When to start grammar homeschool
Top English / Grammar Homeschool Curriculum Picks
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hi everyone and welcome back to my
channel this is Erica with confessions
about homeschooler and today I'm going
to be sharing my favorite English
curricula with you so I'm doing a top
picks kind of series going through all
of our subjects with my very favorite
stuff this is think these are all things
that I have definitely used before and I
liked and I just want to kind of help
give you a jumping point if you are
looking for an English curriculum for
your family hopefully what I am telling
you today will at least help you get
started researching on what is gonna
work best for you guys so the first one
I'm going to talk about is a Becca so
when my kids were younger we used a
Becca for quite a few things and I
actually do really like their English
and language curriculum for younger
students I stopped using it around third
grade pretty much for everybody because
we switched to BJ you press and I'll
talk about that as well and then I'll
talk about what we're using today at the
end of this video so a Becca is pretty
straightforward it's quite easy and I
think it's probably one of my favorite
for first and second grades and even
maybe into third
but it's basically they have two
different kind of workbooks that you go
through the first one is called letters
and sounds and then the other one is
called language and so it combines like
letters and sounds are kind of the
phonics side of things for younger kids
learning to read and combine words
together and things like that and then
the language is more the sentence
structure grammar kind of type of thing
and so it's really straightforward very
easy they do have a teacher's manual for
it for the younger grades I honestly
didn't really use the teachers manual a
whole lot the instructions are right on
top of the workbooks and so the
teacher's manuals can be kind of pricey
the only thing I would suggest is maybe
looking online and seeing if you can get
a used one first before you buy new just
make sure that you're getting the
current edition because if you have a
current edition teacher's manual with an
older book workbook or vice versa
they will not match up so just heads up
there same thing with bju I just make
sure you have the same version of
teachers manual
work but but they're really quite easy I
like how Abeka teaches phonics they
definitely go with the blending the
sounds together and things like that
which is kind of how I prefer to do it
and so I definitely like that for
younger kid oh so that is one of my top
picks for younger kids for English
starting around third grade fourth grade
I definitely prefer the BJ you press
English this one is fifth grade here and
one of the things that I really like
about them as opposed to dia Becca the
teachers manual is no Becca are fine
they're just all black and white and
just all text and so it can be kind of
hard to sift through like what you're
supposed to do for the day
or and whatnot and also the answer key
for the student workbooks is a separate
purchase which I'm I don't love that's
that Becca is slightly cheaper than bju
but one of the nice things about bju is
your lesson and everything are right
here the sheets right here are actually
your student worksheets with all of the
answers in them which is really nice and
then down here this whole kind of
section is the lesson and so it makes it
really quite easy to you know go through
the lessons it's really easy to read and
whatnot they both kind of cover the same
topics if I had to pick one BJ you
actually moves a little bit faster than
a Becca so if you have a student who's
struggling a Becca might be better you
know for you for the younger kids if you
have somebody who is bored with Rebecca
then maybe try BJ you press it
definitely moves a little bit faster
both our worksheet oriented kind of
curriculum and yeah
they both come with tests and answers so
here is kind of my BJ you teske and I
just kind of put it in here and then I
just have that and then here's the Ted
the student test and again I just kind
of put it in here and they can go
through those tests if you want to add
in tests um the other thing that is
included in there for both of them is
writing so BJ you does like one week of
kind of you know English type of stuff
and then one week of writing and then
one week of English so they might do
like verbs this week and then do a
writing unit and then
and then a writing unit and so forth
Rebecca kind of intermingles it
throughout the year so you're kind of
getting writing plus you know your your
English kind of all kind of interspersed
together which is great they're both
fine in that manner
Becca definitely is a little bit less
expensive but one thing with a Becca is
that you are having to purchase
everything separately so like where BJ
you press you do have to purchase your
tests and whatnot separately but like I
said the teachers manual has everything
including the answer key in here and
then you just have to purchase your
student work text separately Abeka it's
like you've got you have to purchase the
teachers manual then you have to
purchase the answer key the student
texts the quizzes the quiz answer key
the test you know and so there's quite a
few different little pieces that you
have to purchase when doing that
curriculum and it can be good and bad
good if you don't want to do the quizzes
and test you could save money in that
way but bad and that you have to have
