LLATL?

[My4arrows]

Anyone use this?  I've only seen the small excepts in the samples, but it looks interesting as it also covers some books I was going to use with my kids next year anyway.

[hollyhock2]

I've used LLATL for two years now, levels Orange through Gray. I really like some parts of it, and dislike other parts. Green and Gray are my favourite levels because the grammar coverage is more systematic. The lower levels have too little grammar, in my opinion. It doesn't come up often enough, so my kids forget it all. I really like how the spelling and dictation works together. Most of the books are really good choices, but I just have my kids read them; we don't do the book studies. I have also skipped a lot of the extra units like story-writing and oral presentations because my kids dislike creative writing. Anything else you want to know?

[mom@shiloh]

I agree with hollyhock2.  We've used it, liked some of it, skipped some of it.  I just cleaned my shelves and came across a LLATL gray student book that we began, but ended up doing LA at co-op that year instead.  It has writing on a few pages, but I'd sell it to you for the cost of shipping if you'd like to look it over.  PM me if you're interested.

[HomeAgain]

We didn't like it.  We used Tan, the 6th grade or so book.  The daily work was light, and the "book studies" were shoddy and felt thrown in just because they remembered they should do literature once in a while.  I know it's been redesigned this past year but I wouldn't go back.  We ended up bouncing from that to MBTP, which actually felt more like learning language arts through literature, to an all-encompassing program (Learning Adventures) that we dropped the science from and did the LA/History/Literature along with WWS.

Right now my youngest is doing ELTL (English Lessons Through Literature) and it's another good fit. 5-6 books per year + short stories and the copywork/grammar/writing is all connected.

[Lori D.]

I really wanted to like LLATL as it's such a great concept, but it did not work here. We tried the Purple Book (5th grade) one year, but dropped it almost immediately, as DS's different language arts areas were so radically different (much higher than LLATL in reading/discussing/comprehension, much lower than LLATL in spelling and writing), that it was impossible to use an "all-in-one" LA program for him. Overall, the program seemed quite light to me, although perhaps that is because we had needed so many intensive programs and time for remedial work with DS's LA topics.

I think LLATL would work fine for a student who is all at-grade level in all LA subjects, does well with workbooks and mostly independent working, and if mom needs a lighter, "just get 'er done" program for some reason. (Side note: from what I have seen of the samples of Christian Light Education (CLE) programs, those are similar to LLATL but have much more depth and meat.)

Another option might be to try Total Language Plus, which is the same idea as LLATL, but instead of a whole year program, it is for individual books. So you could try out a "unit" of TLP for the rest of this school year, and see if this type of program is a good fit for your student to consider doing full-on LLATL next year. ETA: -- yes! forgot about Moving Beyond the Page, but as HomeAgain said above, that would also be another more in-depth all-in-one program to look at! :)

In high school, we did use parts of the Gold: American Lit (the poetry units and short stories), and the Gold: British Lit (the poetry units) as one of a number of resources for our Literature. The high school programs are pretty light, and are geared for the student who works very well independently AND who likes to go research/dig deeper about the books elsewhere on their own. In these 2 high school programs, there is next-to-no instruction/info about literary elements at work in the pieces of literature covered by the program, and most of the questions are comprehension rather than discussion or guided analysis questions. There is a bit of background info, and the British Lit background on poetry was actually quite useful, just way too short and not in-depth enough.

[Holly]

I regret using the red level.  It did not have enough phonics, and really set my child behind with reading.  I also had children using orange and tan levels.  We much preferred ELTL for an “all in one” program.

[My4arrows]

Thanks for the information!  It sounds like it won't be the best fit for us either.  I will be looking more into TLP! And ELTL!  I'm trying to get my boy who loves reading, but hate all other language arts to gain better LA skills.

[mamakelly]

I have literally looked at it every other year and it never quite seems to fit the bill for us. We switched to Christian LIght Language arts last year and it's been fantastic as an All-in One program. My son likes it, and it actually gets done.