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Welcome back to school week, where I am sharing how we homeschool. If you want to catch up, you can read about Sonlight, Bible, and Math.
Language Arts is a broad category, and we use a broad range of resources for this one. This is mainly because I have not really found something I love. So I'll break it on down . . .
My 14 year old attends a once-weekly Institute for Excellence in Writing course. I don't normally outsource my teaching, but this class takes place 2 blocks from our house, and she attends with several friends from our local homeschool group. It covers writing, spelling, grammar, and even public speaking. So IEW is her entire language arts. Her teacher assigns homework every week, so she works on those assigments daily. It's very intense, and I'm happy with it for this year. She's currently working on a research paper and a speech.
My 10 year old uses the following:
Grammar: Queen Homeschool. It's very Charlotte Mason. It covers grammar, writing, poetry, and other LA subjects. We both like it.
Spelling: Rod and Staff. For some reason, almost every spelling program out there does not appeal to me. I never felt there was enough review of the actual spelling words. Rod and Staff is different. It's a simple workbook with lots of word study. It utilizes scripture and biblical concepts in every lesson. And it's cheap!
Copywork: When her Queen homeschool book doesn't give her copywork, I have her use their Copywork for Girls book. She is writing in cursive now, so she copies wonderful paragraphs, poetry, scripture, and book excerpts from this book.
I do plan to slowly begin implementing the Sonlight Language Arts program, but it's something we're not really used to. It uses narration and dication, which we've never done (but I'm really wanting to!).
For my 5 year old, we just do reading right now. He is using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We are working our way slowly through it, and are currently on lesson 42. He loves it, and is really making great progress. I have been using A Reason for Writing with him just a little bit, to start learning to form his letters.
I don't know where I'll go from here for his spelling, but I'd like some suggestions on what others use after 100 Easy Lessons.
So that's it for our Language Arts program. It's more of a mish-mash, but then, that's the great thing about homeschooling, right?
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