Logic of English Review

Our family has been struggling to find an English curriculum that works well for our children.  When we were given a chance to review Logic of English's  second edition of Essentials I jumped at the chance.

We have been homeschooling for a number of years now and have yet to find an English curriculum that worked for our children. After doing some research I found the Logic of English curriculum to be intriguing. We were given the complete Essentials 2nd edition curriculum to review!

We chose to use this English curriculum with our 9 year old daughter. She was the one in the most need of a new English curriculum thanks to her dyslexia issues. Nothing we were doing was working and we were all overwhelmed and exhausted. A clean start with an all in one curriculum was just what we needed.

I have to say that I love this curriculum! Previously we had been using several separate curriculums to complete all of our needs. One book for vocabulary, one for spelling, one for reading, one for grammar, and one for writing. Exhausted yet? We were!

The Logic of English Essentials curriculum covers all of these topics in ONE BOOK! Even better? The book covers three different levels in each lesson. While we were only using this book for one child at this time I love knowing I can teach one lesson for several children at different levels. While homeschooling six children this is BIG!

This curriculum is broken down into a 5 day a week schedule.

Day 1: Essential Concepts. Phonograms, Exploring Sounds, Spelling Rules.

Day 2: Building Words. Spelling Journal, Spelling Analysis (using spelling list A, B, or C).

Day 3: Words in Context. Spelling Game, Grammar, Dictation.

Day 4: Words in Action. Vocabulary, Dictation, Composition. Optional: Essentials Reader.

Day 5: Check Your Understanding. Formative assessment.

The lessons are heavily scripted and very easy to teach. Each lesson focuses on a specific concept.  Such as  /ai/  and /ay/ make the same sound but /ai/ is used in the middle of the word while /ay/ at the end. Honestly these are things that never occurred to me but make explaining how to spell words so much easier.

Instead of saying "no it is spelled this way" with no reasoning behind the correction and simply expecting the child to memorize the correct spelling I now have the rule to fall back on.  I can say "We use a ck to spell the /k/ sound at the end of the word because there is a short vowel right before the /k/ sound".  By understanding why we use certain letters in certain sequences we can better understand how to spell all sorts of words.

I love that we cover the actual reasoning behind these rules as part of the Logic of English curriculum. Understanding the "why" behind these things is extremely important especially when things like spelling and reading are not coming easily to a child.  Our family plans to continue to use the Logic of English curriculum with all of our children in the fall. I wish that someone had recommended this curriculum to us a long time ago.

Want to know what the other Schoolhouse Review Crew members thought of this curriculum? Click HERE or on the banner below to find out!