I was a real English teacher for over ten years.
I have taught 8th grade gifted and ESOL, advanced 9th and 10th graders, and university introduction to writing courses.
I don’t teach English in my homeschool. I don’t use a grammar, literature, or writing curriculum.
I realize I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to English.
I don’t really need a curriculum. I prefer to work alongside my kids instead of throwing a book or app or computer program at them to let them learn on their own.
I don’t have 150 students to track progress like I did when I was a classroom teacher. When I taught in public school, I had to have an opener on the board for the students to correct when they arrived to class. I spent 45+ minutes during each class period actively teaching, lecturing, and interacting with the students. Then, I had to provide a closer to summarize the lesson. This, times five class periods. I had to grade all the assignments, essays, quizzes, and tests – lots of which was busy work to track progress because I couldn’t possibly know how much each student understood every day. We had textbooks for grammar, vocabulary building, and literature…and sometimes novels – all with teacher guides I had to use.
With only 4 students in our homeschool, I have the ability of knowing exactly what each child needs to work on and when. I don’t have to issue busy work.
I have been disappointed with every English/Language Arts curriculum I’ve seen for homeschool grammar, literature, and writing. They all fall short.
Writing Strands is sarcastic and flippant with little useful content. IEW is senseless busy work and geared for parents who are weak in verbal skills – why else do they have such extensive DVD teaching programs for teachers? There are so many workbooks (like Easy Grammar
I’m not going to pay for some online or app program that claims to teach kids writing. I try to avoid more screentime if I can help it. We use real books and paper for schoolwork.
We did use First Language Lessons in the very beginning – our first year -with the girls. It has an actual script but I felt like an idiot reading from that. It’s ok for a transitioning or a first time homeschooler or someone who really needs, likes, or wants a script.
For early reading, my son loved All About Reading. He whizzed through pre-level to level 4 by the time he was 6! My middle daughters enjoyed one year of All About Reading and then The Logic of English. We loathed The Code books. We didn’t like the BOB books much either.
Honestly, the kids all taught themselves to read.
After that, we don’t really use too much curriculum for spelling, writing, grammar, or reading. My kids tolerate Spelling Workout even after they’re really fluent readers and writers, so I buy the little workbooks to help their vocabulary.
Sometimes, I print Education.com or other online worksheets for when we travel.
How do we learn English or grammar in our homeschool?
We study Latin.
We begin Prima Latina at age 8 or 9 and continue with Latina Christiana I and Latina Christiana II and then the First Form, Second Form. I don’t press after this. They can study on their own if they wish.
After that, the kids can choose to continue with Henle Latin
We diagram sentences in Latin and English and that really helps with learning parts of speech and subject-verb agreement.
We study modern foreign languages.
My girls love learning German
They play constantly on the Duolingo 
Studying foreign languages helps to learn grammar: parts of speech, syntax, conjugations, and tense.
We read a lot. Like, a whole whole lot.
We read everything, especially historical fiction and great literature.
The kids and I all read voraciously. It’s a good problem to have to beg the kids to read to do chores or school work.
I love the book lists on Ambleside Online.
We have extensive reading in literature and history with Story of the World and Tapestry of Grace.
We go to the library weekly and stock up on science, history, and literature corresponding to our studies.
We read missionary stories 
I strew books all over the house to expose my kids to great ideas. We have many books on our Kindle app accounts.
We have family read aloud time every morning and evening with lots of different kinds of books – biographies, literature, poetry.
Summertime is full of free reading on whatever the kids like.
We like everything by Life of Fred. The Language Arts series is super fun! The kids read Life of Fred books all the time. My son loved the early readers for entertainment.
Mini-lessons are everywhere.
We often find spelling and grammar errors on restaurant menus and punctuation errors on signs and websites.
My teen daughter circled a random comma in her math text the other day and we all shared a laugh!
Even my middle kids are noticing when there are grammar errors in public or in eBooks or online.
I’m so proud.
If the kids have questions about writing or grammar, I have resources to show them to help them understand word origins, basic and advanced grammar, and the fundamentals of good writing. We also have The Elements of Style
My teen daughter and I just read through King Alfred’s English
We discuss.
It’s just natural for me to guide my kids in discussion about what we’re reading. I don’t need a teacher guide. Most of the teacher guides encourage busy work and seem silly to us anyway.
I encourage them to narrate back to me so I know they comprehend what we read.
