This has been super helpful! I have been struggling on how and what to do with my 1st grader and how to incorporate and make changes for my 3rd grader for next year. I live in NYS so I have strict requirements and didn't know how to do it and yet keep it simple at young ages. I am also glad to hear your free advice on a struggling writer when it comes to the brain and paper coordination. I just thought my second grader wasn't getting it. He's super smart and can do it but when I apply too much on him, I feel like he's in overload and it gets ugly and he hates writing to begin with (at least for school and still makes letters incorrectly and won't use the line as a guide, uses upper and lower case letters or anything else for that matter). Thank you for pointing all this out because I was just beating myself up when clearly this is or can be normal at this age 🤔.
I used to not be huge with poetry, although I do like it. I have found choosing a poem per month to learn as a family during morning basket has been really great!
This video is SO helpful and exactly what I needed to see. We are heading into a different phase with ELA, as my oldest is now no longer learning to read, but reading to learn. So we are focusing more on composition and spelling and grammar and it all feels new and overwhelming still! But these tips were helpful. Thank you!
Thank you so much for taking the time to put this video together. All of the information you offered was so helpful. I also really liked the curriculum suggestions you mentioned and may give them a try this year. The tip about dictation was phenomenal. My kids (4 to 8) love to tell stories all the time but when it comes to writing them down they get lost in the spelling and function that it takes away from the experience. I am going to use the typing suggestion for sure. What we did prior was they would draw a picture in relation to what we read, but again I love the dictation idea. Thank you very much!
I love the idea of taking the long view and not panicking especially when I have all dyslexic kids!!! We do Songwriting!!! We do spelling together one on one!!! We don’t do it daily!!! Idk how long my kids read but I know they go over their time!!! We use our together time and gather round to listen to them read as we do a lesson and we split the reading up!!! Until we adopted we only did phonics weekly or not as often as long as we did it. We do it daily with our 4 year old but sometimes she does it thru a video!!! We don’t do writing daily!!! We do creative writing but no curriculum!!! We writing orally and we write it sometimes!!!
Thanks for this video! There are so many parts to LA and so far I haven't liked the All in one curriculums so this is a very helpful video trying to figure out how to piece stuff together.
The Little House series was our language arts curriculum last year. My kids retained more than any other year. This year we will be using Farmer Boy as our science and history book for the majority of the year along with a small vegitable garden we will be digging, shaping, tilling, fertilizing, planting, and harvesting throughout the year. Homeschool truly is all about growing our kids into good, strong, God fearing people who can go out into the world and care for His children.
There is so much for Language Arts 😔 I still get overwhelmed with it all! Try to keep it simple and don't do everything every day! I will share soon how I break it down weekly for all my kiddos. All About Reading should have instructions for how to set up the tiles in the beginning of the Teachers Guide. Hopefully you can find it and figure it out 😊
I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said. I have an eight year old son who I have not pushed grammar or writing with, and he has just naturally learnt to write. He has written books with cute interesting characters. I have only just started getting him to do some handwriting practice. I love Rod and Staff, I think it doesn't get enough attention or recognition, and everyone talks about the 'new' curriculums, you should do a video on R & S spelling :) I have been considering starting the grade 2 book with my son because I used it for my two older children and already have the teacher books (not that you really need them) but I do like how simple and easy it is. Is there a reason why you don't do their spelling in the younger grades? just curious :) But I am also considering the 'All about reading', he is an avid reader, but I do think he needs some phonics as I was slack and didn't do much of that with him, is 'All about reading' only for children who are learning to read? or do you think it's not too late to do phonics if you feel they need it? I have also contemplated getting the 'Learning Language Arts Through Literature' which is another Charlotte Mason inspired curriculum that teaches all the language arts through literature; but then I think it's going to be too heavy for my son. He reads lots of good quality literature and I am not ready to impose a lot of grammar onto him just yet. I like having different things for the different parts of language arts, and I will often make a lot of stuff up through the literature we are reading, similar to what you are doing. I love your style. Thanks for the video. :)
Thanks so much for all your videos! I am discovering more and more that I am more of a CM teacher than I was when I began homeschooling almost 4 years ago... what do you use for handwriting for your kiddos? My now 1st grader needs lots of practice and my 2nd grader will be learning cursive next year. He has really good manuscript.
I actually want my kids to learn it, so they can read it! Especially if they read cards or letters from older family members or friends who only write in cursive. I think as far as affecting their education as a whole, I think it’s minimal. We live in a culture where it’s the norm to type now, so cursive isn’t as important 💜🌸
@@ashleyruedy8670 I think 3rd grade is a good time to introduce it! Most kids have a good baseline of print/manuscript around then. I know some families start with cursive, actually, but we just do 3rd Grade.
My 3rd grader is struggling to remember his lessons so I find myself reteaching things to him.. we spend a lot of time doing this. Please provide some tips on that if you can .
That's a great question... are you teaching him things that he's not ready for maybe? Also this would be a good time to work on his attention skills. There's lots of great ways to do that!
Thank you for breaking this down. I'm trying to start a plan for next year, my 4th grader. How do you combine AAR & TGTB LA? Our focus currently is our reading & spelling daily. MFW LA a couple times a week.