there's like a lot of pieces to it but
either way both of them and I don't have
to be beca with me because we just used
it when they were younger and so I have
long gotten rid of it we don't use it
anymore
but they're both very similar very
traditional English curriculum the main
difference that I find and I don't like
bju as much for the like say first and
second grade is that they kind of go
with the word families as they're kind
of theme and Abeka tends to go more with
the blends of you know blending letters
and vowel chunks and consonant chunks
and things like that and that just goes
better with all the other things that
we're using so it definitely goes better
with if you're going to use all about
spelling or you know Institute for
excellence in writing and those kinds of
things and spelling you see they all
kind of more focus on that side and so
Abeka just fits in better with how they
teach phonics and english in my opinion
then the BJ you did but BJ you once you
hit third grade enough they don't have
the phonics stuff in there and so I
actually prefer this curriculum for
their English program and they based it
your students basically will have a
double-sided worksheet each day that
they do so you walk through the lesson
your students do the worksheet you can
grade
and move on to the next thing the next
day Rebecca is more if I recall
correctly it's like one worksheet per
day so it's a little bit less they don't
they're quite as aggressive as far as
their schedule goes and so you know it
just kind of depends on what you're
looking for but both are definitely more
of a traditional curriculum okay the one
that we move into once you know we use
bju for years and I was very happy with
it I love bgu I could not speak more
highly of it I think it's a great
curriculum my kids started kind of get
just getting bored with it and I wanted
to try something new and since we were
doing the iew writing I thought hey
let's try the iew fix it I've heard
really great things about their
curriculum and so we decided to just
make a change mainly just to have a
change partially because my oldest
daughter was again is it seventh grade I
think
and the bju curriculum has been updated
up to that point and then they didn't
update the seventh grade and the
teachers manual was extremely hard to
read there was not really any lessons in
there whatsoever it was more just like
the answer key with lessons interspersed
and all the lessons were actually in her
textbook and I know they do that on
purpose because she's older so she would
read her own lesson and then do her work
but then when I if she needed help which
she did quite a bit for that grade for
that particular subject it was really
hard for me to help her I had to go back
and read through all their things and
try and figure out why the answer that
was in my answer key was the correct
answer and so I just found it difficult
they didn't they didn't have as much
teacher help in there as I needed for
that and so that's why we kind of looked
for something different and when we did
that we actually switched everybody over
from bju to this one and this one is
called fix-it grammar it's by iew
Institute for excellence in writing and
this is just the first book they have
several levels so I'm just gonna I'm
just showing you this one because my
youngest is on it so here's my teacher's
manual and then here is her workbook and
you can buy them in digital format or in
printed copy and then my teachers manual
we can show you this here my teachers
manual has exactly what is written in
workbook they basically have a little
lesson to go through and this might look
kind of intimidating but we're on week
19 and week 1 I assure you is much
easier and they really ease them into
things and they introduce one concept at
a time and I have a whole review on this
which and the bju actually on which I
will link below if you want to see more
information on it but basically we read
this lesson together and then she this
is my teacher's manual so she has this
one sentence that she has to edit today
here are all the little marks that she
needs to make on it and then here's
notes for me to help her if she's having
questions or problems or whatever this
is what hers looks like so as you can
see it's the same thing she's
highlighted a couple things that are
important she's working on prepositions
this week and then for her here's her
sentence she only does one a day so it's
super easy and she has to mark them all
up and then as you can see this was her
first day on preposition so she missed
some things there um but it's not like
oh here's a here's a sentence do it all
like today it's like here's your first
sentence today we're just gonna find the
nouns and then next week they start
finding you know the nouns plus the
verbs and then the next week they're
doing maybe capital letters and they
just kind of keep building on that so as
the weeks increase your students are
marking more and more things on their
sentence and so when you first start out
it doesn't take hardly any time at all
and you're like wow this was like really
easy like here let's look at week one
day one sentence one as you can see all
she had to mark were the nouns they're
super easy and then she writes it and so
she just has a spare notebook here and
so she rewrites the sentences once we
fix them and if she had you know if we
had to make any corrections to it like
an apostrophe or capitalize or add a
punctuation or whatever she rewrites the
completed version in this little