They often surprise me with their insight into a story, the connections they make to other things we’ve read or done or seen.
I love discussing things with my children. I love hearing what they think, like, dislike, feel…about what we read, learn, do.
Homeschooling is about connection.
We notebook.
I encourage notebooking from preschool on up. I keep notebooks and journals and model that for my kids.
When they’re old enough, they take information from our discussions and write it down.
The kids write a lot in journals when we travel.
The girls complete notebooking pages for science, history, art, music, religion, and literature. I’m often very impressed when they go above and beyond. I give them freedom to write anything they find interesting. And I only require a few notebooking pages on important topics for each unit since I don’t want to overwhelm them. Since we cycle through 4 years of history, we build on prior knowledge each go-round and get more complex.
They love to complete biography pages about missionaries, artists, and composers.
My teen daughter has advanced comprehension and thinking questions with our main curriculum, Tapestry of Grace, about her literature, history, and worldview reading assignments to complete each week that help guide our discussions.
I don’t encourage formal writing until after age 10-12 or so.
I encourage my kids to write whenever they like – about anything. They often create fun little stories and books and even illustrate them!
I begin to teach proper sentence and paragraph structure after age 10 since little kids need to focus on other more important tasks – like playing. How to write a paragraph?
Whenever they show interest, or in high school, I teach research methods and citation as they begin completing research papers and literary analysis essays. How to write essays?
My middle kids and young son recently completed geography projects on India and China and Hawaii by their choice.
My teen daughter often writes and gives oral presentations for Civil Air Patrol. She won 1st place for her science fair project last year (and it was a doozy!). It entailed much research and recording data and writing up the information. And her work will be published in a real scientific journal!
Some fun creative writing tools are Story Cubes Game, Writing Prompt Cubes by Learning Resources, and Story Building cards.
I realize most homeschool parents need curriculum for most subjects. It is possible to teach with an eclectic blend of materials!
I am so happy that I am trained as an English teacher and my husband is good with advanced maths and physical sciences!
How do your kids learn English grammar?
Interesting stuff. Reading together sounds fun.
Thank you for linking up with #Everything Kids!!
I think that not introducing formal writing until after age 10 is a great idea. If kids can learn while writing about what they want, I think that probably helps a lot!
Some people pick up languages pretty quickly and some people just don’t! I’m learning my 7th language now that we moved to a spanish speaking country (not that i’m fluent in 7!) . My 4 year old is picking up some too, but he seems to have completely forgotten his native one! sigh!
Pls do link your posts in the Practical Mondays Link up! It’s the type I’d love to see more of!
Wow! How fun to be so multilingual.
I wish all kids had the opportunity to learn this way! Thanks for sharing at the Thoughtful Spot!
Sounds like you have a fun and meaningful homeschool! My son uses IEW in his homeschool tutorial. I’ve been pleased by how his writing has progressed, but I’ve never looked at the actual textbooks. I don’t think they use the DVDs in class. He also uses Shurley English for grammar and found that useful. Thanks for joining us at the #LMMLinkup.
I think IEW fills a gap with many teachers and parents. We had a really bad experience at a co-op one year where the teacher didn’t have a clue how to teach the program because she had not viewed the teacher DVDs. When I questioned an assignment that seemed to me to be simply busy work, we got a lot of criticism. I’ve heard good things about Shurley English.
Great way to learn
My kids are grown now, but we did a lot of reading together. When you read good literature you learn good grammar, maybe not all the rules but you learn how the words should go together. I did use Winston Grammar a little and I know we used some of the Ambleside.com resources. But like you, most of what I found for English Grammar just didn’t work. I think when you learn grammar along with reading you almost seem to “catch” it rather than having to do pages and pages of worksheets that have no connection to a piece of writing. I love how you and your kids do homeschool! I’m visiting from #LMMLinkup!
I agree! When I listen to my children read aloud or when we read and discuss great books together, they learn better than with mindless drills.
Hi there,
I love hearing this from an English teacher! While I don’t teach Latin (though I can see the positive in it), we do so much reading together that my daughter’s speech sounded almost humorous because it was so proper at a young age. All that reading contributed to that and I know that many lessons are being absorbed just by partaking in excellent literature! I found you via Coffee and Conversation. Have a lovely week! :)
Jennifer,
THANK YOU for sharing this at Coffee & Conversation – where’s the “LOVE” button?! ;-)
I totally agree with you, although we never did do much with languages apart from Latin and then Spanish. One of the best things I ever did in our homeschool was insist on Latin when the kids were young – I often get comments on the kids’ vocabulary.
