Homeschooling: Language Arts... Part 3

When teaching language arts and all the many subtopics that fall under that heading, I've been around the block a few times with my choices of curriculum. I want to share with you where we are now, what we use and a few of my favorite things.

As a general rule I do not like textbooks. I do use them on occasion, which I will discuss in another post, but I much prefer to teach with real "living" books (as Charlotte Mason would say) and introduce children to original ideas presented by authors who are knowledgeable and passionate about their subject. A textbook is a mile wide and an inch deep. I'll take a mile deep and an inch wide any day! I do not like workbooks either with a few notable exceptions. I want my children to engage their subject matter with both hands and process the information for themselves and in their own way. This just doesn't happen with ten multiple choice questions on a workbook page. I like blank paper and pencil. I'm never disappointed to see the connections my children make on a subject. In fact, they usually surprise me with their depth and their thoughtful observations! It's great fun!

My favorite overall curriculum is Ambleside Online. I have used it exclusively for many years until the children were into the older grades. I don't approve of several of the book choices listed in the older grades so we had to do some changing once we advanced past the seventh grade. The early elementary grades are the best I've ever seen! I love Ambleside Online and use it exclusively through fourth grade!

To begin my discussion of language arts, I'll start with my youngest students. My very favorite choice for preschoolers is the Rod and Staff preschool workbook series! Now I know I just said I don't like workbooks but this is one that is a rare exception! This series is wonderful and all of my children have dearly loved it. It is rich in Bible teaching and quite advanced which is a nice challenge... and I always like to give my children a challenge! These workbooks are very inexpensive which is a big plus. My preschoolers always want their own "school" and this one is a great choice!

When my children are about four (sometimes a bit younger, sometimes a lot older depending on the child) we start learning to read. I use Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It is by far my favorite reading program! It is very simple to use, each lesson is quick and the children can apply it directly to real books from the start. At the end of this book, my children are reading simple chapter books. My youngest reader was Hannah Banana. She read proficiently by age four. My latest reader was my eldest son who didn't read chapter books until he was seven. All of my children, other than Flibby who went to public school through second grade, have used this program and I wouldn't trade it for all the tea in China!

Once we are up to chapter books, my Charlotte Mason tendencies start to emerge. I teach the majority of my language arts through narration, dictation, and copywork. Narration is simply having a child tell you what you just read to them or what they just read for themselves. This is such a simple thing and such a complex thing at the same time. Narration requires a child to remember what they read, process the information into their own thoughts, organize those thoughts in a coherent way, and express them to someone in an understandable way. It's harder than it sounds! Try it! We start very small while they are building their narration muscles and we narrate a paragraph at a time. This is something we do on occasion throughout our reading. We don't narrate each and every paragraph we read every day. There aren't enough hours in the day to do that. When they are small, we do it three or four times a day. As they get a little older we may do it once a day and my oldest students do written narrations once or twice a week which, by then, should be brilliant essays!

When the children have mastered the oral narration, we move on to written narrations. This is the very same thing, but now they write these down on paper. We teach grammar, spelling, sentence structure, paragraph structure, punctuation, creative writing, parts of speech, subject/verb agreement and every other aspect of writing with this method. These lessons become firmly established in the minds of the children because they are learning and using these skills in the context of real writing. How much more valuable is this type of learning than reading a chapter and answering punctuation questions at the end? I'll let you decide.

Along the same line, we use copywork and dictation. Copywork is simply copying down a passage from literature, the Bible, a quote or anything else we might find interesting. By doing this, we compile a nice notebook of great and noble ideas but the other benefit is the children are exposed to intricate and challenging writing structures. This teaches them all of the many aspects of language arts I mentioned but in a way that stimulates their mind with great ideas from great authors. I have my own copybook of quotes from all sorts of authors on the subject of Biblical womanhood and homemaking, which is a topic of great interest to me. If a project isn't interesting and valuable for me to do, why would it be interesting and valuable for children? I try to do things with the children that I like to do myself. This makes teaching fun and exciting for me which is contagious!

Dictation is one step up from copywork. In dictation, I choose a passage of literature and the student reads it carefully noting the spelling challenges, the structure of the piece, the punctuation and anything else that might be tricky. Then I take the piece and dictate it to my student. The student writes it from my dictation being careful to make no mistakes in any area. Then my student takes back the original and corrects her work. This is advanced work and only my big girls do it regularly. My eldest son is starting to try this in small steps but he's not proficient at it yet.

The only language arts curriculum that I like is Learning Language Arts Through Literature. I use it from time to time when life is hectic and I don't have the time and/or the brain power to plan... sort of like now when there is a new baby in the house! ~wink~ It is a literature based curriculum that incorporates narration, copywork, and dictation. This is combined with a bit of worksheet type activities which I don't particularly love but the children all enjoy it and the curriculum is comprehensive and challenging. If I had to choose "Language Arts In A Box", this would be it!

In my next post, I'll talk about the books we read and why we read them. You might want to grab a glass of tea for that one. I might get long winded. Though that usually never happens.