Jennifer Lambert

A Sacred Balance

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I Don’t Teach English

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January 28, 2016 By Jennifer Lambert 26 Comments

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) with endless drills that just make students miserable and waste my precious time in grading and corrections. Progeny Press literature guides are a joke, relating everything in literature to the Bible with few literary theory or critical thinking questions. Some analogies are a real s-t-r-e-t-c-h. Sometimes, the curtains are just blue and not every book has a Jesus figure.

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.

Latin Texts

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 and/or learn a modern foreign language – or ancient languages like Greek or Hebrew.

See our Prima Latina review.

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, French, and Greek.

They play constantly on the Duolingo app.

Studying foreign languages helps to learn grammar: parts of speech, syntax, conjugations, and tense.

Foreign Languages

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 and biographies about artists and composers.

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.

Life of Fred Language Arts Books

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.

Grammar Helps

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 on my Kindle app for iPad. I’ll break out the Warriner’s sometimes too.

My teen daughter and I just read through King Alfred’s English. I wish it were better, but it’s an ok overview for kids.

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.

Notebooking

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?

Literature Study (or Book Report) Notebooking Pages
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Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: English, homeschool, Language Arts, reading

Grammar Foundations

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July 2, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

I’m rereading The Well-Trained Mind.

I am getting back on track and realizing the importance of a classical education. I still love some aspects of other methods and we occasionally incorporate those into our lessons, but I am a classical mama at heart.

Making improvements to our schedule and organization will make our schooling easier and more productive.

Classical English/Language Arts is spelling, grammar, reading, and writing.

Spelling:

I ordered Spelling Workout B for the girls since we don’t have a formal program and I remember that Liz loved it.

I hear great things about All About Spelling too.

And Kate loves her new spelling workbook. I have to distract her from completing the whole thing on her own when I turn away!

Spelling Workout

Tori cried all the way through the first lesson. I don’t think it’s too challenging for her.

I just think she was overwhelmed by something new – that pointed out she needs more help than Kate does.

I encouraged her to read the directions to me and we did the exercises together.

She admitted that it wasn’t too hard after the ordeal was all over.

And now that we’ve completed vision therapy, she’s much more confident with all aspects of her life and school.

Spelling Workout

Classical Mama reading material!

The Well Trained Mind and First Language Lessons

Grammar:

We’ve almost completed First Language Lessons 1. My book is an older edition and it has both level 1 and 2 in a single book. Liz completed that in 1 year! I also teach mini-lessons as needed that come up in our writing and other studies. I love grammar and the girls also get lots of grammar education in Spanish and Latin. We also plan to completely go through Logic of English beginning this fall since All About Reading Level 3 isn’t out yet.

Reading:

We read a lot. I mean, seriously, a lot. Kate tries to sneak books upstairs at bedtime and I’ve taken to having to almost strip search her or she’ll stay up reading and won’t go to sleep until 10:30!

Tori reads to Alex every night before bed. It’s the sweetest thing. He’s a great audience for her. Liz sneaks off to read instead of doing chores. Can’t get too angry at her, lol.

Our school reading does follow the history cycles with Story of the World and Tapestry of Grace. We love historical fiction! We also have units each month for the littles.

Narration:

We’re really good at narration. As an English teacher, it comes naturally to me to ask questions about our reading and the kids are more than happy to oblige, even Alex! They give me the greatest details and I love hearing what they each remember. Sometimes it’s not something that I paid special attention to in our reading and it’s fun to hear what they thought was important.  I am pleased at their comprehension.

Notebooking:

We love notebooking. Liz has done well transferring her narration to paper. We’re working on the girls. They do better with freedom to write and draw about what they’re learning. They always exceed my expectations.

Penmanship:

We’re also reviewing a fun cursive program – Prescripts. The little girls really love it. Tori loves copywork and I try to make sure she has enough, but not too much. Liz doesn’t care for copywork, but I try to give her some for Bible or history to help with her memorization. Alex is beginning to actually write letters instead of tracing and it’s so exciting!

Writing:

We also reviewed IEW (for Liz). It has completely changed the way I homeschool. It is an amazing program and the methods are cross-curricular and I am so pleased by the improvements! I am even teaching the girls how to write with the info I learned in TWSS. Alex is already narrating to me or his sisters! We incorporated some of the methods, but we don’t formally utilize the writing program.

Organization:

I am organizing notebooks for our “new” school year. And I plan to be more proactive about having the girls put their own papers in their notebooks each week.

Recommended resources in The Well-Trained Mind…

Writing Strands: I really loathed the style of these snarky little books.

Rod&Staff: boring and too textbook-y.

A Beka: not advanced enough and expensive for workbooks and boring little readers.

Handwriting Without Tears never worked for us, but apparently it’s great for most everyone else. Go figure.

We all love D’Nealian.