Hi, you have a great list of resources on writing and teaching English. I don’t homeschool, but I plan to reread and check out the information. Thanks for sharing on the #LMMLinkup this week. I hope you will come back often.
My kids are in high school so some more formal writing is necessary to teach how to do a research paper, but I agree that incorporating it into life is the best way to make it stick. I love Wordly Wise to teach vocabulary. It can be seen as busy work if you don’t then require them to use the words in papers and conversation. thanks for your thoughts.
I wanted to teach Latin, but I was scared of it. During the elementary years I used Abeka since they beat a dead horse for grammar. :) But after that I weaned my son off of grammar textbooks and worked on writing. You can’t write if you don’t have the grammar skills. Thanks for sharing with Thankful Thursdays.
Very interesting post! I’m just starting out on the homeschooling journey (my son is 5), but I can see where reading aloud a lot (particularly really good literature) makes a huge difference in this. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Hi Jennifer!
I love hearing about your teaching and how you have set up your homeschool experience. That sounds terrific! I especially love the way you nurture reading in any and all ways. My daughter and daughter-in-law have both homeschooled our grandchildren. Tapestry of Grace is one title I recognized for certain that has been a part of our daughter’s curriculum. I have seen her children thrive and excel in all areas. Her oldest son, our grandson, is a college freshman who earned a Trustee Scholarship and excels in most any area academically as well as in piano, and karate. Even though I spent 15 years as a classroom special education teacher in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, I applaud what you and others who have the gifts, skills, etc. to give their children such a rich educational heritage which often exceeds what happens in most public education classes. I loved visiting your site from the Grace and Truth Linkup today.
What a fabulous testimonial! I love hearing success stories about homeschoolers who achieve academically. Thanks for the encouragement. xo
We read a lot in our home too, and even though my kids aren’t quite school age yet, I make sure we have good quality children’s books and read alouds around. I’ve been weeding through our collection too getting rid of the twaddle books. Thanks for sharing how you “don’t teach English” in your home! ;)
You’re my new mentor!! I’ve been dredging through language arts curricula and I despair! We won’t need to teach much more than basics for a while yet, DD is 7yo and we haven’t even started homeschooling yet (not until next term)… But I like to plan ahead! Have scrubbed all the options so far due to: we won’t do fairy stories or anything ungodly, and we won’t do busy work. I’ve looked into ACE > Apologia > IEW > JAG > Winston’s > BJU > etc. What do you know of Michael Clay Thompson?
Oh what to do? DD is a voracious little reader, and we’re accruing living books by the dozen, but she’s going to need more nurturing in the area of language arts than I can provide from my own brain! I’ll have a look into the things you have recommended above :) Thanks!
I’m not familiar with Michael Clay Thompson.
We love fairy tales and fantasy books! I don’t censor reading. I read along and we discuss.
MCT certainly seems to have a different and living sort of approach, but he’s expensive. Thanks for all the info you’ve provided in your post. Still won’t be incorporating tales of magic/fantasy ;-)
I am so happy to have found your blog and I love that you don’t “teach” English. Do you have any recommendations though for a 10 year old with dysgraphia? I remember in your post about IEW being busy work and I do think that it wouldn’t be a good fit for my daughter but do you have any suggestions on programs that are good for teaching grammar? Since this is a life long disability we will be constantly be reviewing grammar even through high school.
We did NOT like IEW for several reasons and I think it’s pricey for what they offer, but it might be a good fit for your family.
I would ask what your educational goal is for your child? What is the focus of your homeschool?
I am not trained with special needs education, but I would imagine some dictation or speech to text programs for tablets or computer would be helpful for anyone with reading or processing difficulties. My second daughter did vision therapy for convergence insufficiency several years ago and still uses dictation programs in college. We also like the spell and grammar checks in Google docs and Microsoft word programs. Grammarly is also helpful.
While reading, spelling, writing, and grammar are all related, many teachers separate them into different subjects to make sure students grasp the basic concepts. Sometimes, this is helpful to make sure there are no learning gaps. It can be time-consuming and overwhelming though.
After primary grades, we really did not do any formal grammar education. We focused on lots of reading and foreign languages. I still recommend All About Reading/Spelling, Logic of English, and First Language Lessons.
I hope you find what works for you and your child!