I was excited to have the opportunity to review the Essentials program from The Logic of English, as this was a program I was unfamiliar with before this review! We also were able to review the iPad app from this company called Phonics with Phonograms.
I requested the level that was appropriate for Caleb, who is a 3rd grader, but a little bit behind in reading. This program is recommended for ages 7 yrs and up. He has made a lot of progress in the past few months, but I was excited to try out this program with him because it gave us a plan and something to work on each day. The Essentials program turned out to be a great choice and was perfect for where we are at with Caleb in his phonics and language arts learning. With my Essentials package I received the Teacher’s Manual and Student workbook along with the basic phonogram flash cards, spelling & grammar rule cards, and the game cards.
As soon as I got my package in the mail, I opened it up and began reading! The first thing I noticed was how thorough and complete the teacher’s guide is!! If you are teaching this curriculum for the first time, I would set aside a few hours to go through all of the material before beginning with your student. There were portions I needed to read several times to make sure I understood. I do not say that it is thorough and complete to scare you, though. The more I read the more wonderful I thought the program was! I was surprised by how in depth the teacher manual went and was thankful to have such detailed instructions because I don’t always know what to do as a teacher! If you will watch the video on this page, you will learn a lot more about the Essentials program as well.
One thing that I love about this program is that it combines all of the language arts areas into ONE ~ phonics instruction, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, handwriting. I have not seen other options that incorporate all of them together and I think that is a really great thing! Because it combines several areas into one workbook for the student, it is a LOT in each lesson. I found that for Caleb, who is probably your typical BOY when it comes to attention span, I could not spend as much time as the book recommends on each lesson. I had to divide each lesson into several! But, that is the beauty of homeschooling, I could spend as much (or as little) time on each lesson that I needed to.
There are several parts to each lesson, so I ended up breaking the parts up into different days with Caleb. Part 1 includes phonograms and spelling rules. Part 2 has the children spelling through dictation. Part 3 is then divided up between dictation, composition, grammar and vocabulary development. In our home, each one of these little parts ended up taking one whole day’s worth of instruction.
Caleb enjoyed the app as well! The unique thing about this app is that it allows children with different learning styles to participate. So, the children HEAR and SEE and TOUCH with this app, so it is great for those kids who may learn better with those styles of learning! This app does also work on the iPod touch, the iPhone and the iPad. The app is available for $2.99 at iTunes. I liked the app because it gave Caleb a different way to practice spelling – instead of always writing, he had this option.
The price for the Essentials program as a full set is $187.20. If you were to break it up and purchase the items individually, the teacher manual (hard-back) would be $85.50, the student workbook would be $22.50, and the various sets of flashcards are different prices as well. If you’d like to read what other families are saying about The Logic of English, check out the TOS crew blog!
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