Homeschooling Essential: Day One: Language Arts

There are SO many ways of doing language arts.  You can buy curriculum (which I have and a wee bit of it I use).   You can hob nob stuff together (which I've done).  You can read alot of books which may or may not interest your children.  :)  And you can avoid it to the best of your ability.   Each person has their own style and reason for how they approach it.

My approach is
1. I use reading kingdom to teach well.. reading.  My son loves this program, and it is one that I will buy after our review period with it finishes.  We started it last year.  You can find the review I wrote here.   The amount of confidence my son has gained using reading kingdom speaks for itself.   He's happy, I'm happy.    He's a lad that using phonics doesn't work.. he can't hear the differences in many of the sounds... so the reading kingdom method works for him.  :)

2. I do grammar as a page a day.  We use the Complete book of Grammar and Punctuation.   One page every day, the lad practices his writing, his spelling and he's figuring out some of this grammar stuff in a more formal way.

3. Our biggest method is simply to read.  We read LOTS of books.   To practice his recall and narration he often has to tell his dad about what we read together.     I'll stop and ask him.. do you know what this word means?   No.  Well.. what do you think it means?   And you know what.... he can often figure it out simply based on context.   And when he can't, I tell him and if I don't know we look it up.   So easy to do on my new phone. :)   

• We read chapter books (right now the Warrior series by Erin Hunter is a huge hit).
• We read interest books (right now we're going through a stack of books on insects/bugs/creepy crawlies).
• We read a Christian book of some sort .. biographies, missionary stories, short devotionals etc.
• We read one book of poetry... right now we're between poetry books as I haven't found one the lad likes...
  

We just read and read.  In that reading I ask.. so...did you notice the capital letters?   Did you see the period there.. oh look... what's wrong with this sentence?   And the lad learns and it is good.

THEN if we can, we take those books and we practice and do stuff with what we're learning.    In history we learned about Illuminations.   I was talking with the lad about how could WE do an illumination.   Should I copy out a passage from the bible?   Print out a black/white copy to colour in?  Just what did he think would be good to do?

He said MOM.. can we make a poem from the Warriors book?   And so.. he does Language arts WHILE cementing historical knowledge.  Check out the poems the lad has helped created.  They are based on three of the characters from Erin Hunters Series.

and two others he helped write.

Crowpaw crowpaw
He loved Feathertail so
She died in a fight
On the Stalactite
So sad is Crowpaw
So much he saw.

Brambleclaw the bold
The story is told
Of a trail so long
The clan belong
The sun drown place
He set the pace
Midnight spoke
The trail home they took

I do hope you'll join us as we present to you our Five Days of Homeschooling Essentials.   Here are 10 of the 89 people taking part this week.  :)

Shalynne @ Wonderfully Chaotic
Jody @ Because I’m Me
Melanie @ A Year of Jubilee Reviews
Emilee @ Pea of Sweetness
Nikki @ Angels of Heart
Sara @ Embracing Destiny
Heather @ Only Passionate Curiosity
Jennifer @ Simblissity Cottage
Kathy @ Kathys Cluttered Mind
Annette @ A Net in Time