Rod and Staff English Series

I wanted to write a quick word about the English books we use. After finishing the First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise I needed to find a good grammar series that fit two criteria:  rigorous and inexpensive.  I believe one needs a good base in grammar to not only speak well, but to write well.  I also believe children, and not just my children, but all children are capable of much more than our society expects of them. So, when searching for a good grammar series I continually found curriculum that just scratched the surface or tried to make it "fun" to the point of not providing any real learning.  Another issue I found was many books jump around from subject to subject.  One day the child works on verbs, the next nouns, then phrases, etc.  This was especially true with Sonlight's Language Arts.  You can see my issue with that in my posts about Sonlight Core F which my middle child is using.  Update on Sonlight Core F  

Well, after careful deliberation I decided to purchase Rod and Staff's 5th grade English and from the first lesson I was delighted. Each section focuses on a part of speech: sentences, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.  What I especially like about this is each lesson builds on the previous and by the end of the section quite a bit is learned by the student without being overwhelming.

Even though my children do most of their schooling on their own, I am involved with English.  A typical lessons starts with my child reading the textbook and then we go over the oral questions together along with the review questions at the end of each lesson. If there is a corresponding worksheet my child does it and if not then the written practice is done instead.  Grammar is done daily, but as there are not 180 lessons per book we skip one if we are super busy, but still we always finish the book before our school year is done and so my child just continues with the next book in the series.

The one problem I do see is in regards to writing.  Now and then there is some writing involved: compositions, essays, letters, etc.; but not enough in my opinion and so I would suggest adding additional writing assignments to your child's schedule.

One thing to note:  I do like the First Language Lessons series, but I think one could use Rod and Staff's English instead. There are a few things to consider:  Rod and Staff does not have a 1st grade English book and they do not include poem memorization.  I loved the poem selections from the First Language Lessons series and have continued that theme by having my older child memorize 6-8 poems a year.  I also liked being able to do some grammar work with my 1st grader and I did not find the First Language Lessons to be overwhelming. And the third plus for First Language Lessons was the fun ways they have the kids memorize the list of verbs and prepositions.  This has come in quite handy for my children.

We will continue with the Rod and Staff English through the series which ends 10th grade.  At first I thought I might not do this as 9th and 10th grade is just a review, but many other families who have used this series have said the last 2 years are a must as it cements all the rules of grammar.

One last point I would like to make:  my child never complains about grammar.  Maybe my kid is a bit odd, but I believe it is a good series and makes grammar, well not fun per se, but at least enjoyable.  If you are looking for a good grammar series consider Rod and Staff's.