, and we're modifying the exercises to do together on a whiteboard with colored markers (and colored pencils when he writes on the paper).  Because the symbols are grouped (all triangles have to do with things: nouns, articles, pronouns, adjectives; circles are verbs, adverbs) it makes it easier to learn and figure out what belongs to whom.  It takes us longer - this is our second week on pronouns, doing one small piece a day - but the characters are a great intro to grammar for later, when we follow it with Simply Grammar Primer and The First Whole Book Of Diagrams.

[Haiku]

I recommend not worrying about grammar until your child is old enough to begin FLL3. FLL 1 and 2 are boring and, imo, unnecessary. FLL3 starts at the beginning and is fantastic.

 

In hindsight, I would hold off on grammar until my kids were reading fluently (chapter books and the like) and writing well. Anything we did before that was basically wasted time.

[knitgrl]

I don't know where your 6yo is at (reading/writing-wise) but we're using Grammarland and this companion guide. The parts of speech take on Montessori symbols and are fun to play with, and we're modifying the exercises to do together on a whiteboard with colored markers (and colored pencils when he writes on the paper).  Because the symbols are grouped (all triangles have to do with things: nouns, articles, pronouns, adjectives; circles are verbs, adverbs) it makes it easier to learn and figure out what belongs to whom.  It takes us longer - this is our second week on pronouns, doing one small piece a day - but the characters are a great intro to grammar for later, when we follow it with Simply Grammar Primer and The First Whole Book Of Diagrams.

 

Isn't is awesome how the whiteboard makes writing much more bearable than pencil and paper?

 

She does well with reading, her handwriting is neat, she's willing to write a few sentences at a time, but given her reluctance with writing last year, I try not to push it too much. She will be turning 7 in November. We did Shurley Grammar Level 1 last year, but it seemed to plateau for the last 2/3 of the book. Grammarland and the companion guide are definitely reasonably priced. It's also appealing because it looks like it is strictly grammar, not grammar and writing or grammar and copywork, or whatever other million combinations there are. I want to get her to the point (someday) where she can diagram sentences.

 

Looking at WTM 3ed, she recommended FLL for 1st and 2nd, which was not a good fit for us. I wasn't entirely happy with Shurley, so I figured if she suggested R&S for 3rd grade, the 2nd grade R&S should work, right? In WTM4ed, she explicitly discourages use of R&S for 2nd grade. (Sigh.) I wasn't crazy about R&S, but it was something. She suggests Practical Lessons in the use of English Book I, which you can find in Google books. So we just started that. I feel more comfortable with it than R&S. However, I much prefer real books over pdf's on the computer screen, and if you save the pdf, the pictures disappear, which are kind of important for some lessons.

 

My wish is to find an English curriculum I like that will take us through 6th or 8th grade, for the sake of continuity. I am not in love with MUS, but it seems to be doing the job, and I intend to stick with it until the math gets complicated, at which point I will revisit math curricula, so I don't think I'm that picky. I'm ok with things that enable my dd to make progress, even if I do not love, love, love them.