I’m rereading The Well-Trained Mind.

I am getting back on track and realizing the importance of a classical education. I still love some aspects of other methods and we occasionally incorporate those into our lessons, but I am a classical mama at heart.

Making improvements to our schedule and organization will make our schooling easier and more productive.

Classical English/Language Arts is spelling, grammar, reading, and writing.

Spelling:

I ordered Spelling Workout B for the girls since we don’t have a formal program and I remember that Liz loved it.

I hear great things about All About Spelling too.

And Kate loves her new spelling workbook. I have to distract her from completing the whole thing on her own when I turn away!

Spelling Workout

Tori cried all the way through the first lesson. I don’t think it’s too challenging for her.

I just think she was overwhelmed by something new – that pointed out she needs more help than Kate does.

I encouraged her to read the directions to me and we did the exercises together.

She admitted that it wasn’t too hard after the ordeal was all over.

And now that we’ve completed vision therapy, she’s much more confident with all aspects of her life and school.

Spelling Workout

Classical Mama reading material!

The Well Trained Mind and First Language Lessons

Grammar:

We’ve almost completed First Language Lessons 1. My book is an older edition and it has both level 1 and 2 in a single book. Liz completed that in 1 year! I also teach mini-lessons as needed that come up in our writing and other studies. I love grammar and the girls also get lots of grammar education in Spanish and Latin. We also plan to completely go through Logic of English beginning this fall since All About Reading Level 3 isn’t out yet.

Reading:

We read a lot. I mean, seriously, a lot. Kate tries to sneak books upstairs at bedtime and I’ve taken to having to almost strip search her or she’ll stay up reading and won’t go to sleep until 10:30!

Tori reads to Alex every night before bed. It’s the sweetest thing. He’s a great audience for her. Liz sneaks off to read instead of doing chores. Can’t get too angry at her, lol.

Our school reading does follow the history cycles with Story of the World and Tapestry of Grace. We love historical fiction! We also have units each month for the littles.

Narration:

We’re really good at narration. As an English teacher, it comes naturally to me to ask questions about our reading and the kids are more than happy to oblige, even Alex! They give me the greatest details and I love hearing what they each remember. Sometimes it’s not something that I paid special attention to in our reading and it’s fun to hear what they thought was important.  I am pleased at their comprehension.

Notebooking:

We love notebooking. Liz has done well transferring her narration to paper. We’re working on the girls. They do better with freedom to write and draw about what they’re learning. They always exceed my expectations.

Penmanship:

We’re also reviewing a fun cursive program – Prescripts. The little girls really love it. Tori loves copywork and I try to make sure she has enough, but not too much. Liz doesn’t care for copywork, but I try to give her some for Bible or history to help with her memorization. Alex is beginning to actually write letters instead of tracing and it’s so exciting!

Writing:

We also reviewed IEW (for Liz). It has completely changed the way I homeschool. It is an amazing program and the methods are cross-curricular and I am so pleased by the improvements! I am even teaching the girls how to write with the info I learned in TWSS. Alex is already narrating to me or his sisters! We incorporated some of the methods, but we don’t formally utilize the writing program.

Organization:

I am organizing notebooks for our “new” school year. And I plan to be more proactive about having the girls put their own papers in their notebooks each week.

Recommended resources in The Well-Trained Mind…

Writing Strands: I really loathed the style of these snarky little books.

Rod&Staff: boring and too textbook-y.

A Beka: not advanced enough and expensive for workbooks and boring little readers.

Handwriting Without Tears never worked for us, but apparently it’s great for most everyone else. Go figure.

We all love D’Nealian.

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Logic of English review

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February 12, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 3 Comments

I was so excited to meet Denise Eide at Allume and sit with her at dinner one night!

We both share a love and fascination for language and she offered her curriculum, Logic of English, to me to review.


This is an extremely comprehensive program and I am very impressed with all the research and hard work that Denise and her family put into this. It is quite amazing.

As a former English teacher, I can tell you: this program is all you’d ever need for a language arts program with your students or children. It covers reading, spelling, handwriting, grammar, the works!

Read about how the curriculum is structured in three parts at their website.

While my girls are at different stages and we can’t utilize some aspects of the program at this time, we do love some of it right now and I plan to use the games and supplements with Tori and Katie next year.

Elizabeth is mostly beyond most aspects of the curriculum, but the grammar cards are perfect for her Latin review. I love how advanced some of them are! They cheer this little grammar girl’s heart!

Liz reviews advanced noun cards.

grammar cards

Tori and Kate’s favorite aspect of the program right now is the cursive workbook. They practice the directions with their fingers and then practice the letters with a pencil. The directions refer to baseline and midline. They really get it. Better than any other cursive workbook I’ve found. We like simple.

early cursive writing
cursive writing workbook.jpg

The reading program is a bit advanced for them (especially for Tori) right now and we’re already halfway through another curriculum this year, so I plan to hold off and pick it up when we’re finished with that other one. I love that the curriculum uses phonetic symbols on the flashcards. Kate can read the cards on her own and understands them and loves it! I plan to introduce the grammar cards to the girls very soon and get some basics down for them.

