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.
We have enjoyed English for the Thoughtful Child 1 and 2. Simple. Straight forward. Cheap. Does not burden the child with tons of worksheets. I just do an additional step of throwing in a review of the material covered that week on Friday. Keeps Friday light and retention high. We will advancing to Junior Analytical Grammar next year.
I received a very beautiful grammar book as part of a discounted box of curriculum. It’s the Phonics book by Sadlier Oxford. Had it not been there, we probably would have bought the first grade english curriculum made by Christian Light Publications.
We will most likely use Voyages in English (I commented above about why I like it) 🙂
I was actually going to start English 2 BJUP for 2nd grade. I hope we like it. It was either this or Primary Language Lessons which is not traditional at all. Looking forward to hear more reviews on BJUP English.
Erica, can you please share a little more about what you don’ t love about the BJU writing portion? Also, why do you feel your kiddos aren’t getting grammar with BJU?
Thanks!
Yes, please explain further as I was planning on using BJU English 2 next year. but
We used BJU this past year and it worked for us. Basically they have a chapter of grammar (focusing on a particular topic..nouns, adverbs…etc) then a chapter on writing ( persuasion essay, book report…etc) My son is weak in grammar from the previous years we used other things, so we also use the Daily Grams (it’s one page of grammar exercises per day) Those two together have worked for us. HOpe that gives you a better idea of BJU
We have used BJU for I think 3 years now. I have not seen another curriculum that covers so much, and I love it. The writing part… well, there is just a TON of it. My daughter’s best subject is English and even she dreads the writing part. Her hand gets tired, and it gets quite repetitive. I think in future years it could be quite fun, when they are better writers. But for the young ones, they just get overwhelmed. However, I do find it helpful with handwriting. If you want to focus on good handwriting while your child does the writing portions of this curriculum, you could easily just skip a handwriting curriculum all together and just use this.
I have looked into rod & staff English, but keep coming back to this. We also didn’t like R & S for math, so that has caused hesitation for the English curriculum from them.
The only other complaint I would have for BJU is that the books can be really fat. My daughter feels more accomplished when she finishes a book and moves on to the next. BJU has her saying, “Will I ever be done with this?” Overall, we really like BJU.
Growing with Grammar was a huge improvement for my family! I have tried many and never been pleased and last year I just didn’t offer one to my kids at all because I was so upset with nothing ever working. I am so glad I came across Growing with Grammar. Its easy for me to use and I love the straight way it helps my kids learn about the topic it’s teaching. I love this Grammar program!!
I have looked at that, and I like how it is designed for homeschoolers. Have you used any of the other programs?
I’m using their spelling and we are enjoying it. There is a pre-test on day 1. Three days of practice and then a final test on day 5. Every 6 lessons there is a review section. We’re doing level 2 right now. So far its been easy but it will get more challenging as we go on. We just started using it. I’m looking at using their grammar book soon.
We just started using their writing curr, Winning with Writing, and its great! Short lessons each day, but to the point and effective
We’ve been using Shurley English, and once you get past how the student book is organized (we use stick-on tabs to identify each section), my son really gets it!! It’s amazing!
I am glad that there is someone else out there doing Shurley English and loving it. I was feeling all alone. I used this curriculum when teaching in private school for 5 years and added to our curriculum this year for 1st and 3rd grade. I don’t use the teacher’s manual and never really used it when teaching in a classroom. I just couldn’t follow the script very well. I’m going to add a writing curriculum because feel the SE paragraphs are too dry.
How do you use without the TM? I was excited to try this but got nervous because of the reviews mostly with the TM.
I have taught Abeka, BJU, Shurley in as a christian school teacher. I like abeka for the younger grades but though BJU was much better for the older grades. BUT my students had a much better grasp on grammar when using Shurley. I didnlt use the script, except for the question and answer flow. When using Shurley, my 2nd graders had a much better grasp then my 5th graders using BJU. I plan on using Abeka with my 1st grader next year because his k5 porgram used it and he understand well, then switching to Shurley in 2nd grade.
For Grammar: First Language Lessons
For Writing: Writing With Ease, Sentence Composing for Elementary School (by Killgallon), & hopefully next year my older two children will move on to IEW
For Literary Analysis: Discussion (Deconstructing Penguins has great ideas) and Reading Response journals using self-made prompts as well as worksheet pages from Scholastic ebooks (purchased from their Dollar Days sales–one is going on right now!)
Although I was an English teacher in my pre-homeschooling days, I still find it challenging to teach these subjects to my own children. When I taught there was much more of an emphasis on writing and process with less time spent on grammar. I love FLL and WWE for their simple, scripted approach. I also love that FLL teaches diagramming because, taught properly, it can dramatically improve writing skills. I didn’t learn to diagram properly until it was required for a college linguistics course and wish I would have learned sooner.
Thanks Erica for doing these reviews!! I will be homeschooling my 3 kiddos this fall and my head is spinning with all the different curriculums out there!! I was looking at Learning Lang. Arts through Literature but it seems that I have a few more options to look at as well! Thanks everyone for their answers!
I have used BJU press for English with my oldest child since K. (she’s now in 4th grade). I don’t mind the grammar part because what they don’t learn one year, it is covered again in the next. So I like the review and my daughter doesn’t seem to struggle too much with it. That being said, the writing isn’t my favorite either although we have done some of it. Not sure if I will continue with BJU for my son or if we will try something else. I’m thankful for all of the different ideas on here!
I’d love to hear what you don’t love about the writing portion. I’m looking at BJU for 2nd. Thanks!
Me too!
I think the writing is actually good and thorough. I think the issue people are having, is how much writing a child is asked to do. There is so much of it, it’s almost impossible to finish a book by the end of the year. It’s very time consuming and there are just So many pages of writing in the book. They do however, teach it very, very well.
For Kindergarten and 1st Grade ~ really enjoy Christian Light Education (CLE)
For 2nd Grade ~ we use Growing with Grammar and All About Spelling
For 3rd Grade + ~ using Michael Clay Thompson’s Island series (Island for 3rd, Town for 4th, etc.). I had read so much about MCT on the well-trained mind forums as well as some other homeschool blogs but was a little “scared” to try it. I am so glad we did. The Island series has been great ~ we love learning about sentences with “Mud” & building words with Latin stems.
For 3rd grade ~ we also use All About Spelling and are starting Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) for writing.
Hope that is helpful 🙂
Jenny
Just a note, we also began MCT Island series in 3rd and loved it.
We are half way through the Town Series and are loving it even more.
I like the simplicity, the repetition without annoyance, and the stretching content.
This summer, my daughter actually pulled out her Caesar’s English book (Town series)
and wanted to read in it; I directed her to the lesson we would be starting in a month.
Fun!