notebook here and then she also has if
you'll notice one of those words is
bolded the one that's kind of
underlining red there at the top and
that was poor and so at the back of here
she has a little tab and these are all
of her vocabulary words so she is in
charge of looking up those words and
then she just writes them all out here
on her workbook and so all she has to do
every day is correct her one sentence
more
her nouns or whatever the curriculum is
telling her to mark rewrite the sentence
in her book and then look up her
vocabulary words so English only takes
her about maybe 15 or so minutes maybe
20 kinda depends the sentences do get
longer as they get older and you know
like as you can see weeknight teen this
is like a two line sentence and the
words get harder and she's looking at
more things so at the beginning it seems
really fast and easy and then as you
progress it obviously gets a little bit
more challenging and whatnot but by the
time they get through this I feel like
they are actually doing really well
being able to you know like recognize
parts of speech and whatnot and my kids
all did really well on our standardized
testing and that's always kind of my
final like is this working and not that
I would change this curriculum if they
didn't do great on there because I love
it so much and I when I'm talking to
them and they're marking things I know
they know what they're doing
sometimes those standardized tests can
be written in such a way that it can be
really confusing for them and you know
kind just kind of tricky a little bit I
think and when they're marking these
they do really really well so I am quite
confident in this curriculum I love it I
love that it doesn't take very long
they're not doing you know big ol long
boring worksheets it's quite fast and
what they're doing at the same time I
don't think I mentioned this because
I've done a review on this before so I
forgot that they're basically rewriting
a story so this particular one is the
nose tree each level is a different
story
but they're basically everyday writing a
sentence in a story and so they're by
the time of the end of the week they
pretty much have like you say a
paragraph one for that story and then
next week the story continues in their
writing paragraph two in paragraph three
and so on and so during that whole time
they're learning all of the parts of
speech quotation marks commas you know
possessive nouns recognizing verbs and
adverbs and adjectives and all of that
kind of stuff just slowly start creeping
in through the curriculum as you go and
then by the time they're done they've
essentially just rewritten this entire
story so I like that they're getting a
story background instead of just kind of
random information which I feel like
some of the workbook worksheet kind of
curriculums are like that where you know
they're getting their point across but
they're like here
right this random sentence and pick out
these random things out of it and so I
think the story aspect of the fix-it
grammar makes it a little bit more
interesting to them they've got this
ongoing story that they're reading and
writing and like they kind of want to
know what happens next and some of the
stories are goofy some of them are you
know funny and so I think that just
gives it a little bit more of an
interesting element added to it and like
I said it's not you know so much
worksheet you know they really are kind
of focusing on one sentence a day as you
get into the older that might not seem a
lot like a lot like for her this is the
first level but like my older kids who
are doing it are doing like you know
paragraphs and things like that so they
definitely the workload I think
proportionately increases based on the
grade and so I really like that about it
I like the style and then the last thing
that I really like about it is that it
coordinates really well with the IAW
writing curriculum which I'll talk about
when I get into our writing one video
but I love that curriculum and these two
things just go together like perfectly
you know they're finding kind of the
same things in the same manner as they
are for their writing curriculum and so
I think that just makes it all kind of
mesh together really well and so I
really like it for that reason as well
so we've been using this curriculum for
a few years now and I love it and
barring any you know unforeseen
circumstances I do plan to continue I'm
using the fix-it grammar it's probably
one of my favorite curriculum at this
point so anyways those are my top picks
for English I hope that at least helped
you give you a little bit of information
like I mentioned below I do have put
links below I have specific reviews for
these products I don't think I did one
for Rebecca because we stopped using it
but I do have BJ you and fix-it grammar
reviews videos for you so I'll link
those below and you can go and check
those out in a little bit more detail if
you're interested in one over the other
but anyways those are my top picks for
English curriculum I hope that has
helped give you at least a starting
point in researching for your family if
you have any English curriculum that you
absolutely look
there's a ton more out there these are
just my favorite out of the ones that we
have tried make sure leave a comment
below maybe say why what you love about
it so that other people can learn from
that as well so anyways thank you so
much for watching this video and hanging
out with me today and I will see you
next time
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