Alright women...help a sister out. I spent all day..yes...ALL day yesterday looking all over amazon to come up with our reading list for this year. Happily I ordered 13 books which I think will take us well into next year. Now...my question...these books were origionally meant to be books for dd to read and then answer questions...but then that left me with no read alouds. SSOO...i'm going to use these as read alouds, and have comprehension questions for her after each chapter. Okay...sooo....suggestions on liturature for her to read? I've used bju and christian light in the past...mainly because the both have workbooks to go along with them. (she's a little workbook fanatic...she does workbooks in her free time...yes...she's an odd one)...so should I stick with it or branch out and just let her pick books to read on her own and not worry so much about answering questions after each story? (she's also a bookworm and reads silly little books like judy moody) okay...and my big question. My sweet, wonderful, amazing BRILLIANT daughter can NOT get the hang of grammer. A lot of our problem is I haven't been diligent in making her learn spelling words...so when it comes time to write a paragraph, most of the time is spent with her saying, "mom...how do i spell...mom...how do i spell....hey mom..."...gggrrr...Please please please give me a great grammer program that will help that little light bulb come on above that pretty little blond head.
I really like the CLE reading program! I feel like the reading books are just about right in difficulty for the grade marked on the spine, but the workbooks can be pretty challenging for some kids (some more than others). So I would suggest doing these as "the reading course". IDK about spelling - I like Sequential Spelling which is built around word patterns not spelling rules.
Here are a few websites of curriculum providers that offer some great ideas for literature to read: http://www.sonlight.com/ http://www.veritaspress.com/ http://www.bfbooks.com/ and my website lists our reading: www.familyd.50megs.com Feel free to change up how you do comprehension - let her just read some, but for others do a little project, have her to do a book report, write chapter notes, etc. As for grammar, you don't have to force it on her with a separate program necessarily - try to integrate any grammar into your reading. Learning Language Arts Through Literature is good for this if you don't feel comfortable yourself. Some spelling options: http://www.rainbowresource.com/prodlist.php?sid=1281293055-2054080&subject=8&category=1878 http://www.rainbowresource.com/prodlist.php?sid=1281293055-2054080&subject=8&category=1876 http://www.rainbowresource.com/prodlist.php?sid=1281293055-2054080&subject=2&category=1877 We use the first in this spelling list "Spelling Workout" 1994 edition, and my kids are great spellers. Try to combine all these - find words from their spelling in their text, etc . . .so she can better see how spelling, grammar, and reading all work together.
I don't have all the answers but here are some suggestions. First, have you ever read anything by Ruth Beechick? Not sure how old your DD is but I'm guessing if she's above 4th Grade you may find this RB book helpful: "You can teach your child.." Briefly, RB talks about letting a child learn spelling through their writing. So if she asks how to spell something, if it is phonetic and she's done phonics you can ask her to first try write it on a scrap paper and see if it looks right. If she can't get it, you'll help. Other words she asks, you spell to her, but let her write it in her own little home made dictionary too. You can buy "blank" dictionaries for this. I know it is a long and hard way, but I've used this with my son and he does spell well, also he is now looking up words himself in the "real" dictionary. He must write every day unless it is "crazy day" here. Workbook type curriculum that I've used that teach grammar are CLE, BJU and Rod and Staff. I'll tell you my experiences. CLE would have worked best, my first choice, but there is a bit of pronounciation problem (South Africans talk a very flat English so it sounds different to US English) They explain things so carefully, gently review, expand and so on. Also nice workbook format. Their story books are delightful pure stories. I think most children would not struggle understanding it. BJU- lovely and colorful, ds enjoyed it, but at every chapter review my son would say, "What's a verb again?" and so he had no retention and so I think for him it was just a brush over each concept and he needed to dwell there longer before moving on. Then due to financial restraints I got R&S. No bells and whistles. We do a lot of it orally and a section written. And he gets it just fine. The book reads as if it is talking to the student, so it is very easy to understand. If it moves too slow, we skip bits, but if he doesn't grasp on fast, there is plenty of review, so I am impressed with it. Great price, does the job and TM available shoud I need it at higher grades. And then one more thought. If you decided not to use a workbook for comprehension after your reading/read alouds, you may want to consider narration. I really held off on narration for ages as it seemed "weird". But then I found a site where you could print a whole stack of narration prompts to put in a jar. Now my son reads something, then I pull out the jar, grab a few cards and we do comprehension and a lot more that way, orally. I find the narration requires a lot more wider thinking than the system we used previously to cover comprehension, which was just re-gurgitating facts. I could not have thought of those narration questions by myself, so I am grateful to that site. Sometimes after narration I get my son to write the answers down. Later I hope to not only do oral narration. Hope I am not completely on the wrong track here for you, just my ideas.
I have used this site for spelling: http://www.all-about-spelling.com/free-spelling-lists.html And we use this all the time: http://www.all-about-spelling.com/free-spelling-lists.html
Well....on Grammar, I do not lie, I LOVE Easy Grammar. Quick, easy, over fast. On the reading....can you turn the read alouds into more than just read alouds? I say this because last year we did read alouds, BUT, I had my kids do something each day. I made up this form that was broken down into 3 parts. First part was basically a "narration", we'd read a chapter, they'd have to write a few sentences about what happened in the chapter. Also, while we were reading any words that they didn't know were written in the section for them to look up the words in the dictionary. Then finally, each would pick a favorite sentence from the chapter and write in a section for copy work. We read maybe 15 books last year. Now....in their free reading they read a lot more. BUT.... Does this make sense???
