Language Arts

Curriculum choices are available in abundance for all subjects; however, Language Arts curriculum is the foundation for learning and is, in my opinion, the most important curriculum choice a homeschooler will make.  Language Arts will be the curriculum used to teach early learners to read, write, spell, and properly use language.  Also, very important to consider when selecting a language arts program, this portion of a child's educational experience will determine much of a child's attitude toward education and his opinion of himself as a learner.  Let me explain.  the language arts curriculum used to teach a child to read will set a precedent for the rest of his educational experience.  Not to say that a poor experience in early education can not be changed, but that the original 'school' experience is either postive or negative based primarily on language arts.  (At least this has been my experience.)  Preschoolers and Kindergarteners, in general, enjoy and most excel at recess, crafts, art, counting, music, etc . . . It is their first experience with reading and to some extent writing that will shape their education for years to come.

If a child goes into 'school' (or homeschool) excited about learning and then struggles consistently in this one area, it is easy to become frustrated with school and with himself.  Reading is not as complicated as the scholars and educators would lead us to believe.  Learning to read should be fun and exciting.  A child who grasps the basics of word formation and phonics will enjoy learning to read and will thrive in their education as a result.  As parents and teachers, we tend to think that each student will grasp the concepts of reading quickly and easily and using the same basic curriculum.  This is not always the case.  Language Arts curriculum varies greatly and should be adapted for the students needs.  Yes, I use one basic core curriculum for Language Arts for all of my children; however, I also vary the curriculum to best suit the needs of each child.  That is not always possible in a traditional classroom with many students, but with homeschooling it wonderful to be able to adapt the curriculum to best suit each child.

We use ABeka's language arts program for all of our children.  I love their phonics program.  I have seen it in use in large classroom with 30+ students and have used it individually with my children and have had excellent results in both settings.  What really sold me on ABeka is what I heard from a secular educator.  We are part of a 'distance learning charter school' program in Alaska.  This is part of the reason we have such wonderful materials for our classroom.  We are technically enrolled in a charter school here in Alaska and are required to submit individual learning plans for each student as well as work samples and progress reports each semester.  This process allows the state of Alaska to maintain records for us and benefits us in that we have access to a multitude of resources at our local school office and we are given an allotment per student each year to spend on educational materials.  While working in the school office several years ago (laminating my multitude of visuals) I overheard one of the contact teachers tell a prospective homeschool parent that ABeka was an option (although not covered by state funding since it is 'faith based').  She told the parent that ABeka tends to be at least one grade and sometimes two grades ahead of its secular counterparts in reading level.  I knew this to be true from my classroom experience, but it was nice to hear it from a public school teacher as well.

We use ABeka's K4 program with our little ones, Advanced K5 for kindergarten, and phonics and language for the rest of the elementary grades.  I love ABeka's complete programs for K4 and K5 and the children have done extremely well with their reading level.  Because the state will not pay for ABeka materials, we have always purchased these materials ourselves and used different materials for other subjects such as math, history, science, etc . . .

Now to the changes we've made to the basic curriculum.  I love ABeka's language arts in that it is all-inclusive.  Their language arts program includes everything, i.e. phonics, reading, handwriting, creative writing, spelling, poetry, and grammar.  It is all cross-curriculum so that the reading program stays right on track with the phonics, the spelling and handwriting stays right on track with the reading, etc . . . However, my children did not like the readers ABeka uses, especially starting in first grade.  My oldest is somewhat serious and prefers non-fiction books.  The cute little stories in the ABeka readers were silly and boring to him.  He much preferred science books.  So, that is what we got him and he excelled in his reading immediately.  On the other hand, Joy is a little princess and prefers to read fiction books about butterflies, unicorns, glitter, and tiaras (ha, ha, ha).  We use the basic teaching methods and workbooks from ABeka's language arts program, but substitute readers geared to each individual child.  The best readers I've found are primarily from Scholastic.  We use a lot of Scholastic readers across the curriculum.  Science Vocabulary Readers are Josh's favorite and Scholastic has a host of different science subjects that are covered in this series.  For Joy I've found several different series of books, but my favorite for this year is a set of books called Read & Understand.  The books are fiction readers that include comprehension questions and a teacher's guide with reproducible comprehension activities for each book.  She loves them and I can see tremendous improvement in her oral reading skill.

Also, I found it frustrating to teach two different lists of spelling words each week to my two oldest students so we have modified ABeka's curriculum to teach one set of spelling words to both Josh and Joy at the same time.  We've done something similar with handwriting and creative writing to allow them to work together on these areas since they are so close in age and grade-level.  This allows me to do more classroom-style teaching in creative writing and language areas while allowing them to work together on literature, handwriting, creative writing, and language.

Yikes, how do these curriculum posts always end up being so long?  So sorry.