Home School Product Reviews

We love this book (A Reason For Handwriting D – 4th)! There is just enough cursive practice for a day–a few letters and words–to not be frustrating, there are tips every week, and, best of all, once a week, there is a long (2- or 3- sentence) Bible passage to copy. My son wants to do his best when he writes the Scripture passage, and he no longer complains about doing ‘cursive.’ In the past, it was a chore, he was often frustrated, and he dreaded it; we used a variety of packages that had him scrutinize his letters against the books’ perfect machine writing, and of course he could never match up (who could?). In A Reason for Writing, the book has guide letters but never has him compare his to its perfection. And he really loves to write out a Bible passage on a special page which he then colors, to be hung on the wall. He isn’t one to love coloring, but for this, he does it with pride. We highly recommend it.

Karenlee

Boulder, CO

Mommy of 1; Homeschooling since preschool; Writer.

For the complete A Reason For series and other ways to improve your homeschool handwriting visit Timberdoodle.com.

I find it very frustrating that the Teacher’s Edition for Easy Grammar is listed as a required resource, and that this program is so highly regarded. There is very little student or teacher direction. Compare the sample pages here with the student book samples; they are exactly the same. How helpful is a teacher guide with NO answers?!

Sharon

MI

Read more about Easy Grammar at Timberdoodle.com

Language Lessons for the Very Young 1

We love the Language Lessons series.  They are easy to use, and have beautiful poetry, picture study, and a bit of grammar and copywork.

I personally think these will not work as your stand alone LA program.  Supplementing with a little modern writing, Spelling, and handwriting is a good idea, as Timberdoodle recommends.

Another caveat is that I personally would not use this Language Lessons for the Very Young 1 with a first grader.  My advanced 2nd grader is using it this year.  I cannot imagine my first grader writing small enough to fit the copywork on the lines, or being able to spell names of months, days of the week, etc….even copying them would be a stretch.  I will use Language Lessons for Little Ones 3 for first grade.

Look over the scope and sample lessons, and they will switch out the book if you feel your first grader needs to use the previous book in the series.

Sandra

FL

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

I heard about this (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons) book from my sister who had used it with her children.  I used it with my two youngest sons when they were about 3.  I remember I was almost in tears, when my middle son read a stop sign.  With my youngest, we got through most of it, but it gave him the tools he needed to be a solid reader.  He is a bookworm, even now at 16.  My sister did use it with her kids at around 2 1/2.   Our kids were early talkers so maybe a rule of thumb would be to use as soon as they start developing language skills.

This book worked wonderfully for my boys. One does need to read the parent instruction carefully, I read it more than once to make sure I followed the program (being the stick-to-the rules accountant that I am).  The only regret is that I did not have this book to use with my oldest son, he learned to read by 4 but he does not have the same enjoyment of reading as my youngest two.

Jensen's Grammar

My  two oldest boys both used Jensen’s Grammar along with Jensen’s Punctuation in their high school years.  Both studied the books on their own.  Both scored over 30 on the English section of the ACT and were placed in Honor’s English in college.  I intend to use it with all my children.

Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier

This book was a pleasant surprise!  It was an impulse decision to buy because it was offered at a significant discount.  I honestly wondered if I had just wasted my money, but The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier is a gem and worth the full price!  The book focuses on seven of the weakest areas of most writing:  Passive voice, nominalization, vague -ing words, weak verbs, misplaced modifiers, super-long sentences, and wordy writing.    Each of the seven chapters begins with a mystery that contains several sentences that use the weak writing that will be focused on for that chapter, then it goes on to explain the problem and how to detect and fix it. There are lots of examples, each showing a sentence with the weakness and then how it could be written better.  The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier would be great to go with a junior or high school level creative writing class.  Matter of fact, that is what my sister-in-law is doing with it.  I plan on incorporating the ideas into my 5th grader’s writing.  I’d highly recommend it to all homeschooling families who are concerned with their students’ writing or who would like to focus on specific writing issues.

Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier is on sale for only $5.50. Exclusively at Timberdoodle.com

Sequential Spelling

There was once a time that I wholeheartedly recommended this spelling program. However, that is no more. I used this program with three different students for about a year. They were three very different students- one ace speller, one in need of serious remedial spelling help, and one who was right on track in spelling. I recommended this program before because it was fun, easy, the boys enjoyed it, is relatively inexpensive, requires no teacher prep, gives immediate feedback, can be used for multiple students easily, is not consumable, and was pretty easy to complete each day. Turns out, it was too good to be true. My ace speller was terribly bored. My remedial speller made very little to no progress. My on track speller began slipping behind. I believe this is because this spelling program is completely lacking- spelling rule training phonics training segmenting/syllable training My students learned little other than how to change a few letters to make a new word in a word family. This training didn’t stick. In their daily writing I often saw misspelled words that we had already covered in their spelling tests. I wouldn’t even recommend using this program along with a supplemental program that covers all it’s missing. In my opinion it’s simply missing exactly what it claims to teach- spelling training.

13 other homeschoolers gave Sequential Spelling an average 4 stars. Read their reviews and see if this is the spelling program for you!

Character Quality Language Arts Pre A

I have done alot of research on language arts programs for my 9 and 10 year olds. I kept coming back to CQLA. First I purchased the teachers manual. Then I went onto their website and used the program for a month printing off the weeks as we went. Having the 4 day lesson plans made it a no brainer to set up each days work using dividers for each day in their binders. The answers were clear and it was great to have all of the optional suggestions to add challenge, interest or additional practice. English is my weakest subject and CQLA is just the best program I have come across with all of the skills being incorporated into one program. To have their hearts turned to God as they learn how to communicate is awesome. It does take us longer to complete the sections than stated in the manual but we are enjoying the program so much it has not been a concern or problem. We look forward to completing CQLA for the remainder of our homeschooling years.

Language Lessons for the High School Student

We love the Language Lessons series by Sandi Queen!  She’s done a very nice job of picking out interesting quotes, stories, etc. for children to copy.  The pictures are absolutely fantastic!!  We use these for all of our children who are school age and will continue to use them for our younger ones.  I used to have the kids copy different things I picked out, but a I got busier I wanted to find something that would do the same thing I was doing, but I didn’t find anything I liked.  I was thrilled to find these and was so happy to see Timberdoodle start to offer these.  I whole-heartedly endorse these books by Sandi Queen,  You won’t be disappointed.

Word Roots A1

Word Roots is a fun for the family who wants to learn latin words to improve vocabulary- good for moms who do not want to spend time teaching it to their children, and for children who are already so busy with other subjects and do not want to overload them with additional work.  But a child who already plays many video games and watches much TV may not enjoy this product.

Check out a sample page from Word Roots A1.