As I look at the writing in Grade 2, I have a concern over BJU and wonder if this has created any difficulty in any of you using BJU. In Chapter 2, they begin "Writing a Personal Story" and I'm wondering how this is done when we haven't reached nouns or verbs yet. In addition they then continue w/Nouns then Writing again, then Verbs, then Writing again. Isn't this sort of backwards, not teaching what is really needed to create a story? How has this worked for your kids? Did they have problems creating and writing? R&S teaches sentences then writing a "sentence" and goes in those sort of steps rather than to write an entire story before learning nounds and verbs. Just trying to find what's best.
We're finishing up BJU grade 2 grammar. When I taught secondary English in school, I taught Abeka. My big gripe with both programs is that they insert writing lessons into the grammar program before they've even gone through the grammar. Grammar's the foundation for writing! Abeka annoyed me because they'd start with punctuation. I thought it was asinine to have me tell a student to put commas after nouns in a list when we hadn't even covered what a noun was! Anyway, what I've done with BJU is go through all the grammar [took about a semester] and now we're going back and doing the writing portions/dictionary/thesaurus/phone book/etc. We just finished learning how to write a letter this week. I actually have liked doing it this way as the cumulative reviews at the end of each chapter help keep the kids refreshed on all the grammar we learned the first semester.
It always seemed to me, using BJUP English for grade 1-4, that the grammar before the writing piece prepared you for the writing piece. Like, our next writing will be a tall tale. Our grammar Friday was knowing when to use a pronoun or the noun itself, to make the sentence more clear. So, I think if you just dive into the writing in chapter two and take your time, it will work out.
I did BJU, but it was quite advanced. I ended up using grade 2 with my 3rd grader and so on. I really like Rod and Staff. When I say BJU seemed quite advanced does not mean it was better. I mean it goes in to advanced topics rather quickly in my opinion. I feel a child needs to develop a great sentence first, then work on a great paragraph. At some point after that, a great multiparagraph paper, and so on. My dd loved BJU so she will be using it next year. I am not sure if I will use it with my other children though. I have never used Rod and Staff, but looked over it a lot. We might still use BJU. Because I have enough experience, I am thinking of using EPS writing books.
