Author: Wendy

We’re no stranger to literature studies in our home. We love them! And we especially love trying out the large variety of studies out there by all the different companies. So it goes without saying that when Memoria Press was offering literature studies to the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I begged to be chosen for the review! We were offered choices from second grade through ninth grade, but I ultimately chose the Fifth Grade Literature Guide Set, primarily for Munchkin (who is technically in 4th grade, but excels in language-based subjects). The other benefit the Fifth Grade set had was that one of the books it covers is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. This was a benefit because Munchkin asked for (and received) a Chronicles of Narnia box set (a single-volume, actually) for Christmas, so we didn’t even need to hit the library to do this study.

Each of the literature studies comes with a student workbook and a teacher answer book. These are available together or separately, and the novels you need to complete the study are also available directly from Memoria Press if you need them. The workbooks are a nice quality softcover with a gloss cover, and there’s one spread in the workbook for each chapter of the novel.

We started the very day our package arrived – we were that excited to dive in! The first lesson was all about the author. The Lion study guide began with a short biography of the author as well as a bit of information about the specific novel being studied right in the workbook. On the opposite page is a list of comprehension questions about the passage. Then the real fun begins – reading the novel and working through the study!

Memoria Press suggests that you read each chapter (or section of a chapter) and then do the workbook pages for that section. So each day, Munchkin and I would read a chapter together (he didn’t need my help to read it, but it’s a nice way to spend a few minutes together) and then he would work through the questions. There are some straight comprehension questions and some “digging deeper” type questions (Which biblical character do you think Peter represents? for example). It was a nice balance between the two types. In addition to questions, there are other types of activities for students to do – drawing pictures based on the text or copy work, for example. I think my favorite part of the study is that it requires students to write their answers in complete sentences; my children are traditionally the kings of the short answer. This was a really good exercise in answering questions properly for Munchkin.

The teacher’s manual follows the student book exactly. The pages look identical, except with answers typed into the blanks. Where the student book ends, though, the teacher book continues; this is where you’ll find the (reproducible) quizzes and the final test that I touched on before. I really like the inclusion of tests. I know a lot of homeschool parents shy away from these types of measurements, but I find it really helpful to gauge how well my children are doing in a particular subject. The tests include several sections, including multiple choice, short answer, and essay. There’s a grading rubric right in the teacher manual, which makes assigning points (and *gasp* grades) easy.

Some of the guides have really neat hands-on activities, like recipes. In Lion, it was for Turkish Delight. I really wanted us to be able to make it, but I just couldn’t find all of the ingredients (specifically the rose water, which apparently is the most important ingredient in Turkish Delight according to my online research).

Lassie gives us a recipe for Yorkshire Pudding, which is a favorite of our family and one we haven’t had in ages. (If you’re unfamiliar with Yorkshire Pudding, it’s a traditional English side dish that more resembles bread than pudding.) The kids will be thrilled when Munchkin gets to that part of the book and we get to enjoy that treat again! In addition to the recipe, the Lassie study guide includes a comprehensive appendix of things that the student will find helpful while working through the book (a biography of the author, maps of the locations in the book, information about the industrial revolution, poetry, and much, much more).

Heidi has a lot more interesting kinds of written activities, such as making a to-do list for the main character, writing a letter, and copywork of poetry. It varies quite a bit from the straight question-and-answer pages that Lion had, which will make it more interesting for Munchkin.

I can tell based on the literature selections that 5th grade is the year Memoria Press expects students to study Europe; all three of the books are set there (LWW in England, Lassie in Scotland, and Heidi in Switzerland).

We were incredibly blessed to have received the full grade set of literature studies. Extra special thanks to Memoria Press for this gift, even though they knew the review period would only provide time for working on one of the titles. 

While Memoria Press is known for providing a “classical education,” you don’t have to subscribe to a classical philosophy to use these study guides. In fact, I’m not even 100% sure what that means, and we really enjoyed using this guide. I can definitely see myself working these into our school budget moving forward. (And when Small Fry and Dragonfly are older, we’ll just need new student books!) What a gem we found with this product.

Blessings,

 

Members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew are blogging about a wide age range of Memoria Press literature guides this week. Make sure to click through to the Crew blog to find more reviews, especially if you’re interested in a grade level I haven’t discussed today.

I’ve always heard that English is the hardest language for people to learn because it’s the least logical. Logic of English has made its mission to dispel that myth by finding and explaining the way the language works – and more specifically why it works the way it does. I’ve had the privilege of reviewing their Essentials 2nd Edition curriculum with the boys over the past several weeks, and I’m excited to tell you all about it today.

