Hi everyone! Welcome to day 3 of my homeschool curriculum forum/discussion series. Today we’re going to be talking about English & Grammar.
I have to admit this is always one of my hardest subjects to finalize when picking curriculum. For the most part I am happy using Abeka phonics for the earlier years, but when it comes to 3rd grade and up I’ve been wavering. For the last two years we’ve been using BJU Press English & Grammar. I started this in 3rd grade and had planned to stick with it for future grades.
While that is still my plan, I’m not totally in love with this curriculum. I’ve just been sticking with it because it’s “okay”. The pages are colorful which is nice for visual learners, and the daily lessons are nicely outlined at the top of the student worksheets which I also find helpful. You do need the Teacher’s Manual in my opinion for this curriculum as there are more examples and help for the student in the TM. The TM also includes a smaller duplicate of the student workpage but also includes the answers as well which is helpful.
Pros:
- Fairly thorough and straight forward
- Colorful worksheets
- Student workbook answers are in the teacher’s manual.
Cons:
- Can be pricey unless you buy used.
I have looked into Abeka, Rod & Staff English, as well as Shurley English, and Easy Grammar but haven’t been brave enough to try any of them as of yet haha!
So for lack of wanting to change I’m currently planning to stick with BJU English. While BJU English isn’t a bad curriculum at all, it’s just that I don’t feel my kids are really “getting” English. I am also not a huge fan of the writing, so we use something else for that, but we’ll tackle that in the writing curriculum post coming soon.
IEW Fix It Grammar!
As many of you know we switched to a new English/Grammar curriculum. We’ve been using Fix It! Grammar now for about 2 years and so far I really like it. Click below to see the full review on this English/Grammar curriculum.
What I like about Fix It! Grammar:
- It takes less time, about 15 minutes per day.
- It includes vocabulary.
- I like that we’re learning to edit a continuing story line.
- Story is interesting and kids are excited to see what happens next.
- It correlates well with the IEW Writing program.
- Helps reinforce proper paragraph formation, writing structure, etc.
- Teacher’s manual is easy to read and concepts are clear and concise.
- Love the extra teacher notes, so far any questions the kids have asked have been listed in the teacher notes which is great!
- Like the easy reference flash-cards.
- Cost is great!
So, now comes the fun part!
What are your favorite English curriculum, resources, websites, etc? Leave a comment below discussing your choices for this year and why.
Feel free to ask questions or reply to each other too!
It’s my way of doing a forum without actually doing a forum haha!
And hopefully this will help us all as we start the process of researching curriculum, and trying to decide what will be the best fit for our homeschool.
Note: Please keep today’s conversations geared towards ENGLISH & GRAMMAR, I will be posting one for each subject separately so we can keep our comments organized.
Disclosure: This was not a sponsored post, I may however be affiliated with one or more products mentioned. The opinions expressed in this post were not influenced by the company. They are products I have used and felt like sharing, cuz’ it’s my blog and I can if I want to.
Thanks for doing these reviews. I have been struggling to find the right program. I have just ordered Voyages in English. Thanks Taryn for the excellent review!
I’ve used Rod & Staff English with my four oldest kids. We started in about 4th grade with the books (youngest of those four is doing 4th this year). It’s not colorful but it’s reasonably priced and it is an excellent curriculum. My older kids have consistently scored very high in grammar areas on their standardized tests. I really like that that it introduces diagramming which really helps lay a foundation for the later study of foreign language. I’ve got two more that I plan to also use the Rod & Staff route.
have you used this through middle school and High school levels?
if so how did the children do in it?
I used Abeka for K-2, and wanted to venture out this year and tried Shurley English. WOW what a difference! Yes it is good material, but it is hard, fast paced and the workbook is boring for the kids visually. My kids have maintained good grades in English but it has come with a struggle. We have had to slow down alot of the lessons to 2 weeks instead of 1. I have had to turn to the internet for extra worksheets and instructional videos to help them understand. I am strongly considering trying BJU for 4th grade. I like that colorful pages and interesting writing assignments.
I loved Shurley when my kids did it at their private school (and they loved doing it too!) HOWEVER, when we switched to homeschooling this year, I could not believe the difference between the classroom version and the homeschool version. The jingles weren’t even the same! The workbook was BOOOOOORRRRIIINGGG. So we shelved it.
The kids are in a hs program that uses BJU (2nd grade and 5th grade, respectively). I find BJU to be pretty straight forward and similar to what I grew up learning plus the workbooks look nice.
My 5th grader has really struggled with the switch from Shurley to BJU. What Shurley made grammar so easy for 4 years, BJU has made so hard for him to comprehend. It’s like he has had to completely relearn how to do grammar in 5th grade.
Saying all of that, I think Shurley is a wonderful program but it is so different than the way most other programs teach grammar, it may require somewhat of a learning curve. I do believe they offer an intensive program to get you started but check their website to verify.
I have used Shirley English for three years and LOVE it. My kids are in 3rd, 5th, and 6th grade. It takes a lot of prep work from me, but I have personally learned more about grammar teaching this than I ever remember learning in public school. I believe this curriculum challenges kids, but once they “get” it their understanding of grammar is amazing. The jingles are an excellent way to remember parts of speech. I do not, however, enjoy the writing sections so I am looking for something new in that department.
Angela, My kids also loved Shuley in their private school, and we too found the homeschooling lessons to be boring, overly repetitive and “spiraling” as someone else said. They would get tired of repeating jingles, but soon we made them silly, and now we can’t forget them!
They know how to correctly classify sentences VERY well, and they can give definitions (jingles) for every part of speech and we ALL feel so much more confident in grammar! It was kind of choppy for the first 2 weeks, but it flows easily, now! This is my second year teaching Shurley, and I feel as competent as one of their old teachers!
