Life Schooling 101: What We Use For Language Arts
Now just because we life school doesn't mean we don't take advantage of some of the great curriculum choices out there! In fact, in this blog post I want to explain all about what we use for Language Arts during class time and beyond.
First, let me reiterate that life schooling involves academics, but it also involves schooling kids about life.
Read my inspiration for life schooling: Why You Shouldn't Homeschool.
Ya know, the necessities? The things we've experienced as young'uns ourselves and how we can teach them how to or not to repeat what we've gone through. Life schooling is about elevating our children in their talents and skills and helping them to find their calling, so to speak.
FYI: Keep in mind, "calling" may be plural in most cases but helping them to at least follow the basics of what their calling may be as they will later on begin to explore the rest for themselves!
This is the more difficult part of life schooling, but I will be sure to speak more on this in another week as I discuss our subjects.
This week is all about what we use and how we implement Language Arts into our schooling days.
The first thing I want to talk about is Easy Grammar. As I stated in my first Life Schooling 101 post on how we implement math into our homeschool day, I will not be doing any in-depth reviews on any of the curriculum right now because I will save that for another blog post.
But Easy Grammar is the base for what we use to learn about the parts of speech: verbs, nouns, pronouns, and all of that cool stuff. Now this is for my oldest two, 5th and 7th grades.
Because my boys have pretty much gotten the basics down as far as understanding how to spot the parts of speech in a sentence, we use Easy Grammar as good review each year.
What my kiddos mostly love about this curriculum is that each lesson is short and sweet, but it provides enough thoroughness that it makes them feel challenged even when they've forgotten some things. So with each lesson, they will have learned about whatever the topic may be about, such as conjunctions, and I may provide some follow-up work that we will do together at the board to be sure they "get it".
Sometimes, I may even throw in a worksheet or two of Daily Grams which is a revisit of the parts of speech, but they will also gain practice with punctuation, capitalization, sentence combining, and whatever extra practice subject they have for that particular day: alphabetizing, antonyms/synonyms, how to use a thesaurus, etc.
Once again, these lessons are very short and sweet as it takes them about 10 minutes to do each one! What I enjoy seeing as a homeschool mom is the fact that as I incorporate short lessons for them, they seem to like school a whole lot better and they ask to do more school on some days!
I really enjoy the mess out of this, buddy!
Now, as far as my 2nd grader, he is still using Christian Light Education's Language Arts curriculum. Soon I will probably be switching him to something else because he says the lessons are too long and tedious and he's over that!
Yep, he said that to me!
But last year I was in a really good place with him and because I don't want to lose that with him, I will heed his request as I asked him to give me one more year with Christian Light. He is such a soldier as he is hanging in there with me. He works very independently and I am one proud Mommy!
Christian Light has been known to be faithful for us as far as thoroughness and I want to stay true to them! This is what has given my now 2nd grader the wonderful foundation he has as far as his reading and language skills.
Sometimes, I may purchase additional items or workbooks for him to use to kind of switch things up a bit for him since he is beginning to get a bit bored with it.
I went to one of my local Five Below stores and purchased a Reading Comprehension book: The Smart Alec series. He really enjoys reading the stories and they are quick lessons which follow up with about 4 or 5 questions in the end. Oh, how he loves the days we do these!
So, I guess this is one of the reasons he is able to stick it out with me using Christian Light Language Arts, the fact he is not doing them every day!
Another thing we just started working with is First Language Lessons For the Well Trained Mind. This was something I had been tossed about for years wondering if it would work for my chiccos or not, but so far it seems to be doing pretty well for them.
I decided to give it a go because I wanted to begin working more with all of my children on their writing skills. This is an area that has been a bit of a drab, but I think I've finally found a good approach, helping them to learn how to speak well!
This is what First Language Lessons are all about! Their approach: once kids learn how to properly speak, this can be translated onto paper rather easily.
So we are right into the beginning parts of the book and so far they are digging it.
As far as writing, we are not putting an emphasis on their writing skills as of yet, I know that in time this will come. I am choosing to take things slow in this fashion because I know I can easily cause them to hate this area. As they develop in their speaking skills, writing will be a breeze!
Trust me, I know this all too well!
Now for my older two, Spelling and Reading, we do this organically. What I mean by that is when we come across words (beyond their grade level) that are unfamiliar to us we research them. This is a rule in our house for all of us, my husband and I as well, if there is a word we don't know, research it!
Some words I see my children write and I know they should have spelled correctly, I point this out. I express to them not to use slang writing in their chats or texts with their friends because it will breed a bad habit for later on especially when they're my age...LoL.
What my children choose to read is typically what they are interested in. My 2nd grader loves, loves, loves Rod and Staff's All About God readers. These, he reads mostly independently as I'm working with another student or sometimes he may read them with me.
I love the fact that I do not have to probe him with questions because he comes prepared with many of these as he interrupts me working with his siblings!
But he reads everything his eyes can find to read. His siblings' books, traffic signs, subtitles on movies, whatever he sees...he reads!
My older two are a bit more relaxed when it comes to reading, so I tend to read with them more. They are very auditory learners so I take advantage of this.
What I've noticed gets them going is reading very dramatically with them and they tend to want to imitate what I do, so they will beg to read next. I thought this was such a great tactic sneaking this in there...LoL!
Reading on their own, my 7th grader will mostly read self-help books or articles. He has really taken a liking to this area.
My 5th grader loves adventure and mystery stories, but he would rather listen to them.
Maybe I will do a blog post soon on the titles of books and articles they read? We'll see, hmm?
But this is all I have for today...Until next time!
Catch me next time as I talk about how we incorporate Science into our school day!
"You were designed and created to be a world-changer, whether for one individual, several, or an entire world. Your life is a book and the pages of your life are being added daily, so be the difference someone wants to open and read!"
-Lynn Palmer
