We love the flash card use in this system. Works really well with my kiddo. Morpheme flash cards are especially useful when students are going through level 3. Having the videos available online now for Spelling Analysis is also a game-changer.
@@KS-cl8br Oh my gosh. No. The lessons are so incredibly dense that not even an adult could handle that. At a steady rate, it takes 2 weeks or more per Unit. Probably more. So you can expect to cover 15 lessons in one school year. Level C is very advanced content.. very appropriate for Middle School Level or High School. So. I don't understand the rush.
I love your flip throughs so much!! You have sold me on so many things we have used- BYL, LOE, Singapore Math, now Sonlight 😂 We are already doing Essentials and I would have loved to have seen this a few months back. This will be so helpful- I had the hardest time finding good review or flip throughs for Essentials when I was trying to decide.
I'm so happy my flip throughs have been so helpful ... I always want to share information that I would need when I am trying to make curriculum decisions!
The essentials online only teaches level A and B. It does not cover level C. If you do online all resources are included as pdf. I am currently completing LOE foundations with my kids and this is one of the best LOE essentials walkthrough I’ve seen.
@@fab5bailey369 No, not unless you think you will need more reinforcement. Also, if you are using the Reader set, you will be missing the scheduling suggestions if you don’t have the manual.
Thank you so much for this!! I've enjoyed LOE Foundations, but have been on the fence about Essentials because it felt so overwhelming. But this helps so much. Thank you!
Yes! I agree. We love LOE Foundations, but I have also been on the fence about moving into Essentials next year or trying something else. My big question is this: is doing Essentials along with a writing/comprehension curriculum too much? Sometimes Foundations lessons can get long already. One other question @sciencemama - have you been progressing at a pace that will allow you to do all 30 units in one year?!? I'm curious to know :)
This is SO HELPFUL! Not a lot of LOE Essentials reviews out there. This was SUPER helpful to me. We've used LOE Foundations A-D (currently halfway through D). Looks like we're staying on the LOE train. My kiddo loves it, so do I. Teacher intensive but gives such a great foundation in English Language Arts.
Haha, it has to do with the fact that we don't use the spelling or phonics from Sonlight - mostly just the readers, copywork, and composition! My upcoming video gets a bit more into that!!
That makes sense! I am skipping the spelling in Lang 3 as well. And using A Reason for Spelling but then I'm pulling in other resources like MCP Phonics which I got through Sonlight and then worldly wise. I almost feel like I would prefer a more focused phonics program... Just not sure I could manage all the books. Lol so I'll be waiting patiently for your next video 😅😂
This is really helpful. I'm thinking of switching over from using Spell to Write and Read to thud one. It's not overwhelming to me because so much of the program is similar. I do like the rule cards from SWR better because they are more visual with symbols in representing the rules. What I don't like about SWR is they do not plan the lessons for you. With 3 kids at very different levels to keep up with, lesson planning becomes draining for me. I'm hoping this might be my answer and I might even be able to use much of the cards we already have since they are essentially the same.
@makerofahome yeah sure! So we did switch to Logic of English this year. I used Foundations A for my 5yr old and Essentials for my older kids (8 and 11). I really like having the lessons planned out for me and the kids like it too. The activities are good and they have good grammer included in Essentials levels. The one issue I found was that the lesson parts take as long as 40 min to do. The structure is each lesson has 5 parts and in theory you could work through 1 lesson per week. I found this was a bit much for my 8 yr old so I had to scale it back for her. But my 11 yr old was grasping it quickly. My challenges were not related to the curriculum (although the lesson parts are too long). It was that the 11 y/o was ready to go faster and the 8yr old needed a slower pace. I would say my 7-8 yr old wasn't quite ready for Essentials and should've been put into Foundations C. But it does work to put them in different levels (A and B) of the Essentials lessons and still do the lessons together. I like that. Finally, we participated in a Classical Conversations co-op this year and I didn't realize until after we started that the grammer in LOE was redundant for my 11 yr old (because of our CC grammer) and my 8 yr old wasn't ready for all the grammer. I still used some of the grammer though. Also, I skipped all of the reading associated with LOE. We only used it for Spelling and some grammer. Sorry this is long. For the coming year I have not yet decided to continue this way or go back to Spell to Write and Read. I don't really need the grammer in LOE while in CC and I might be able to work better with my 2 older children at their different levels with SWR. I will be looking at both in about a month and considering which will be better for us right now. My youngest will stay with LOE and go on to Foundations B. If we were not in CC I would absolutely stay with LOE.
@@goodfriendacres5633 thank you for the thoughtful and thorough response! I used LOE foundations A&B with my oldest but ended up selling all my materials. Now he needs more spelling instruction and I need to teach my youngers how to read. Trying to decide what to do, so this is helpful. Did you use SWR to teach your olders to read?