There is so much involved with this curriculum, but it all works so easily (for the teacher) and in perfect harmony that it was a true pleasure to implement this into our school day. When you get your package, there will be a lot of things in there (it was a heavy box!): textbook, two workbooks, five packs of flashcards, two packs of game cards, and a pack of game tiles. I’ll go over these items one at a time in the coming paragraphs.

The Elements

The main component is the textbook, which acts primarily as the teacher’s manual. It’s a very heavy, hardcover book with over 600 pages. The first hundred or so pages is instructions for the teacher, explaining how to teach the course. Then comes the placement test so you know which level to use with which student (there are 3 levels, and all three levels can be taught using the same book). After that are “pre-lessons,” to be used in case your student needs to learn very specific skills before starting lesson 1. The bulk of the textbook is the lessons themselves.

The lessons are very teacher-friendly. The textbook scripts out exactly what you need to say during the lesson, and there’s even a section at the beginning of each one telling you which of the supplemental materials (workbook, spelling journal, and which specific deck(s) of flashcards) you’ll need for that lesson. There are 15 lessons, each split up into 5 sections, which is perfect for a school week (even us, since we recently switched back to a 5-day week to make up for all the extra time off we took for the baby’s birth last November). The lessons are very streamlined and rarely took us more than about half an hour. What I loved most about this curriculum is that it’s mostly “open and go.” It takes a bit of time to go over it all when you first get the book to learn the ropes (remember that the first hundred pages are all teacher training). But once you understand what you’re doing, all you have to do is gather the appropriate student supplies and read the script. Easy.

The next component is the student workbook. This is a softcover book with over 300 pages that is designed to be consumed by one student. How your student performs on the placement test will determine which level you start them at, but all three levels are included in both the textbook and the student workbook. There are a variety of different types of activities, and because all three levels are included in each book, you could presumably use the same text and workbook for three years. The lessons would be similar from year to year doing it this way, but there would still be some building on the previous year’s learning.

The Spelling Journal is like a dictionary that students create themselves using Logic of English phonograms. The book is divided up using the different letter combinations, with letters creating the same sound on the same page (c, k, and ck, for example). It shows each way of making the sound at the top of the page, and underneath is the rule for when to use that form of the sound and several blank lines. Students are instructed to use the guidelines they learned during the previous lesson and put several words in the correct column.

The series of flashcards are really helpful. The five decks include: Basic Phonograms, Grammar, Spelling Rules, Advanced Phonograms, and Morphemes. We primarily used the Basic Phonograms and Spelling Rules decks, with the others making only occasional appearances.

The textbook will tell you which flashcards you need and when to use them. The cards are clearly labeled so it’s incredibly easy to find the one (or more) you need for a particular lesson, especially if you put them back in order (ABC or numerical) when you’re done, which I did.

The flashcards are many, so you’ll need an organized way to keep track of them all. I rubber-banded each deck together, and then stored them in a 10×5 crocheted basket that I made especially for the purpose of storing these cards.

In addition to the flashcards, there are two decks of Phonogram game cards, one set in “manuscript” and one set in “book face” (just two different fonts). These cards are used frequently for a variety of activities and games. Their use was probably the highlight of the program for both of my sons.

Finally, there’s a set of Phonogram game tiles. We haven’t come across a lesson that uses these yet, so I can’t really tell you much about them except that they exist and are much thicker than the regular flashcards (think of the spinner board from a children’s game). I have these stored in a ziploc baggie in our flashcard basket.

Our Use and Opinion of the Program

The package arrived late in the week, so I took the weekend to go over the teacher training portion and we started in right away Monday morning the following week. We followed the lessons pretty much exactly; because it’s all laid out so beautifully for you, there’s really no reason not to. Since we had just one workbook and Spelling journal, I assigned those to Seahawk since he’s not quite as strong in the language arts as Munchkin. It was enough for Munchkin to do the work orally.

I don’t think the kids necessarily loved the program – it is pretty intense – but it’s so easy to work through that they were willing to do so. Logic of English does something that no other company we’ve come across before has done – explained the whys of English in a way that makes sense. For Logic of English, it’s not enough to teach students what the rules are. That’s not to say that knowing the rules is a bad thing, but understanding and implementation jump to a whole new level when students know precisely when and why to use a specific group of letters to make the sound they need. It’s not enough to know that “sometimes C says /k/ ans sometimes C says /s/.” Logic of English tells us when C makes each of its sounds. This has been a vital difference for the boys, especially Seahawk. It’s even been interesting for me to learn, though I’m naturally a good speller (as is Munchkin). It’s good to know why we use which letter(s) when spelling; this knowledge helps the non-natural spellers among us to determine on their own how to spell a word correctly.

Long story short: we (I, at least) loved using this program. I saw a marked improvement in my kids’ understanding of their first language. The ease in which I could teach it was a definite plus for our family. It’s definitely something we’ll continue to use.

