Satori Smiles

We are using two different grammar programs both of which offer features that we like.

First Language Lessons

First Language Lessons is a program we started at age five with Level 1. The program is very gentle and emphasizes memorization techniques, repetition, minimal writing, and is completely scripted. We found Levels 1 & 2 to be very easy for Satori who is a bit language-arts-advanced, and would do 2-5 lessons at a time, but we’ve finally found a comfortable spot with level 3. We now do just one lesson in about 15-20 minutes, twice a week, which is perfect for us.

FLL Level 3 comes with two huge components – Teacher’s Manual (468 pages) and Student Text (352 pages). Normally I have been buying their PDF versions and printing them out myself, but not with these colossal books. Instead, I got them on Amazon at 34% off. The student text is necessary and is consumable. The pages are perforated so I took them out and ProClicked them so we have an easy-to-use workbook that lies flat. I kept the Teacher’s book as-is, the pages stay open.

There are 89 Lessons plus an additional 21 Lessons covering Writing Letters, Dictionary Skills, and oral Usage. The book includes three sample schedules. It uses a Four-Strand Approach.

1. Memory Work – memorizing poetry, rules, and definitions
2. Copywork and Dictation – For Copywork a student copies a quality sentence. Dictation means student writes down a sentence said aloud, without looking at the written model.
3. Narration – Student retells a passage she has heard or read and puts it in her own words. Precursor to original writing.
4. Grammar – Rigorous yet gentle scripted lessons. Level 3 introduces sentence diagramming as well

I’m going to go over a lesson in each program that covers Adjectives That Tell Whose. In FLL3, that would be Lesson 14, and it’s 4 1/2 pages long. (click for larger image) As usual, we start off rattling a few grammar definitions. We have to say the definition of an adjective three times.

An adjective is a word that describes a noun or pronoun.

Then we get into the actual lesson and the completely scripted lesson has a script for the teacher and expected student response. The student will be directed to her workbook to read some examples of adjectives.

And so on… It’s very thorough. There is sometimes an Optional Follow-Up activity. We didn’t do this one, but it consisted of taping labels on to items (Mom’s purse or Smiths’ table).

Here’s the student workbook for Lesson 14, which is four pages long. Most of it is reading, but there are a few exercises that requires writing.

I realize that this lesson didn’t have any diagramming exercises, so I included a lesson that did. In First Language Lessons, the lines are drawn for the child, making it pretty easy to diagram.

Growing With Grammar

Now for Growing With Grammar Level 3.  First huge advantage, it can be done independently! A second benefit to us is that it offers more written practice on the grammar concepts in each lesson.

We also do one lesson, which takes about 10-15 minutes, three times a week. This program is very straightforward and easy to do. Like FLL, there are two books, but this time they are both for students – the Student Manual and the Student Workbook. Both books are spiral bound so lie flat nicely. The manual is small and two can fit in the size of the workbook. We like it as a reference book when we need to quickly look up a grammar concept. It’s much easier to do that with GWG than FLL. Level 3 has 105 lessons and 5 review lessons, for a total of 110 lessons.

There are five chapters, each with roughly 20 lessons. See the Table of Contents on their website for additional detailed information. They also show a sample lesson.

1. Growing with Sentences
2. Growing with Nouns and Pronouns
3. Growing with Verbs
4. Growing with Adjectives and Adverbs
5. Growing with Words and Punctuation

Lesson 4.4 covers Adjectives That Tell Whose. Lessons are pretty much always just two pages.

That takes just a few minutes to review, usually I am sitting there next to Satori to be sure she understands it all. Then we whip out the Student Workbook. Again, there is just two pages. The first page has practice problems that cover the day’s lesson.

The second page is a review. You can see here the diagramming exercises do not include lines like FLL, but we are okay with that.

So now you have an idea of what it might be to use First Language Lessons or Growing With Grammar Level 3 (grade 3-ish). My goal was not to say one is better than the other, but to let you decide what might work better for your family. Since we love language arts, we do both – Growing with Grammar on M/W/F and First Language Lessons on Tu/Th. I think they both cover grammar in different but complementary ways. First Language Lessons explores grammar and language arts more in-depth, in the classical style, and includes poem memorization (see previous blog post). Growing with Grammar is independent, more to the-point and got us up to speed on grammar very quickly when we needed it last fall. It has more writing and practice in the early years, which is what we enjoyed. We just love both programs.

First Language Lessons Level 3 starts off Poem Memorization with the poem “The Land of Nod” by Robert Louis Stevenson. Satori loves to memorize poems and here she is reciting the poem for her blog.

