You know that I love to try out new school books! And I have this fetish for writing curriculums – I’m not sure why, but they really appeal to me in general.
For this curriculum review, we got to try out two different products from Joyce Herzog review. Joyce has been an educator in both private and public schools, and has supported homeschooling for over 25 years.
We were sent the Budding Writers set of books to work on, which includes 5 books of varying levels:
Step Into Writing – $10 – 36 pages of beginning writing practice. The book is broken up into 12 sets, each set is made up of 3 different kinds of pages.
The first page that your student will do is copywork, where they copy down a given sentence, and you check it for capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. It is stressed that a student work for perfection in their writing, instead of finishing, so sometimes we would set a timer if I felt that Emma was rushing through it. She would work to the timer and be done, even if she was in the middle of a sentence.
The second kind of pages are dictation; after completing the copywork for a lesson, the student then has a page of dictation where you read a set of short sentences and the student writes them down. If there are any words your child doesn’t know how to spell, you write the words down for them at the top of the page so they will get them right when they come up in the dictation.
Next is a page called Experience the Story – this is were you discuss the details of the story of the previous two pages, and the student tells you back the story in their own words. The teacher is the one writing on this page, and then reads it back to the student. 🙂
I have to admit – I love this book! It was a little easy for Emma, but we are working through it anyway because I love the concept of weaving all these different parts of being a great writer together at an early age.
Step On Into Writing – $10 – this book is the second in the series. The books build on one another, but you can start out with any of the books if you have an older child. This book has the same 3 kinds of pages as above, but at a higher difficulty level (for a better reader). In this book, a forth page is introduced, to be completed after the student has finished the other 3 in each set. The new page is ‘Write Your Own Story’, and is just that. The student writes a story based on the picture given (ties in with the theme/story of the past 3 pages), and you help them work through it learning to edit their writing.
Adventures in Writing – $10 – is the third book in the 5 book series. In this book, your student will learn to, and practice, writing short stories in a single paragraph. This book contains 32 story prompting pages with ideas, and a few more blank ones so the student or teacher can make up their own. The pre-filled story prompting pages start with a few questions about a given picture. The students are given a ‘word box’ full of words, including more difficult words for older students. The word box can be used in multiple ways (ideas provided) to keep it interesting for your learner.
This book is a great, but Joel thought it would have been more fun if it had story starter pictures that involved more outside activities and animals (not to mention guns and adventure), and not quite so many pictures about girls. 😉
Then and Now – $12 – is book four in the series. In this book, the student will begin to write comparisons, writing a paragraph for each item. In this volume, the student will learn about paragraph structure and order. At the top of each lined page is a picture (all the pictures in this series are sketches from an old schoolbook), and to the side is a set of sentences and questions designed to help the student see and verbalize the differences between how things were done in the vintage pictures and how things are done now.
Writing US History – $15 – is the final book in this series. Designed to be used by students who already understand how to write a paragraph, this book features pictures and key words, and incorporates index cards, to teach your child the basics of writing a research paper. Using real people, places, and events (and even in chronological order! <3 ) as the catalyst for each short paper, your student will learn how to keep thoughts grouped by theme, together using a different index card for each theme/time frame/event, the student then can practice putting each set of ideas in their proper place in the paper.
I LOVE this set! Yes, you could probably come up with the story themes yourself, sure, you can provide copy paper for your student, and I suppose that you could even make up your own Word Box. But, at least for me, they are so worth the $10 to $15 to have all the work done for me!!! And, they are spiral bound do they lay flat.
Besides the Budding Authors set, we also got the short booklet 6 Weeks to Understanding Grammar ($12). I will say that I have been teaching grammar ‘the Joyce Herzog way’ for years (by default! LOL!). Mrs. Herzog explains how we teach proper grammar, starting when our kids are infants, by speaking to them properly, and gives a case for not ‘teaching’ grammar until students are 12 to 14, and old enough to really understand as opposed to teaching them to underline words in a sentence (and this is where I come out and admit that my kids don’t know how to diagram sentences. I always let them skip it in their books because I think it’s useless! LOL!).
I have really enjoyed using the Joyce Herzog products that we have been able to try; I love how straightforward they are, and there is no twaddle. The concepts taught are taught for a reason, and without busy-work. I will be checking out her other subject offerings! The TOS Review Crew was able to try out quite a few different Joyce Herzog products – you can read the other Review Crew reviews here.
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