Our Language Arts Adventures

I have shared what we are going to be doing for History and Science in earlier posts, so I wanted to share our thoughts on Language Arts, but I thought it would also be helpful to share what we have used and loved so far, as well as F-L-O-P-S!

We have explored many different products and methods in regards to Language Arts over the past few years. We have had some big winners and we have had complete duds. One of the best parts about homeschooling is that you can tailor the education to the child. . . no cookie cutter, one size fits all approach here!

Jordan learned to read using a variety of sources. Leap Frog videos, Starfall.com, letter games, flashcards and reading with Mom and Dad are the main ways she learned. I actually often say that she taught herself! I think PBS shows like Super Why, World World and Between the Lions helped a lot, too. We supplemented with Zoo Phonics and Explode the Code, as well, but I don't really know how much this taught her as just reinforced what she already knew. Looking back, she was much more of the whole word approach rather than phonics, but we are working on the phonics as well to help her with spelling and fluency. But we plan on stopping ETC after this workbook.

Cali is learning to read using a variety of sources, too, but completely different. While she loved watching the videos with her sister when she was little, and it is how she learned her letter sounds at 18 months, she actually doesn't like to watch the videos now. It is really strange, I don't know where she changed but she refuses to watch them with her sister when Jordan asks to watch them! She did the Zoo Phonics with us last year so she was exposed to the idea that letter sounds can be in the beginning, middle and end and was good at sounding out 3 letter words by the age of 3, but while she wanted to learn how to read like her sister so badly, she got frustrated very very easily. The Sonlight Readers did not work --- Bob books did. Sonlight LA did not really work at all for her actually. What worked for her was a combination of songs for word families, some letter games, and mostly using workbooks -- in particular Queens Language Lessons for the Very Young 2 and to a somewhat lesser extent, Explode the Code. She loves these and we may continue throughout with these resources (meanwhile Jordan doesn't like Queens Language Lessons!)

For Spelling words, Jordan being a visual learner has made things interesting. In the beginning what worked best was writing the words with colorful markers on the big white board. After that got old, I didn't understand why using the hands on methods that would work wonderfully for Cali (magnet letters and stamps) wasn't working for her, so I admit I got a little frustrated. Luckily, I stumbled across the idea of using flashcards but tracing the different sounds in different colors so she could visually see the word in her mind, broken down into sounds which helped her in spelling. For instance the word tighten would be broken down where "t" is purple, "igh" is blue, "t" is red, and "en" is green. This helped her tremendously!! And now that our computer is working again, Spellingcity.com has been amazing! She learned two weeks of words within 3 days using that!

For creative writing, I love to have the girls tell me stories while I copy them down word for word, and this does work for the most part. . . but we also use a tape recorder for the girls to tell their stories, I listen and keyboard, then we discuss (and correct if we are using as an assignment). I love the idea of also keeping these tapes for them to listen to when they are older -- I have a couple from my childhood that the girls get a huge kick out of listening to! The only problem I have found with this is that for Jordan at least, her stories tend to be more concise and to the topic when I have to stop her occasionally to write it down, where when she uses a tape recorder it can follow a few rabbit trails being more free form, but it is still an excellent tool.

Finally a favorite idea that we have done in the final months of our K year for Jordan has been to abandon the LA program we were using (besides Spelling and ETC) and have been working on a story for the PBS Story Contest. Using it as a way to wrap up all we learned this year about similes/metaphors, dialog, adjectives, varying sentence structure, etc has been a lot of fun and a great way to review. The idea was to also use this as copywork as well, and her art could be the illustrations. The only problem is that we started somewhat late on this and I need to play with how I broke it out as she is now at the illustrating part and is kinda "over it." LOL But we will definitely do this again next year!

So that is our look at Language Arts over the years. Going forward Cali will be continuing Queens Language Lessons for the Very Young (moving on to level 3) as well as Explode the Code (finishing Book 3 and going at her own pace from there). I will be using the Spelling words from Sonlight LA 2, using SpellingCity to learn as well as magnets to build the words. For Creative Writing, we will be focusing on journaling and Queen Language Lesson writing prompts.

Jordan will be using Critical Thinking Company's Language Smarts. While she used Sonlight LA 2 this year, we will be using Grade 1 just to reinforce what we have learned and fill any holes. She LOVES the colorful look of the workbook so I think it will be a lot of fun! I will be using a Spelling List I got from our homeschool group for the K-3 National Spelling Bee, putting it into SpellingCity and also a new product I will be reviewing soon, SpellQuizzer. We will be working a bit on vocabulary using Worldy Wise 3000 Book 2 (although we won't be buying the book yet. . . They actually have games online that teach the words and have a few activities! I plan to use this to see if she likes it and then may buy the book later in the year or next year). For Creative Writing we will focus on journaling and story starters, along with self created stories.

Finally for Handwriting, we will continue to either have them trace my handwriting (via Walmart tablets) or worksheets here using Copywork. When I post our unit plans, I will post the copywork that I chose for each week -- mostly focusing on either facts of the time period or great writing samples from the Literature we are using.

Have a great weekend!