Did I mention we are currently using three separate Grammar programs? Satori’s a bit advanced in Language Arts, and this past year I had as a goal to focus on grammar so we could tackle more sophisticated writing courses.

We are working in Growing with Grammar Level 3, which has us use a separate Student Manual and Student Workbook. I chose to start with GWG last fall to get her up to speed the quickest with grammar, and allow her some hands-on practice. We breezed through Levels 1-2, doing two lessons a day, everyday, and now we’re slowing down just doing one lesson a day. It’s so easy to do that we still do it almost everyday.

She retains what she’s learned and applies it in her own independent writings. The Student Manual is very handy, as she can quickly and easily refer to a concept she’s learned. We cannot do that with First Language Lessons (the second grammar program we use).

It takes about 10-15 minutes to complete a lesson. We start out reading the manual out loud.

Then Satori’s let loose to do the two sides of the worksheet for the lesson. The first page practices the concept learned, and the second page usually has some sort of brief review. I was excited to start diagramming in this program, but so far it’s been pretty simple.

We have come back to First Language Lessons 2 as it has a more thorough approach in which we orally discuss the lesson. I love the memorization of grammar terms. We’re not memorizing their suggested poems this time around though, I’d like to choose my own.

We’ll be finishing up FLL 2 next week and starting Level 3 in June. Level 3 is where we start diagramming. Like GWG, we’ll have a separate student workbook. This is a first for FLL, and I’m kinda looking forward to that. The first two years of FLL specifically do not have the young child do much writing, but we don’t have to worry little hands getting tired in our household. She would write all day long if she could.

FLL has us memorize this entire list of prepositions. Since we’ll be covering it all over again in Level 3 this summer, I just wrote them out on our whiteboard. We both take turns reciting the list, and we’ve said it almost everyday for a few weeks, so I think Satori almost has it all memorized. (I do not.)

We also did start in on MCT Island, the Grammar book. I forget to take pictures of what we’re doing as it’s never at our desk, but I’ll share soon. I introduced this one time at bedtime, so now Satori insists on doing our lessons in bed. She even insists on being the teacher, so she gets the Teacher’s Manual and I get the Student Manual. It’s an expensive program though, especially buying both teacher and student books. Some families just get by with one book, but I’m not sure which one we’d prefer. I purchased the entire Island series already though, so I guess we’ll have time to decide once we get closer to the next level.

One of my biggest homeschooling concerns currently is how I should take advantage of my daughter’s writing enthusiasm.

We’ve been studying lots of grammar, using both Growing with Grammar Level 3 and First Language Lessons 2. They’re very similar in their scope so far, with GWG being more visual/written and FLL being more oral/memorization. Since we’re on Level 3 (grade 3) of GWG, we’ve started diagramming with that program first. We just started this week in fact. Satori loves it.

I don’t mean for this whole story to be read and scrutinized, but here’s an example book that Satori writes almost everyday. She wrote these pages in the first hour of her waking up one day this week.

Neither First Language Lessons or Writing With Ease has taught us what a paragraph is though, so you’ll have to excuse the solid blocks of sentences. In fact, I’ve heard that FLL/WWE doesn’t teach paragraphs at all in their first four years of books. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong. Growing with Grammar will be introducing paragraphs to us in their Level 3, 1.20 lesson, which coincidentally, we’ll be hitting tomorrow. The writing program we use – Write Source Grade 1 – covered paragraphs, however, in these early grades, they don’t require (or expect) children to be writing multiple paragraphs. So Satori has no concrete experience with writing paragraphs.

What I have noticed is that anything I do teach her, does actually come out in her writing! In Growing with Grammar we’ve recently learned Direct and Indirect Quotations and conjunctions. I am seeing both of these concepts properly applied in her writing. I guess our emphasis on grammar is paying off! I even see new vocabulary words being used. On this page, she used the word “knob”, which we learned in one of our Geography terminology picture books means a small hill.

I’ve also noticed usage of adverbs, which is a new part of speech we learned a few days ago in First Language Lessons.

Later that day, she wrote more pages and finished the whole book. You can find blank books like this on Rainbow Resource. I think that’s a bit expensive for just one book, but she loves them. We also quickly go through these smaller books for a more reasonable price.

But there’s more to quality writing than grammar and conventions. She has a pretty good writing voice. She often asks her reader questions in her writing. I want her to learn more of this as well, so I’ve been educating myself everyday. Here’s what I’m using.

