Common Sense Press

We used this book for my 8th grader last year when he was in 7th gr, and we finished it this year. This is a good all-in-one language arts book.. so you don't need to buy separate books for vocabulary , spelling, grammar, etc.. I like the copy/dictation work exercises, even at this level. I don't think I ever had dictation or copy work exercises when I was going to school! It is an exercise they used to have kids do years ago. Charlotte Mason used it. It is a valuable tool, I think. It gets kids writing and thinking about punctuation, sentence structure, style and formats. The only thing I wish for is that Common Sense Press would continue to put out separate books for each upper level grade, like they do w/the lower grades.. For high school, there are only two books- American Lit and British Lit.. My kid will be in high school for four years though! So it would be nice to have more of these available for senior high!… (mais)

We used this book w/my daughter this year in homeschool. I liked it b/c it incorporates everything in one book- spelling, reading, grammar, writing, vocabulary, etc.. So you don't really need to have separate books for those skills. I did find that the reading was a bit easy for my 2nd grader, who is a pretty good reader.. We always read other stuff too, so there was plenty we had to challenge her ..So if you are looking for a good language arts curriculum, and you don't want to buy four different books, this is a good buy.. But if you have an advanced learner, you may want to get one grade higher so your kid doesn't get bored and say "This is e-a-s-y, Mom!"… (mais)