It's week 4 and my daughtere still isn't thrilled with LLATL orange. I like the idea of it but she don't. I still think it's because she already read the book. We finished up with Boxcar Children this week and start the new unit, research, next week. I was hoping it worked, she like the looks of it and now it's a struggle to do the book. She likes her First Language Lessons and she likes her Preparing Hearts To His Glory (which I don't) We are so different. Preparing has a bit of language arts in it and of course FLL is mostly grammer. If I stop LLATL I am afraid not to have enough in Writing. She is isn't good at paragraph formations and doesn't write more than 5 sentences with her narriations. My goal for this year is for her to do a full page of narriation and reports with more than one 5 sentence paragraph. Any suggestions? Suck it up and finish the book? Revamp in the LA department? The only thing that I have kept constant in the LA department is the FLL series.
We tried HOD's BHFHG and my daughter was liking it, but I don't b/c it isn't enough and she likes it b/c it is so easy. She can just breeze through it. I tried the R&S English recommended and was totally disappointed. I found HOD really lacking in the language arts department. I really only like their history. I decided this week to order Abeka's Language A for 4th graders and just move forward. I am doing the free first 6 weeks of writing with ease 3 that is on Peace Hill Press's site right now and I really like it. If it continues to go well, I am going to buy it when it is released. I found my girls narration much better with Writing with Ease 3 than with HOD. I also scrapped HOD except for history. We are continuing R&S English while waiting for Abeka to get here, but I am confident that with the change her skills will improve and be more on grade level. If I didn't feel it was working and had invested enough time to see whether there would be progress, then I would start looking around for something else to help improve her language arts skills.
Try http://ywp.nanowrimo.org ~ click on the young writers program. I had a complete non~writer. This really motivated her & she now has several novels finished. Grammar teaches the editing process but if you want to encourage writing this just may do the trick.
My daughter loves every November and participating in NaNoWriMo! To the OP: My daughter liked the idea of LLATL when I first bought it. But she hated it. It just wasn't captivating in any way. We ditched it after about 3-4 weeks. We enjoy grammar, vocabulary, poetry, and writing books by Michael Clay Thompson from www.rfwp.com. They also have books for discussing classic literature. I like the series called - What if the Wolf Were an Octupus? Good luck and I hope you find something that works for you.
Last year I bought some lit guides for 5th grade. I could pull one of them out and trying them. They are easily for either 4th or 5th. I just cannot see buying much more since I am not sure what is going to happen when we move.