@@makerofahome Yes. I have used essentially the same approach to reading with all 3 of my children. And that is to teach spelling first. I took this approach after reading an article by Wanda Sanseri about teaching spelling first as a means to achieve reading. I find that the method has worked perfectly for us and my children are like any others with different learning strengths and personalities. But when you have to learn the phonograms either to read or to spell you are starting the same. Then once you start putting them together to spell the words, you find you can read those same words. Once you can spell 5-10 words a week you can read 5-10 words a week. So you are practicing your reading already just by doing your spelling lesson. Before you know it you pick up an early reader book and you can sound those words out because you know the phonograms and a few spelling rules. My 1st learned to read before age 8, however I think it was around age 9 that it really started to make sense for him. He is now 11 and can read chapter books without problem. I rarely or never sat down with him to "practice" reading together. My second is the same. She is 8 and has finished the McGuffey Primer within the last week. She might progress more quickly if I spent more time with her, but I notice her reading progresses in relation to her ability to focus on spelling (which has also improved this year). My 3rd is sounding out early CVC words at nearly 6 yrs old. She begged to learn reading so I expect she may end up learning sooner. I'm using LOE Level A with her because having planned lessons is easier for me (particularly the variety of activities). There are early readers in the back of the workbook. We are nearly at the end of Level A and this week I showed her Book1 of the Bob Books boxed set Level 2 (Red box). She (slowly) read nearly the entire book, needing help with a few words which had multi-letter phonograms. As a busy mom of 3 I have been relieved that I don't have to spend much individual time teaching reading since the spelling lessons are sufficient. We of course like to enjoy reading books together and often my children will of their own will ask to read to me as they discover their own abilities.
The online supplements still require all of the resources you purchased. I have used the old logic of English online course and the new online supplements. The improvements in the "supplement" versions are very nice. They come with a guide of which aspects are available online vs only in print to help you make sure you cover all of the aspects of the program.
The Essentials courses are full courses. They don’t require print materials unless you need the Reader portion. The Foundations courses are optional supplements that still require the full print set to implement.
So I have never heard of this program until seeing your videos and I'm nearly sold. I've been anticipating the "next stage" of learning after learning to read (we are doing AAR and AAS), and my biggest concern has been how to incorporate grammar/vocabulary and not do 3-4 different curriculums just to cover everything, like you mentioned as well. So thank you for this in-depth review! It was very helpful. Do you feel like it's pretty well-rounded to where it doesn't really need supplementation?
Hi! Thank you so much for this video. If you don’t mind me asking, does the grammer teach everything about grammer? I guess what I’m asking is would I need to purchase another grammer curriculum along side essentials?
Thank you so much for making this video!! It was exactly what I needed to help me get a true understanding of what all is involved. I have a question for you. About how long do you spend on Essentials and then also writing portion of Sonlight a day? We have a co-op once a week so it will already take us longer to get through each unit. With Foundations I didn't add writing so I'm a bit nervous about how much time it will take with doing writing on top of Essentials.
I feel like we spend about 30 minutes a day on Essentials. Some of the parts I’m able to get done in one sitting but other ones (especially the spelling or phonics sections) I have to split over 2 days. So I would say a unit takes us about 5-6 school days. As for the writing portion, that depends but I would say 15-20 minutes.
Do you think you'd be able to teach both a student in level A and level B or C at the same time for the bulk of the lessons? For example do Part 1 together, then separate for going through flashcards to make sure each student knows all the concepts
Hi! Yes, I just discussed that a bit in my latest video but I’m combining Essentials with Sonlight LA because we love the Sonlight readers and creative expression or composition! We aren’t doing the full program just those 2 sections 😊
Do you have to buy a new student workbook for each year? Since some of this work is done at all levels (a,b,c) or do they give you multiple pages to review each year?
Do you have to buy a workbook every year? Because some of the worksheets are for the “all” part, so you wouldn’t be able to come back to those, only the ones specified for level a, b, c.
Hi, that was actually something I had to research a bunch ... and that is why I decided to copy only the sheets that I needed but save the "master" to print again when we go back through. I hope that makes sense.
Yes, if you do a 5 day week ... but I find on average a unit takes us about 6-7 days because a few of the sections can be really long and my kids just get tired!
Question: So my daughter is 12 years old but not that great of a speller. I looked at the placement test and she would begin in Level C. So if I'm understanding the process of this curriculum, then I would order the unit books 1-7, 8-15,-16-22, 23-30 and flashcards. Then I'd start at Unit 1 Level C and walk through each unit Level C? I do understand as I walk through I'll still be doing the "all" sections as well. So even though we are new, we would start at Unit 1 level C-Is this correct? So with that said, question: say you were starting off Level A-Book 1-7 ; when you complete Unit 7 Level A, do you move onto the next book 8-15 at Level A? Or do you go back to unit 1 and start as level B?
You are correct about how you would use Level C. As for level A, once we finished Unit 7 we moved to Unit 8 in Level A ... we won't move to Level B work until we have finished 1-30!
It really depends! In general, Logic of English is based on an Orton-Gillingham style of teaching reading which can be really good for students with dyslexia. But yes, there is a lot to remember, but it is constantly reviewed.
@@sciencemama That would be nice!! I have a 7yo and a 9yo and I'm not sure if would be too much for my 7yo to handle, start her at Essentials A instead of Foundations B. First time LOE and we are not native speakers.