Blessings,

 

Besides Essentials, Logic of English offers a series of English Foundations for younger students. Members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew are talking about the different levels this week. Click over to the Crew blog to find out more!

My boys love to write. They have so many creative ideas in their heads, and every so often they get the hankering to write a book. Not a 200-word picture book; no, they always want to write a novel. The problem is that they never have the “stick-to-it-tive-ness” to complete the novels they start. So when I heard about Here to Help Learning and their novel-writing class (formally called Flight 3 Essay Writing), I knew this would be something the boys and I would want to review.

What It Is and How It Works

Here to Help Learning combines video instruction with practical use. There are six levels of instruction, from the basics of learning to turn thoughts into paragraph form all the way up to where we worked, writing a six-chapter novel. The program is designed to be used twice a week. The first day of each week, there’s a video that runs about 20 minutes over the course of five sections. I quickly discovered that the first section is the same each time, so after the first two weeks we started skipping that part. (Each section is its own video ranging from about 2 to about 15 minutes, so this was easy to do. It was the 2-minute opening video that we started skipping.)

The titles of the videos are the same from lesson to lesson, and they’re all based on airplane terminology: Pre-Flight Checklist (this is the one we omitted from later lessons), Flight Check-in, Take Off, Full Throttle, and Flying Solo. The meat of the lesson is found in Take Off and Full Throttle, so that’s where I’ll spend the majority of my focus for this review.

Flight Check-in is the part of the lesson where students turn in the previous lesson’s Flying Solo work (what would be “homework” for a public school student, but is just independent study work for homeschoolers) and separate the new week’s worksheets into their appropriate tabs in the binder. Flight Check-in is also when the group is instructed to recite the program’s Bible verse focus, Colossians 3:17 (Whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him). I love this verse, and I love that the program includes its recitation each week. It’s a fabulous reminder that our skills come from God and that we should praise him through our work and talents.

Take Off includes my boys’ favorite part of each lesson: the writing warm-up. There is a picture prompt that is different with each lesson as well as a literary technique. Students are instructed to use the prompt as the basis for a short story (they’re given 7 minutes to write and 3 more minutes to finesse after that) which includes the “literary technique of the day.” This is one of the “Top 10 Literary Techniques,” and it’s explained/described during the video – including examples – so the students can understand how to use it an include it in their story. These include metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, and others.

After the writing warm-up is completed, you move on to the longest of the five videos: Full Throttle. In Flight 3 Essay Writing, this includes the Meet the Authors segment of the program, where Mrs. Mora (the HTHL teacher) interviews successful Christian authors. We’ve just completed lesson 8, and so far it has been different portions of the same interview with Bill Myers, author of over 100 books and creator of the animated series McGee and Me. The interview covers a broad variety of topics, but they all come back to what it’s like to be a writer for a living and letting God have control over your life (another great reminder for Christians).

Once the interview video is over, there’s time to go over the “big assignment” of the week, all of which culminate in the student writing their novel. So far, at the end of lesson 8, we’ve done a lot of brainstorming and list-making. My kids are getting antsy to actually start writing their novels!

How We Used It

There are worksheets to print out each week, so upon getting access to the site I sent the first three weeks’ worth over to the print shop. There was quite a bit of printing in the beginning (due to doing several weeks’ worth plus the 36-page Language Helps workbook) so I had it done on Saturday, when copies are half price.

Armed with our worksheets, we watched the video that very first day (I’d watched it in advance so I would know what to expect) and from there, it was easy to implement everything. We quickly found our groove. For the first three weeks, we followed the course of study exactly: the video and worksheets one day, the homework another day, working only two days per week.

After that, though, the boys were getting anxious that they hadn’t really begun their novels yet. (They don’t realize that they are writing their novel. Knowing about their characters and what the main conflict will be is going to help them not to lose their mojo later on in the process.) So, they requested that we up the speed. We still do one section per day, but now we do it four days a week instead of two, thereby getting through two lessons per week. This speed is working really well for us. When we get to the “write chapter one” lesson of the program, I imagine we’ll have to slow down again because I’m pretty sure they won’t be able to write two chapters per week.

Final Thoughts

If you’re not sure whether the program is right for you, they have a free one-day trial where you get full access to everything the site has to offer with no credit card required. If you want something a little more, there’s a 14-day trial (with a credit card) and the price is $6.99 per month after that. This fee covers your entire family – no limits – and includes all the videos and worksheets you need to run the course.

We’ve really been enjoying working with Here to Help Learning. The lessons are relevant and it’s nice that we’ve found something that teaches the boys how to write (a very important skill in our opinion) that isn’t sluggish and boring. Here to Help Learning is a program we heartily recommend.

I’m one of 100 reviewers talking about Here to Help Learning this week. Make sure to hit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog to find more reviews about the program!

Blessings,