Weekly Resource - Language Lessons Through Literature

Language Lessons Through Literature is a labor of love by a homeschooling mom.   I have used the first level and am now working through the second level.  It is a great combination of Charlotte Mason and the classical approach.

Each lesson, at the early levels, includes an Aesop's fable, a poem, a chapter of a good read aloud book and copywork.  The copywork is from the chapter read and each week she adds additional copywork through maxims, Bible verses and poetry.  In alternate weeks, she includes an artist study or narration exercise (of the fable).   In year 2, students begin to memorize definitions for and identify parts of speech from sentences in the book they are reading.  She includes 108 lessons each year - so 3 lessons a week for a 36 week school year.  Her approach is slow but steady.  Even my 3yo is memorizing the parts of speech with us (he seems to like adjectives best).

She recently completed level 3 and I plan to use that next year.  It will introduce sentence diagramming by having students complete charts and will introduce more complicated grammar usages, using a dictionary and some studied dictation.  At this point, she intends to create a series that will go through high school.  For composition she intends to loosely follow the steps of the progymnasmata.  Each student should keep their own "spelling journal" which uses the phonograms and rules from Spell to Write and Read and serves as a more relevant spelling list.  (this information is from a personal communication with the author)

The workbooks are worth the time that they save.  Although all of the information for them is included in the lesson itself, it is worth it to not have to prepare the copywork for your student (she also has it available in 5 fonts for one price!).

The price is truly affordable - especially for a curriculum that is nonconsumable and whose books are in the public domain (aka free).   You can buy a paperback book.  I have gotten the PDFs so you can either print it out or read it off the screen.  Obviously you would print out the workbooks!  The only thing this curriculum doesn't do is teach students how to read.  It certainly encourages a love of reading though! :)   For the price, parents might even want to buy it for use over the summer as a gentle way to help students remember what they have learned, practice their handwriting and listen to good literature regularly.  It is sold through Lulu Publishing.  If you can wait they do have 20% off sales a few times a year.

I am so glad that we found this little gem and we plan to follow it through to the end!

Update 3/23/14 - I have now reviewed her new reading program.