Our home school curriculum, subject by subject: English (2. Spelling)

As mentioned, in English class, we study four subjects: Grammar, Spelling, Reading and Writing. You can read about our Grammar program here.

2. Spelling

The boys started Spelling Workout A in first grade after having completed Phonics Pathways, and I have to admit; I’ve never really looked for a different program. My sixth grader – who’s just finishing up Spelling Workout G and will get through Spelling Workout H by the end of this year -is a master speller, and my fourth grader, who is slightly dyslexic, profits from it as well (despite what this excellent, and much more extensive review of the program says).

I have been supplementing the program slightly, by making my older student learn extra word roots, prefixes and suffixes from a list that I got out of the Targeting Grammar book. I haven’t looked at next year’s program yet – six years of Spelling Workout finished, and now what will we do? - but whatever will come, I know he’ll be prepared.

For my younger student with a bit of special spelling needs, I’m supplementing with extra spelling words. (You can read more about that here.)

In addition to all this, we discuss and keep a record of new vocabulary every day; these are mainly expressions or words that the boys get from their daily readings.

Our home school curriculum, subject by subject: English (1. Grammar)

When it comes to English, like most, we study four subjects: Grammar, Spelling (including vocabulary), Reading (Literature) and Writing.

1. Grammar

We started grammar in second grade with Grammar for the Thoughtful Child. It’s not very well structured and a bit outdated, but covers some of the most basic grammar topics.

For the lower grades in general, I have used the Targeting Grammar books. They are fun and fairly easy, yet they go through most of the basic grammar that is needed to prepare for more advanced studies. Sometimes when I know a little more knowledge is needed to understand a specific topic later, I add information or discuss something more in depth. Both my older boys finished Targeting Grammar Grade 5-6 by the end of fourth grade.

I’ve also used God’s Gift of Grammar A and B, and although I like the layout and its thoroughness, there’s just too much – I don’t find it to be very concise, and there are simply too many exercises (AND it’s hard to cut some out because they’re all over the place). This was my grammar program of choice though, until this summer when I discovered Rod & Staff.

Prof. Husband brought most of our school books for the academic year 2012-2013 back from the US in September last year. I had searched high and low online for a good grammar program, and finally settled on ordering Rod & Staff's Progressing With Courage, Grade 6, but of course I couldn’t know for sure that this would be what we were looking for. Oh boy was I surprised. It was the first time ever that I opened an English grammar book and thought, “This is it. THIS is grammar!” It is a rigorous program, with lessons, assignments, worksheets and tests enough to keep a student busy 30-40 min./day, every day for the entire school year, but it provides a good grammar education, and I just happen to think that’s important. What’s that? Why yes, of course it teaches you to diagram sentences! This fall I will start my (then) fifth grader on this program to do the Grade 6 program over two years, and I will definitely get the Grade 7 package for my seventh grader next year. Add our Latin grammar, and I think I can say for sure that should we keep it up, this is one topic the boys will have mastered by the time they graduate.

To read about our Mathematics program, click here.

To read more about our general philosophy of education, read here.
To read more about our general curriculum idea, read here.

Spelling challenges

Spelling is a subject my oldest son flew through like a breeze. The Spelling Workout program was just right for him, and without any effort he has acquired a perfect command of all existing spelling rules in English.

My fourth grader on the other hand has always been struggling. Until last year, he still mixed up b and d consistently, as well as read a lot of words backwards, especially three letter words: ‘was’ always turned into ‘saw’, ‘God’ was ‘dog’. It made for a few laughs during reading time, sure, and at first I thought maybe he would just grow out of it, but last year we realized this was a serious matter, and something we have to work on. One of the problems is that he knows all the rules, but when it comes to applying them to actual words, he gets lost. 

We have chosen not to label his condition, since 1/ the label's main purpose is to determine what to do with children in regular schools that don't keep up with the lesson plan, and 2/ there seems to be as many programs and solutions to this kind of challenge as there are children (although we are of course following general common advice recommended in this kind of situation; one-on-one tutoring and special attention and education [kind of hard to avoid when you homeschool, ha ha]), but have designed a special program this year, hoping to overcome the bump that we are facing.

We are still using the Spelling Workout program, but are complementing it with extra reading practice and word recognition, word roots/suffixes/prefixes and spelling memorization. 

Google will tell you that the average college educated person knows 20,000 - 25,000 words, and there’s obviously no way my son can memorize the spelling of all those words, but we’ve started with a memorization program with the 1000/2000 most common words in the English language, and I figured we could get at least 3000 more words done within the next couple of year. Spelling workout provides about 7000 words, so I figure, come high school, my son will know for sure how to spell at least 10,000 words, and in reality probably about double that, since he actually is starting to recognize patterns and related words daily. We just have to stick with it.