Last in Line...

Language Arts Switch

By choice we delay starting 'formal' grammar until later, and so started grammar with Bobbi (who is now 10 & 1/2 yrs old) earlier this year - we started in March 2010.

We picked up Writing Tales which is a good thorough program that uses the progymnasta approach and, teaches grammar.

We've given it the good 'ole school house' try and while Bobbi has managed well with it both he and I are a little weary using the progym approach, it's just not for us long term- we tend to enjoy more diversity in our language arts tools so we've made a switch back to, a sort of, Classical Charlotte Mason approach which we like and seemed to keep jumping off the progym wagon to do.

This may also stop me from *needing* to create all those extra WWE/LA's type pages for the children to , ahem, enjoy .
My long-suffering husband will be so pleased.

I like to select our language art pieces for copywork, narration and dictation out of books the children are able to read themself and, WWE has always been a perfect match for that.

So here is where we are, going at an acclerated pace through Writing With Ease (WWE) & First Language lessons 3, our way.

We're finishing out 2010 using WWE text and any pages we may wish to do out of the last part of WWE2 workbook.

We are using longer readings out of the books and creating more involved pieces for dictation - I'm using those pieces to cover spelling and re-enforce grammar topics also.

(I'm not requiring Bobbi to write anything during history time at present with the reminder of SOTW2, he is just giving oral narrations and doing the map work for 'fun'.)

On the history front: Bobbi also reads The Kingfisher Encyclopedia tie-ins to himself at the table, while Daisy reads her allotment, if any, out of Usborne Book of World History. Then we all chat together. All done, next subject).
We're using scripture for; memorisation, copywork and be.a.u.ti.ful handwriting. The children also enjoy reading The King James Bible, with it's beautiful old english, out loud during bible time. (Ties in beautifully with our Middle Ages study too).
I mentally allocate this as part of their 'reader' to mum, along with their weeks pieces of poetry.

As an aside: Their other readers, chosen out of the book basket, are for them to read and then come tell mum about. Sometimes I'll get them to read a book aloud to me, more so with Daisy still, to hear how they are doing with their reading, and because reading aloud is such a valuable skill.
I don't seem to be asking them to do that too much though as, the lovely thing is that they'll bring their books to me so I can enjoy hearing a portion they've just read to themselves.

And now back to poetry, thanks to Sonlight, and my mother's gene pool - our children like it!
For our occasional piece of creative writing I've been getting both Bobbie and Daisy to create small pieces (a couplet, or haiku, or limmericks ) to go with a picture study.

We haven't had a chance to enjoy Story Starters like I wished to - we'll get back to that, soon.
It's nice to see the joy jump back into Bobbi's language arts time and, for now, to have language arts as an 'easy' subject for him.

With Daisy's language arts we've continued to enjoy WWE (our way) & Classical Writing Primer, picking and choosing the pages I desired her to learn with.
CWP is such a lovely program with a good scope of different topics and options.
Daisy likes the drawing/narration pages and the book selections.

We've just about finished CWP Autumn and for variety, just of late, I've been interchanging her language lessons with some variety by doing lessons orally out of Queen Language Arts books. I've chosen to just use the picture studies and the creative narration that goes with those, and discuss the grammar in Queens.