Amanda, I agree with you about the writing sections…so very, very dry. We stopped doing them all together last year, which was a huge mistake. This year, my dd (5th gr) will do them because she stresses less about writing. My ds (7th gr) started with Apologia’s “Jump In,” and we’re thrilled at the prospect!
With regard to Shurley Grammar, my only disappointment is the fact that the books stop at grade 7. I need to decide whether to change to another curriculum for 8th, or to be finished with grammar this year. What do those of you with middle school/high school experience recommend?
My kids also loved Shuley in their private school, and we too found the homeschooling lessons to be boring, overly repetitive and “spiraling” as someone else said. They would get tired of repeating jingles, but soon we made them silly, and now we can’t forget them!
They know how to correctly classify sentences VERY well, and they can give definitions (jingles) for every part of speech and we ALL feel so much more confident in grammar! It was kind of choppy for the first 2 weeks, but it flows easily, now! This is my second year teaching Shurley, and I feel as competent as one of their old teachers! My only disappointment is the fact that the books stop at grade 7. I need to decide whether to change to another curriculum for 8th, or to be finished with grammar this year. What do those of you with middle school/high school experience recommend?
We enjoyed First Language Lessons for K-1st because it was all oral and kept our interest. I’m not a fan of workbooks because many times my children would finish a workbook and not really know what they learned.
We love using Mad Libs to learn parts of speech. We do this about once a week and enjoy reading the silly stories we create.
Copywork and Easy Grammar have been effective too.
I’ve written all my Language Arts recommendations on my site http://www.homeschool-how-to.com/homeschool-language-arts.html
I have used Abeka to teach my daughter for the 3 years we have home schooled. I think she grasps the concepts very well. This year we have added notebooking/lapbooks to give her something she can use as a reference.
For Kindergarten, we have loved using McRuffy Language Arts.
http://www.mcruffy.com/SEAnnouncement.htm
It is affordable, fun and includes all aspects needed for Kindergarten. Phonics, Reading, Spelling and Handwriting. I had switched from Alpha Omega Horizons and was SO thankful that I had.
The customer service is WONDERFUL. 2 Thumbs up for McRuffy Language Arts!!!
We used FLL #1-3… in 4th I wanted something a little more challenging. So we switched to Rod & Staff which I had been told was harder…. we all HATE it:) WE’ve pushed through but have learned more writing and verbal etiquette/Grammar than written Grammar. I was very pleasantly surprised by how FLL prepared my daughter for R&S just because we really enjoyed Grammar with FLL.
Anyway, I will be hunting for a new Grammar for my 4th grader for next year and purchasing FLL #4 for my two other children!
Funny, b/c I’m also looking for a writing curriculum. I’m considering IEW and Writing Strands. We’ll see:)
We’ve been using Rod & Staff English for the last 7 years starting in the 2nd grade, through the 3rd grade. This is the most cost efficient for an English curriculum; straight forward in its approach, they have been really easy for even the newest of readers to self teach if needed! The books break down by concept; an entire chapter on nouns etc. the lessons themselves last for only around 10-15 minutes each. After the 3rd grade we switch to the Easy Grammar curriculum; they are on the same format of teaching by grouping. This is also an excellent program as the child can self teach & yet retain the information; we have been using this program for the last 5 years with our oldest two. I have tried the Simply Grammar curriculum from Karen Andreola though only for one child, however I was very pleased with it as well! We will be trying the First Language Lessons by Emma Serl this coming year on our 5 year old; as he is advanced past the K5 realm 🙂
We did use Bob Jones English & Grammar this year as that was what was on hand. It has been proven to be thorough; tho labor intensive for the parent. I don’t think it to be any more superior just because of the high cost! Also, we used Abeka in K5 & WAY too hard for a young child! Our goal has always been to teach for life & not for high test scores, after all they are children & it will be important for them to actually remember how a sentence should be written. Hope this info helps!
We are using Easy Grammar and Daily Grams! My daughter {8} loves it, which is a blessing considering the subject matter! {I’m a total history and science gal} ; ) It is very easy to use and something we will stick with throughout!
Do you recommend using Easy Grammar along with the Daily Grams? I’m considering switching from ACE English to Easy Grammar….
We used Abeka (and a few other sources here and there) for my daughter in K-2nd and then switched to BJU for 3rd-4th. While we enjoy the curriculum my daughter and I aren’t huge fans of every other chapter being a writing chapter. We completed all the “other” chapters first this year and then started tackling the writing ones. We like it MUCH better.
A friend of mine recommended Switched on Schoolhouse so we may try that for 5th grade. Anyone have any experience with SOS in Language Arts?
Amy
We didn’t use Switched On for Language, but we did for math. Math isn’t my daughter’s best subject, but we found switched on not only lacking, but extremely glitchy. They send out patch updates to improve things, but it was just not a good experience for us. There were times where the multiple choice answers didn’t even have the correct answer available, and many times my daughter would answer something correct and it would tell her she’s wrong, and other times she was wrong but it said she was correct. The learning was difficult, and she dropped down to a 2% for math scores this year on her testing, which shocked us all. We wanted to like it, but with the lack of instruction and help, plus the constant glitching of the program, I was glued to my daughter’s side the entire school year. This caused my other kids to begin to struggle as well, because it got harder to give them my attention. I can’t imagine language being much better, because the program itself seems so flawed. My sister uses teaching textbooks math for her kids and they have never had instruction OR glitch issues. So I think it just says a lot about the program. Hope that helps.
We have used BJU and love it, however I do agree the writing is a bit too much.