To combine AAR and TGTB I rotate lessons. Like Mon I do TGTB, then Tues I do AAR. SOMETIMES the TGTB lesson is short, so I do both in one day if we have extra time. I also skip some of the lessons if I think he doesn’t need it, so I’m not doing every single lesson in each book.
Ok, how do you keep up with all that? 😂 It was wonderful advice and I absolutely love your approach to LA, but is it as parent-led and intense as it sounds? And how do you do record keeping? I’m not great at it, but I’d love to be better. Any tips there?
I am TERRIBLE at record keeping! Thankfully I don't care too much to keep detailed records, plus my state I live in is pretty relaxed at this point for homeschool. It's more parent led at the beginning as I show everyone how to do their lessons, but then as they know how to do their independent work after a week or two, it's a little less hands on for me. My littles (3rd grade and under) are always pretty parent led. I don't prefer my kids to do video instruction until 5th grade or so. Kids in early elementary need more direct instruction, but we do "short lessons," so no more than 10-20 minutes per kid for each part of language arts.
Did you post a video on brave writer? What you liked and did not? I am considering incorporating this next year and wanted to know how/ why you seem to have stopped using it. Or maybe you have not??
Hey, Erica! I actually never did a video on how I do Bravewriter... I was not very consistent with it. I did REALLY like the principals and I basically just use the principals now within what ever I use. I used Some of the writing projects and literature guides and enjoyed them. :)
I notice my child needs to work on writing and spelling. Do you think Fix It Grammar and IEW together are enough to help with the spelling? I need minimal things to check off. Those are what I was thinking to try this next year. She'll be in 5th grade.
I know EXACTLY what you mean about needing minimal things to check off. I'm not sure if those would be enough when it comes to spelling. Is there a way to get something for her that she can do independently? I've been using Rod and Staff spelling, and my 5th grader did that independently this year. But you could probably squeeze in spelling practice with IEW writing lessons.... as you edit her papers and find misspelled words, have her practice those and fix them (without spell check ;) )
I am so confused about IEW. Did you do the Structure and Style Course first before the theme based writing units? Their website seems to suggest that is the way it should be done. I am considering for next year for a 3rd and 5th grader. Thanks!
I’m sorry I confused you 😬 I made the choice to not do Structure and Style first since I already had the theme based writing units I got used for a good deal. I was also an English teacher before, so I didn’t feel like I directly needed to do Structure and Style with her first in order to be able to go through the theme based unit with her. (They are very similar!) but if you have never done IEW, I recommend following what they recommend! I will most likely be doing the basic intro to Structure and Style with my up-coming 4th Grader next year 👍🏻
@@JoyfulNoiseLiving you should do a video with your kids doing the actions and saying the poems with the different parts of speech. That would be awesome!
I was looking into doing IEW, but it is quite expensive to have to do the teacher training or the online structure and style. Do you have to do the training, or can you just use the books?
Well, if you use the streaming lessons, you don't have to do the teacher training, if you are able to follow the instructions in the teacher's manual for how to grade the papers. Also, if you are already strong in language arts and writing, it's pretty intuitive. But if you struggle yourself with language arts or writing, then I recommend the training. Or if you are teaching it yourself and not using the streaming videos. It took me a while to jump in because of the price, but I am happy I did!
I don’t use TGTB any more for my kids right now. I decided to not use it, but didn’t make a video about that change yet 😬 This is a video explaining how you fit together Language Arts if you DON’T use an all-in-one curriculum like TGTB. I thought there were some moms who could benefit from this method in case they wanted to move away from TGTB as well 😊 I liked TGTB for Pre-K through 1st, but I don’t prefer it after that.
I have been so encouraged and helped by your videos, Ashley! Re: the part when your boys recited what a verb is (with hand motions), did you make that up or do you have a resource for that? Thank you!
Hi, Kara! Sorry for the delayed response. 😬 That verb phrase is from First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. I loved using it with all three of my kiddos!
I just don't understand all these homeschooling videos here on RU-vid. My husband and I try our best not to complicate things when it comes to homeschool. Most children rather play instead of homeschooling anyway. All these RU-vidrs every year are changing up their children's curriculum saying this didn't work and that didn't work, but when I look up the curriculum they don't use the curriculum to it's full potential. This is messing up their children's education because every curriculum teaches concepts differently in Math and English Language Arts. This creates gaps in children's education. Homeschooling is not for lazy parents taking content out of curriculums. That's probably why it doesn't work. Parents have to be 100% committed or just let the schools do the teaching. This is the reason why some states have high restrictions against parents that choose to homeschool. We don't mind it though. We do educate our children. People stop changing curriculum every year. Geesh... Just my opinion. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I appreciate your thoughts! Thanks for reminding us that we have to be committed. And if you'd watch more of my videos, you'd notice that I have been working on my consistency.☺️ I have definitely switched curriculum in some areas, in others I've found what's work and stuck with it! I disagree that you if you change curricula it will mess up the kids. I do think sometimes there are things that are just not working. But also, there is no perfect curriculum! Thanks for challenging homeschoolers to stick with it! I did make this specific video for people who may have wanted to not use The Good and The Beautiful any more and wanted to move to using other things for ELA.