Course Correction

So to speak.  And yes, already.

I was planning to use K12's 4th grade language arts course for the Cub this year.  The whole shooting match, the literature piece, which I love, and also the rest of it: composition, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling.  

After two weeks I've come to the conclusion that it requires simply too much writing.  Too much writing of word lists and rewriting of sentences, things that don't really further his knowledge much other than the knowledge of how to complete worksheets.  Because the Cub is 7 years old (and a boy) I need to get as much instructional bang as I can from each task involving writing or else he dissolves into a quivering puddle of angst.

So we will keep the literature piece from K12 but ditch everything else.  I had the Michael Clay Thompson language arts materials on the shelf (Island level) and we will try those.  These language arts materials teach grammar and writing through story.  It is such a unique approach that I finally decided last year after reviewing the materials extensively that I simply could not implement it effectively.  But now I've decided to try, mainly because I think the Cub will at the very least respond to the approach.  The K12 materials were sucking the joy out of learning about the English language and I'm hoping that the MCT materials will resurrect that joy.

As for spelling, I've decided to go with Spelling Power.  Spelling Power is another one that I've reviewed extensively and finally dismissed because it seemed too complicated.  With the K12 program requiring way too much writing of words that the Cub already knew how to spell, I knew I needed something that only targets those words that he needs to practice.  This is the approach Spelling Power takes and so we'll try it.  I think it will work for him, I'm just not sure if it will work for me.

And writing.  I used K12's 3rd grade composition course for him last year because he was feeling very disgruntled about having to do (age appropriate) copywork.  He produced some wonderful pieces using the program, though I think he needed far more hand-holding than the K12 people were envisioning.  I've decided that I'm not ready to do that much hand-holding again this year, so we are switching to Writing with Ease.  This program combines listening to passages from good books with narration, copywork, and dictation.  We will start with level 2 but depending on how he does we may accelerate that and move on quickly to level 3.  The Cub has also been writing his own narrations from his history book Story of the World this year.  And the thing that he is finding most wonderful is that he is writing in a journal every day.  So far he is loving this task as he uses the journal to write all kinds of information about cars, his current obsession.

So that's it.  The first curriculum change for the year.