Tuesday 1 March 2016

Words, Words and more Words

Welcome to the fifth annual Virtual Curriculum Fair. Today is week one of the 2016 Virtual Curriculum Fair. This week homeschool bloggers from around the world are sharing their language arts recommendations. They will be sharing their perspective on how to teach: phonics, reading, writing, grammar, spelling, speech, literature, Latin and foreign language studies.

This year I will be co-hosting with  Kristen over at Sunrise to Sunset and Laura over at Day by Day in our World.  If you have any posts on the topic of Language Arts please add your link to the linky at the bottom of this post we look forward to seeing what you use to teach language arts.

Language Arts

Have you ever stopped to think about it our whole world runs on communication and to communicate you need words.  Words take on many forms they can be both verbal or non verbal.  When you start home educating you are faced with the task of finding a way to teach your children to communicate in a multitude of ways.

Then the questions start:
  • What are you using to teach grammar ?
  • Are you doing a second language ?
  • How are you tackling literature ?
  • Are you using phonics ?
  • Which spelling program are you going to use ?
  • How do you teach your children composition ?
  • Will you be joining the local speech and drama club ?
Some days it feels as though the questions are never ending.  Each time you do a google search you discover that there's a new program that promises to do it all for you!  (If only they could go to sleep on a magic pillow and wake up well educated ...) Do not let these sorts of questions fluster you or make you feel as though you can not teach your children well.

The most important question to get settled in your mind is:  What is my my homeschool philosophy? Once that is settled then start looking for programs that will help you school your students within that framework.  Personally I am leaning towards a Delight Directed and Charlotte Mason approach in my homeschooling.  Now that I know that I look for products that will help me educate Nathaniel in that manner with the long term goal of addressing the areas in the questions above.

Every year new products appear on line and I'm so grateful to companies that provide updates to their products too. The downside is I keep wanting to buy something new ...

In the past I have used and been pleased with the following items and will be continuing to use them this year:
On this blog
We enjoy great literature and are trying to follow a Charlotte Mason approach with reading twaddle free literature.  I share a new book each week on a Tuesday called Tuesday's Treasures.  Be sure to come back each Tuesday for a new book.

Second Language Resources
For more information on Language Arts you can read the posts from past fairs here:
We have some wonderful homeschool bloggers sharing their thoughts and inspiration on Language Arts and your homeschool.

Be sure to grab a cup of coffee / tea and take some time over the week ahead to read over these posts:
Add your posts about anything Language Arts related to Week 1 - Language Arts link up below.

6 comments:

  1. I've enjoyed this and particularly the links to literature and Story of the World. Pulling books out for the third volume is on my to do list.

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    1. Enjoy the journey :) Great literature is such a marvelous gift

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  2. good to see what different people do. To see other programs in action. :) visiting through VCF, I am a net in time

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  3. Some very good links here and reading about resources you have used and liked is helpful.

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  4. Language Arts is the one subject that makes me want to runaway and hide. It's nice to see some of my favorites on this list!

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