Alex and the girls love the book Doodling Dragons! Even though they already know their letters and sounds, it’s fun!

I am extremely impressed with all aspects of this curriculum. It works with classical and Charlotte Mason style education perfectly, with memorization, dictation, and narration aspects. I look forward to utilizing it to the fullest extent.

Also, check out these new products!

Foundations Phonics A-D

Phonics With Phonograms

A fun, effective phonics recognition game that eliminates exceptions and provides a complete picture of the phonograms needed to read and spell!

Buy the Phonics App!

The girls really like the workbooks and knock out a lesson almost every week. We refer back to the flashcards for review. This is a complete English Language Arts program that helps my girls analyze phonics and learn to read well.

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: English, Language Arts, reading, review, spelling

Monster Nouns

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November 6, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

The girls loved these Chomping Nouns fun pages!

It fit in well for Halloween week.

Chomping Nouns Game
Chomping Nouns Printables
Their different styles of learning fascinate me.

Notice how Tori’s nouns are all lined up, neat in columns.

Neat Nouns

Kate’s words are in the monster’s mouth all haphazard and messy.

Respect the differences!

Nouns Everywhere

The girls are still writing in their journals every day.

Most of our writing and reading come from the Tapestry of Grace Year 2 curriculum. We’re working our way through First Language Lessons.

Stay tuned for posts on All About Reading Level 2! I just won the program and we’re really excited to get started!

ProSchool Membership - Productive Homeschooling
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Notebooking and Journaling

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August 24, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

We’re excited about our new junior notebooking journals!

The girls begged for cursive work and I found these fun cursive workbooks that have animals for each letter.

It’s like cross-curricular with science! super!

Writing in Cursive Workbooks
Cursive Workbook

Tori taught herself how to write her name in cursive from our wall border!

Tori practices her cursive on the Aquadoodle.

Aquadoodle Writing

Tori loves Draw Right Now. We just got the whole set on sale! (her cat is upside down – haha)

Draw Write Now Cats

I made pretty notebooking journals!

I covered their new writing journals with scrapbook paper and ribbon.

Tori has a blue striped front and Katie’s is green argyle.

I plan to put something decorative on the fronts, but haven’t gotten the stuff yet.

Paper Covered Journals

The backs are both Hawaiian print. We lived in Hawaii for three years. They girls still call it home.

Hawaiian Print Journals

I added a schedule on the inside cover with another fun paper cover for each girl.

Weekly writing schedule:

Mondays, they write about anything they did over the weekend.

Tuesdays are writing from our weekly vocabulary or spelling list.

Wednesday is narration day from history, science, or literature reading.

Thursdays are dictation. This is our most difficult writing task.

Fridays are fun choice – favorites from the week.

Daily Journals

This is now the first thing the girls want to do during our school day! They love it!

This week we loved this fun printable and foldable from Scholastic: wallet words.

They had to determine which picture began with which blend: BR, GR, or TR.

Blends Booklets
Blends Books

Then we placed the cards in the wallet and folded it up. They loved showing it to Daddy!

We love Productive Homeschooling for fun printables!

NotebookingPages.com LIFETIME Membership Linking up: Every Bed of Roses, 123Homeschool4Me, Los Gringos Locos, Faith and Good Works
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Story Art

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January 14, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

I set up a class at our winter homeschool co-op using the story+art ideas from A Mommy’s Adventures.

story+art=StArt

I have a theme each week and check out books from the library and bring art supplies for a craft. There are about a dozen kids signed up, grades K-2, including my Tori and Katie (for whom I planned the class).

Last week, we read some ABC books and did initial collages.

I had all sorts of collage materials, hoping to appeal to all the boys and girls: moss, rocks, sequins, shells, beads, jewels, stickers…

We all got a kick out of this alphabet book: A is for Salad. The pictures illustrate the letter, but the words say something a little different.

Victoria’s and Katherine’s initial collages:

Initial Collages

I did one with Alex at home. He was so proud!

Making Initial Collage
Gluing His Letter

I couldn’t get the ‘A’ to print straight. Oh well, he didn’t mind.

Letter A Collage

This week, we read about dots and did Do-A-Dot pages.

Those were a real hit!

Sea Turtle Dot Painting
Seahorse Dot Painting

I got the dot printables from Making Learning Fun. We used the theme of Swimming Creatures to go along with our Apologia Science class.

Resources:

  • Peanut Butter and Jellyfishes: A Very Silly Alphabet Book
  • A is for Salad
  • The Dot
  • Press Here
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