BraveWriter – Writer’s Jungle

In my opinion, this is too expensive for what you actually get if you purchase it at the regular price ($79 for a download), so I was glad to find it 50% off at the Homeschool Buyers Co-op. I started reading it a few weeks ago and am halfway through. It isn’t a curriculum, but a 246 page manual that guides the parent in approaching writing. It debunks several popular writing misconceptions and has given me the courage to perhaps tackle writing (gasp) on my own with my daughter, using no curriculum. I’ve refrained from purchasing her Arrow subscriptions, but eagerly read other people’s thoughts. I’d like to finish this book first and then decide whether to buy the Arrow subscription, which I think should also be less expensive.

6+1 Traits of Writing by Ruth Culham

This is loved by public school writing teachers, but I’ve most definitely gotten my $18.95 worth out of the first book for primary students (grade K-2-ish). It goes into detail the 7 traits of writing – Ideas, Sentence Fluency, Organization, Word Choice, Voice, Conventions, plus the 7th trait – Presentation. It is chock full of actual student writing samples from from kindergarten to grade 2. It has given me tons of ideas on how to demonstrate great writing skills, as well as how to assess my daughter’s writing. Based on this book, my daughter is ready for the next book, 6+1 Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide Grades 3 and Up. That just arrived in the past hour and I’ll be reading it this weekend.

Next week I’ll probably order her book, Using Picture Books to Teach Writing With the Traits.

Also arriving on Tuesday of next week is the entire Michael Clay Thompson language arts Island series program! I’ve heard so much about this, it was all I could do to wait until I thought my daughter was ready. This program is designed for 4th graders, or gifted 3rd graders. We’re far from either. Needless to say I really thought I should wait a few more years, but enough people were happily using it with their younger ones that I decided to give it a look.

I also look forward to improving my own grammar and writing skills. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in an academic environment (it’s been 13 years since college) and I know I need to brush up on several skills. I’m also quite psyched after reading both the books mentioned above (Writer’s Jungle and 6+1 Traits), there’s so many ways Satori and I can improve our writing and make it more fresh and appealing.

Today we finished the 100th lesson of First Language Lessons, which concludes Level 1 (Grade 1 equivalent) of the First Language Lessons grammar program. As I mentioned earlier, this program moves slow, but does an excellent job in getting the grammar-stage child to memorize important grammar terms, as well as memorize poetry. So we started moving at an accelerated pace, sometimes 5 lessons in one day.

Here’s our latest poem Satori memorized. I hope to get her on video saying all the poems she’s memorized. For now, we made this page with the poem, and Satori drew a picture. The girl understandably, has blushing cheeks, as she blames a dropped plate on “Mr. Nobody”. The squeaking door is also there, left for Mr. Nobody to oil.

Today we reviewed our fourth type of sentence, the Exclamation! Satori had a giggling fit when Mama demonstrated various exclamations to express excitement, surprise, fear and anger. We then drew a few sentences on our little whiteboard, remembering to add the exclamation point!

We look forward to continuing to use First Language Lessons Level 2, and my plans are to use it 2-3x a week, and do as many lessons that fits in a 10 minute period. I expect us to do 1-2 lessons at a time, but if they’re over in less than five minutes, we’ll add another lesson if I think Satori can handle it. In FLL 2, we’ll go into more depth with verbs, as well as learn about adjectives, conjunctions, adverbs, prepositions, and much more. We’ll memorize more poetry and do picture narrations on fine art. I have downloaded the new First Language Lessons 2 in PDF version which is easier to read than the 2003 book that combined the first two years.

We’re also adding a new grammar program, Growing With Grammar, that will give Satori more practice in writing instead of just copywork.

That’s it. I am finally convinced that we’re going to continue to use First Language Lessons, but we’re going to ZOOM through it! Satori’s got a good memory, she memorizes the poems after I say them a few times, she’s got the grammar definitions down and understands it all.

I thought we started a bit early with this program, so we were only doing a few days a week. This month I pushed that up to 4x a week, and today I decided to do TWO lessons at a time. Each lesson only took a few minutes anyway. Life is getting more exciting now that we moved out of nouns and learned two new things, woah! Satori now knows about pronouns, and easily picks them out of any sentence I read. We’re just started verbs, with an introduction to action verbs. That’s Lesson 54.

I wrote a few sentences on the white board today, and Satori marked them with an “n” for noun and a “v” for verb.  It was easy and kinda fun!

After we finish FLL 1/2, I think we will be moving to MCT Grammar Island, perhaps this winter or next spring. This program starts at Third Grade, but I’ve seen a few families who started it early. The sample pages look easy enough for us to start, but I’m open to advice here if anyone is using it…

If I could describe a day in the life of Satori lately, half of her waking hours would be spent writing! She started the day writing a story in an entire 28-page Bare Book. She then wrote in her new Animal Journal. In the afternoon, she gave me a few letters. And so on… I’m very proud of her to do all this, but it also overwhelms me. Should I be concentrating on giving her the skills to write better? In particular, all this makes me want to go faster in spelling so she spells her words correctly… go faster in grammar so she knows how to write proper sentences… go faster in writing so she knows how to organize her thoughts… My perfectionist tendencies are making me very anxious about all this, I feel like I’m going too slow for her in certain subjects.

