One of my dearest friends lived across the street from us when we were both newly minted homeschooling mamas. Wanting to do everything “right,” we scoured the internet, curriculum catalogs, and sought advice at homeschool conferences in order to only purchase the best of everything for our budding little geniuses. While our kids played back and forth across our street through all hours of the day, we sat together drinking her delicious authentic chai tea and planning with great excitement for what would be homeschool classrooms dedicated to God’s Word and excellence in academics. Neither of us had much money, so when we did decide to purchase books that were on the pricey side, we determined to share them between our families.
A common phenomenon I have observed among homeschooling mamas is a marked lack of confidence when it comes to teaching language arts. From reading, to composition, to spelling, to rhetoric, to the dreaded GRAMMAR, I do not think I have ever talked to someone who felt well-equipped or excited for the rigors of developing strong communicators. I too felt this lack of confidence, and spent not a few sleepless nights wondering if I was going to end up with a bunch of dummies who couldn’t put together a proper sentence. Because of my lack of trust in the process, I ended up spending far more of our precious resources on language arts curricula that ended up not working at all, and worse, sometimes undid the progress we had been making.
I laugh to myself today as I remember discovering Shurley English when our daughters were barely in 2nd grade. It had some good reviews, and seemed to be enough of an open-and-go program that I could easily manage my toddler twins and precocious preschooler while doling out precious nuggets of English language wisdom to my eagerly-listening 6 and 7 year olds. My friend and I were thrilled. It did not last long. I have tried SO many different approaches and curricula since those early days and have since come to discover that adding in a separate workbook grammar program in addition to reading, spelling, handwriting, vocabulary, and composition programs (if you choose to do all of those in the younger grades, especially at the same time, which I heartily discourage) will make for an unbearably long day, and will probably not offer the great results that you hoped for as a new homeschooling mama.
There are programs that build their philosophy around combining all language arts together into a cohesive single lesson for each day. With these, you spend a limited amount of time teaching concepts that are written to relate to one another in some way. I do like this approach better than using five different workbooks, but if your child has even a hint of dyslexia (not uncommon), or struggles with handwriting (most do), or can read or spell or compose sentences at a pace that differs from any of the other pieces of the language arts instruction, you will end up with a program that is too difficult in one sense and not challenging enough in another. Then that beautiful, all-in-one notebook of expensive, carefully curated lessons ends up collecting dust on the shelf because you have to break apart the pieces anyway.
There are so many things I’d rather do with my time than try to convince children who are dreaming of when they can play in their tree fort outside of the relevance of subjects and predicates. After forcing years (embarrassingly, because I didn’t yet possess the confidence in myself to teach what my children needed to learn at that stage) of dry, time-intensive, frustratingly cobbled-together language arts, I finally overhauled my entire approach.
Here is the language arts program I have finally fine-tuned as my youngest is entering 6th grade in the fall, just hitting our stride after homeschooling students for about 15 years.
Reading
I recommend beginning with phonetic reading instruction before ever picking up a pencil or a workbook. This meant that we started learning letter sounds at about 3 years old. But because it is so easily incorporated into the day and allows you to incorporate big letter tiles appropriate for small hands, and silly things like “writing” the letter A by taking big steps in the backyard or drawing with a finger in a tray of shaving cream, it’s fun and no one thinks that school is actually happening. My goal was to have my children reading before kindergarten-age. In our state, children do not have to be registered before 7 years old, so that gave us plenty of time before having to turn in any official records. Reading instruction can easily take only a few minutes each day, and flows well around nap times and snacks. We used All About Reading for all of our reading instruction. It is a standalone program, and is somewhat teacher-intensive. However, it is multi-sensory, Orton Gillingham-structured, and is based on learning English language rules instead of lists upon lists of sight words. Translation – you will spend FAR less time instructing, and the time you do spend will pay off in spades once that foundation is established. There are four levels, and they can all easily be finished by 2nd grade (note, I am not talking about reading comprehension here, which continues to develop through high school, but simply learning how to read the English language). By not tying reading instruction to other lessons arbitrarily and beginning long before “real” school, I greatly simplified my task with my younger students. I’m sure there are other programs that teach phonics-based instruction, but this worked so well for so many years that I did not want to mess with our progress. And each subsequent student that uses it makes it less expensive because you can re-use most of the materials.
