Language Arts in Our Homeschool (2014 - 2015)

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Welcome to the 4th year of the Virtual Curriculum Fair! January is a time when some of us experience homeschooling burnout and wonder if there’s something better we could be using. And, for some, it is a time to start planning for the spring homeschooling events where we’ll purchase materials for the next school year. This week’s theme is Playing with Words: the Language Arts which includes phonics, reading, writing, grammar, spelling, speech, literature, etc., etc., etc. Latin and foreign language studies could also go here.

Language Arts in Our Homeschool 2014 2015 Day by Day in Our World

Language Arts ~ Phonics

J is considered preschool still, so we continue to move slowly through materials I have in the house. The primary material is Foundations A by Logic of English which we received almost 2 years ago for review. He’s also enjoying the kindergarten Spectrum Workbooks.

We go at a snail’s pace still because I want learning to be FUN for him and if something isn’t clicking I’d rather set it aside for later. While we practice writing in the air, we have yet to integrate the handwriting component on paper.

J likes to ‘play’ on the iPad and will use a variety of apps including the Talking Shapes iPad App and Hooked on Phonics.

Language Arts ~ Literature

For my high school students, we have a mixture of materials in use. P is doing a half credit of British Literature this spring using Hewitt Homeschool’s Lightning Literature British Medieval Studies. He began the course during a review period with Beowulf and will start back up in a few weeks to complete the material by the end of April.

Both boys are studying for the Academic Decathlon teams sponsored by our charter school. We’ll know in 2 weeks if they are on one of the teams. The literature selection this year is

Language Arts ~ Writing

For P, his writing is integrated into his British literature course. But, R needs more basic instruction and this is the year for me to step back and let someone else offer suggestions. He’s working on Write at Home‘s High School Composition 1 course with a writing coach who provides lots of feedback on his assignments. He is still struggling, but making progress so far.