But she’s only five, so I should just relax, right?

We follow the Well-Trained Mind philosophy closely, and they discourage creative writing until 5th grade I think. We are using their curriculum on both 1st grade writing and grammar and these are very gentle and appropriate for this age. But I’m wondering if they are too slow for our situation, with a very eager little writer. I rarely talk about these new programs we started using this year on this blog, but I’ll go over them now.

FIRST LANGUAGE LESSONS

For grammar, we are using First Language Lessons (I refer to this as FLL). This was easy enough to start a year ago, but you’re supposed to start when the child is reading at a certain level, so we stopped and then officially started again this spring in January 2010. We do it a few times a week and all spring we only covered nouns. Only this week did we start pronouns! We also covered several poems, which Satori memorizes very fast. I think it goes very slow and has lots of repetition, so I’m wondering if we could use a different curriculum. Or perhaps just go at a faster pace? As of this month we are going to do FLL 3-4 times a week instead of just twice a week, we’ll see how that goes. Below is the lesson we did today, we are on Lesson 50. The book we have covers both Year 1 and 2, and there are books that cover Year 3 and 4.

This is the only grammar program with which we have experience, so I am not sure how I feel about FLL. I’ll try it throughout the summer and hope it picks up. We are not doing any of the copywork it has in the book, as we do enough of that in other subjects. However, today, Satori wrote down the pronouns we’ve learned so far on her own accord.

Although I’m not 110% gung-ho on First Language Lessons, it is doing the job and it is one of the easiest things I teach her (as is anything by the WTM team). It also is nice as it covers things such as days of the week, months, poem memorization, and more. If it sounds appealing to you and you want to use this program, a new version is coming out this September, which is supposed to go better with the writing program I’ll be discussing next. The main difference is that they took out the redundant copywork that is also covered in the writing book.

If anyone has any suggestions on a good grammar book that might be more fast-paced and engaging, I’m all ears! Oh, I forgot I do have Painless Grammar Junior, which supposedly is meant for grade 3, and I do think we’d need at least one more year before we start that one. Oh, and I can’t wait to re-learn grammar myself, I used to love diagramming sentences. (Is that nerdy?) Anyway, it’s been such a long time and I think I forgot a lot. Am I putting apostrophes in the right place?

WRITING WITH EASE

For writing, we started The Complete Writer: Writing With Ease: Strong Fundamentals which also covers 4 years. I’ll refer to this program as WWE, everything has an easy acronym. Another very gentle and super easy-to-teach program. You’re supposed to do it four days a week and each week covers a piece of quality children’s literature. (We only do this two times a week.) The first day you do Copywork, writing a simple sentence, pointing out the sentence structure such as capital letters, end marks, capitalizing proper nouns, etc… You get a choice of two sentences, one very short and simple and the other a little longer.

The next day you read an excerpt from the literature and there’s a short series of questions your child answers in complete sentences. Then you ask her to narrate one thing she remembers from the story. All pretty easy, although I sometimes I end up reading the passage two times for her to answer the questions correctly. Her narrations started out as summarizing the entire passage, but lately we’ve gotten that down to one sentence, which is the point anyway when first starting out.

Here’s her copywork. You don’t need their student workbook, but I downloaded a PDF so I had them all printed out. You could just as easily use your own paper. Obviously Satori doesn’t pay attention to the lined paper they use.

I love getting the teasers of the literature they use as well as the practice listening and narrating. I do enjoy the copywork, but hope it will rub off soon in her own writing. I’m just not sure it’s enough in our particular situation. She just writes so much, I want to formally go over sentence structure with her. You’d think she’d understand what a sentence is after all this copywork, but she says she doesn’t understand what a sentence is when she writes on her own.

So in one of my next posts, I’ll talk about a new writing program we’ll be easing into this summer. I think we’ll still do Writing With Ease a few times a week.

During the time it took me to write this post, I got 3 pages of letters/drawings from Satori. She asked me what my teacher’s name was when I was a little girl, and then she presented me with “Your Old Class”, subtitled “Miss Osin” and a picture of me in a classroom with Miss Osin. Then she drew a picture of the Scooby Doo gang and they all had something to say about me. Daphne says “I think Angela is so prity!” Velma says “Angela is smart”. Shaggy says “Shes with me”. Scooby says “Shes a heerow!” Ah, a nice little laugh before bedtime.