Laying a strong foundation through Logic of English-a Review

For the past several weeks Evan and I have been working through Foundations Level B from Logic of English. An English enthusiast myself, I was so excited to get my hands on this product to review and use in our homeschool. The Foundations program is specifically geared towards children ages 4-7 and is a comprehensive, multi sensory language arts curriculum. Level B is appropriate for children who have basic phonemic awareness skills, are already familiar with short vowel sounds and can read short vowel words. If you are unfamiliar with Logic of English, their tagline says it all-"Combining the science of reading with the joy of learning." The program aims to teach language arts through phonemic awareness, reading, handwriting and spelling to produce strong readers and writers.

The Level B student workbook was an instant win for us-just look at the cover! It's full of engaging activities and colorful worksheet pages that make phonics fun and approachable to the struggling reader. Right away Evan enjoyed the phonogram and reading skills games(cleverly disguised as Bingo, tic tac toe and so on). Let's face it, the English language is one tough cookie to crack! Logic of English does a great job breaking it down and making it less intimidating for little learners.

Tongue signals serious concentration going on here hehe!

The readers were also a home run with us. Other than doing a great job re enforcing lessons learned, they are cute little books filled with silly stories sure to entertain young readers. As both a mom and a homeschool teacher, I love readers like these because they build confidence. When you're 5 years old and having a hard day struggling to understand reading rules, I imagine its so nice to be able to say "Hey I read that!" Also, I appreciated the diversity in characters illustrated throughout these Logic of English readers. Here's a video of Evan reading from the Level B Reader "Can Pete Pick a Pet?"

Foundations helps children to develop solid phonemic awareness by learning the way sounds are formed with the mouth and tongue, and how to listen for and feel these sounds as they are pronounced. This is brick and mortar to learning to read, write and speak the English language well. In the introduction to the teacher's manual there is a really helpful list all of the phonograms and high frequency words covered in the book-I found myself referencing often. You can find the scope and sequence outlined there as well and how it aligns with Common Core standards. 

From a teacher's perspective, I have to note that this curriculum is incredibly comprehensive. If you are not one to spend as much consistent time on your preparation and planning on this Kindergarten level, this is probably not the best fit for you. There is no skirting the teacher manual here, it is essential to the program as a whole and you will be lost without it. Whether it's a pro or con in your book, the lesson plans are very detailed if you plan to use the program to it's fullest potential. Each lesson includes objectives relating to phonemic awareness, phonograms, handwriting and spelling, with reviews and reading assessments included throughout. Lessons are scripted, so that's a plus for me! And, the little "teacher help" boxes in the margin are full of helpful tips and tricks as well.

To teach Foundations B you need the teacher manual, student workbook and set of corresponding readers. Level B picks up right where A leaves off, with lessons 41-80. You can buy both A and B as a set to get the best value. If you do buy sets individually, they would also recommend a few extra reusable materials like phonogram flashcards, game tiles and more. At first glance this program does seem to fall on the expensive end of the spectrum, but it helps to remember that you are buying a comprehensive language arts curriculum covering phonics, reading, handwriting and spelling. 

Click on the picture below to read more review from the crew!

 

And, learn more about Logic of English on social media at the links below...

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheLogicOfEnglish/  @LogicOfEnglishYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/LogicofEnglish
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/logicofenglish/

Our Kindergarten Cirriculum

What curriculum are you using? It's a common question, with a not so common answer. As I'm learning in homeschool circles, there are likely as many answers to that question as there are individual homeschools!

 The beauty of teaching your children at home is that you have the freedom and flexibility to customize your teaching to their unique and individual learning styles. Because of that, we've really tried to stay away from the one size fits all "curriculum in a box types," and have chosen different materials for each subject(of course, if that type of thing works for you, rock on!).  There's a sea of choices and different methods of teaching out there, and add to that a great amount of books and resources dedicated to helping you evaluate those choices and what would work best for you. Read: Overwhelming!

 

 

Enter "The Well Trained Mind" to the rescue! Thankfully I'm kind of a planning and research nerd, and have really enjoyed sifting through the options out there over the past year(or more, embarrassingly). This gem of a book has by far become my favorite resource and in effect, our road map to a classical education at home.  She's basically my own personal Siri for all things school related.

So here are my humble picks for this the first chapter in our homeschooling adventure. In a nutshell, I plan to focus most of our time on the "3 R's," and color the rest of our day with fun unit study activities.

Reading-We are working our way through Bauer's recommended "Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading," and using a variety of phonics primers provided by Usborne(a fave!) and Scholastic.

wRiting- We choose "Handwriting without Tears" because well, self explanatory.

aRithmatic-I feel like Evan will be a strong math student, so I felt comfortable going with the Singapore based "Math in Focus" to start. Not only has it come highly recommended, but once I saw how nicely illustrated and colorful the workbooks were, I knew they would be a hit. We actually started with this set earlier this summer and are currently whizzing though Kindergarten math-thanks in large part to all of Evan's excellent preschool teachers for giving us such a solid foundation.

As an aside, Cathy Duffy's curriculum review website has been such a helpful reference. You can read Cathy Duffy's review of Math in Focus here...http://cathyduffyreviews.com/math/math-in-focus.htm

 

To mix in the arts and a wide breadth of other subjects, we are also doing monthly unit studies. We started off July with "Under the Sea" and will be moving onto Dinosaurs this month(because my Evan is ALL about some dinos right now!), then the Solar system, and so on. The bulk of our library books, science and art projects will tie into whatever theme we are learning about that month.

Speaking of art, we've noticed that Evan has picked up a budding interest in drawing, so we've recently added some books on first drawing lessons to our library-a perfect example of something I hadn't necessarily planned for at this point, but decided to follow his little 5 year old lead on.

Later on this year I'll add piano into the mix and use the Bastien primer to start-simply because that's what I learned on. Music is a huge part our everyday life with the hubbs being such a talented musician and serving as worship leader at our church, it's only natural that it would pulse through our schooling as well.

So that's the plan! If you're a fellow homeschooling family, please feel free to share you're doing this year!

*Disclaimer-all plans subject to change! ;-)