Handwriting
My next approach would be to teach handwriting ONLY once I saw my student gravitating toward using a pencil without my coercion. There are many activities that children can use to develop fine motor skills, and holding a writing utensil is only one of them. This is difficult, I realize, because we often want to “get going” on our homeschool track, not realizing that we are actually making the process of writing anything odious to our students when we push too hard too early. Once I saw that they could hold the pencil correctly, we started with cursive, not printing. Cursive is much easier on little hands because they do not have to lift the pencil from the paper, they start all lowercase letters from the baseline (particularly for D’Nealian style), and it is excellent for children who tend to mix up b, d, p, and q. Not to mention, you will not have to start all over with a new cursive handwriting curriculum in third grade after your child has just mastered printing. Uggh! Remember, by this point you have already taught letter recognition and reading, so your child will be very familiar with print letters and will still be on track with reading skills. You would be surprised at how much you can teach without your student having to put pencil to paper. Once you get letter formation down, start using some copywork books or passages from your favorite read alouds for additional practice. Copywork passages not only expose children to beautiful words, but they are learning some basic rules of the English language along the way. Another great thing about the Logic of English cursive program is that you can re-use all the materials over and over again and with multiple students.
Spelling
Once you are about a year into your reading journey (starting at about level 2 of All About Reading) you can start to incorporate spelling. The process of encoding (spelling) requires different skills than decoding (reading) but you still do not even need to be putting paper to pencil at this point. You can use the same letter tiles you use to teach reading. The same process of memorizing rules instead of lists of word applies here as well, and we used all seven levels of All About Spelling. If you start around kindergarten with spelling instruction (with or without handwriting being in place yet – that will come eventually), you will get through all seven levels before middle school, and, for the mom who feels like she is carrying so much already, you will not have to teach spelling again. All About Spelling is that thorough. Any sticky words are easily corrected with lots of composition practice throughout high school and beyond. This program IS hands-on and teacher-intensive, but it is so straightforward and step-by-step that it is easy to teach multiple children at multiple levels at the same time. And I don’t throw around the word “easy” for many things in the homeschooling universe. Helping your students memorize and utilize a limited number of rules versus vast lists of sight words is a FAR more efficient use of your time as a homeschooler. Trust me when I tell you that you will save time and headaches by using a phonetic-based spelling program for 30 minutes about twice a week for the elementary years. And, you might sense a budget-friendly theme here, you can re-use all the materials for each level of spelling with all of your students.
Composition
By the time children are ready to start composition, there is *still* no need for them to have to write everything down. They can absolutely “write” a paragraph well before they can actually use a pencil to put it on paper. It takes a long time of handwriting practice for children to be able to comfortably write a full paragraph, and even when they do, it might take 30 minutes just to get 5 sentences neatly down. Perhaps you have a unicorn who loves writing everything down, but I definitely didn’t have one of those until much later. If you make children write answers to questions that they could just be narrating to you, you are asking for tears and headaches. In fact, for prolific story-tellers, handwriting can actually get in the way of their creative development. If you’ve ever seen a child excited to share a story with you only to hit the roadblock of not being able to write as fast as his ideas are coming to him, you understand this frustration. To start teaching composition, you will primarily be a scribe helping students organize their thoughts into coherent sentences. This is a process that takes years to develop, and there is no need for a high pressure environment, especially when they are already doing the hard work of learning to read and spell. There is great freedom here for Charlotte Mason-style narrations. For more formal composition instruction, you really can wait until reading is very well in hand. Handwriting can be established alongside composition instruction IF you are committed to being the one to write your students’ ideas down (or type them and let them read it back to you aloud). Early composition is about the process of putting together ideas and words, not about handwriting. If you start All About Reading around preschool, you will be finished with that program and able to replace that instruction time in your day with some focused composition instruction. We have used and really enjoy Classical Academic Press’s Writing and Rhetoric program as well as Institute for Excellence in Writing’s Structure and Style for Students programs. Both follow the progymnasmata, which is an ancient set of foundational writing exercises spanning all the way from retelling fables through formal rhetoric. Writing and Rhetoric is workbook-based, but I have come across few programs that make playing around with words so much fun. We laughed (truly) our way through the first couple of levels, and the way they introduce new concepts is so unintimidating that anyone can be comfortable using it, even the child that hates to write. Did you know that just because a workbook has blank lines for answers to be written in that you do not have to use them that way? Blank lines and workbooks are primarily designed for larger classroom use, and you are a homeschooler, so feel free to plug in oral narrations anywhere you see blank lines. The point is that your child understands the material you’ve just taught, not to fill up time writing sentences. Use beautiful words for copywork when they really need the practice.
Even though we could have gone on with Writing and Rhetoric to the Thesis level (which is in high school), I prefer to switch over to IEW’s Structure and Style video lessons around 5th or 6th grade. The reason for this is that I’ve always had to make some courses independent for the older students by this point because teaching the younger ones requires so much of my undivided attention. With IEW, students can watch the videos (you buy forever-streaming video once and can re-use them for all your students) and follow the instructions for writing from key word outlines all the way through five paragraph essays. I then spend time helping them edit their writing on the last day of the school week, unless they need some more intensive help earlier. This is an easy way to build some independence into the schedule when you desperately need it. Anyone who has overheard Andrew Pudewa’s cheesy jokes will get why kids seem to love his funky style. IEW just works. It builds upon skills learned in the very beginning levels, and though some would say that it teaches writing too formulaically, I have seen that the purpose of requiring a certain style of writing as IEW does helps students to incorporate better, more interesting writing practices beyond these courses, and eventually to do so without even thinking about it. We want automaticity in strong composition skills. We use the IEW video courses for about three to four years, then study to take the CLEP exam. I have had multiple students use IEW for three years, then take the CLEP English Composition with Essay exam and test out of two full semesters of college-level composition. And only one of my students would tell you that she actually loves writing. Do with that information what you will.
Latin
So far in the language arts universe, we have covered reading, handwriting, spelling, and composition. These are so foundational in the early years as to deserve the lion’s share of your resources and time. Depending on how much independence you need your older students to have, you can begin to incorporate literature studies or book guides or even continue with the narration-style question and answer sessions to cover reading comprehension. That is another blog for another day. But what about vocabulary and grammar? As one who uses a lot of Christian classical homeschooling resources, it should not surprise you when I say that Latin will hit both of these thoroughly and will actually make upper-level composition and vocabulary significantly less painful in later years. And not just by a little bit. In fact, Latin will make study of all the Romance languages exponentially easier because they are all based on the same roots! I would be so bold as to say that you can skip vocabulary and grammar completely in elementary years and teach Latin instead. Take this from someone who banged her head against a wall using sundry vocabulary cards and grammar charts for years to no effect. Don’t worry because you don’t have to be a Latin scholar to teach Latin. There are many enjoyable Latin programs that start very early (Song School Latin is so much fun), and with consistent practice can give your student a very solid understanding of how grammar works, as well as a grasp of Latin roots that form the basis of about 60% of English words. You can pick a Latin program that teaches through videos, songs, and chants, and requires few workbooks or written passages. We are using Latin for Children right now, and it is workbook-based because of all the organizational charts and vocabulary pages. But my students are quick with their handwriting by this point, so it only takes a reasonable amount of time to complete our lessons each day. Oral chants take up the rest of our Latin time.
Grammar
By about 6th grade, you will finally be ready to spend some time with a formal grammar curriculum. By this point, your student will have been exposed to a great deal of excellent composition through copywork, will likely have composed a couple of her own 5-paragraph essays, will have read a plethora of wonderful books, and because of Latin will know exactly what a subject and predicate are. You should not have much trouble at all diagramming sentences so your students can see how principal and subordinate clauses work with each other, learn a few obscure grammatical terms like gerunds and participles, as well as refresh writing mechanics such as how to properly use a semicolon. You’ll review capitalization rules and verb tense (or teach officially it for the first time, but I guarantee that your students already know more than you think). If you have been using IEW or Writing and Rhetoric to teach composition, your student will already be quite familiar with these concepts, but those programs are more focused on the art of writing, not nitpicking grammatical skills. We like Well-Ordered Language for middle school years because it’s a great crash course of formal grammar without being too overwhelming. The basis of the program is learning chants that are then used to analyze and diagram sentences. We do only three sentences each day and there are only four levels of grammar to complete. Of all the grammar programs I’ve tried (and I have tried a TON) this one has been the most straightforward, step-by-step, clearly-explained instruction I have ever come across. The lessons are short and simple, and we move on with our day after just touching on grammar concepts for about 20 minutes three times a week. Once your student is in high school, I’m a firm believer in focusing more on essay skills. Good grammar is such a natural outflow of having been exposed to so many excellent books over the years that adding an extra program beyond middle school is unnecessary.
There you have it. A bare bones plan for creating some of your own little excellent communicators without too many tears or pulling your hair out. Life is too short and homeschooling is too amazing to waste time with that.
Hebron Heights Academy 