Please Go Back To Start

Sometimes trying new things only makes you realize just how much you really miss the old things. Don't say I told you so. LOL! Lately, I have been feeling a strong sense to return to Rod and Staff English while we complete Winston Basic Grammar this year and my children are not too ecstatic about it but they know Mom has to do what's in their best interest. Winston Grammar's lessons only take about 10 minutes a day and 2-3x/week to complete. After two months of using the Basic set, Winston appears to be more of a fantastic hands-on supplement to grammar than a full program, IMO. I'm not stating that it's incomplete because it REALLY does work and the cards reinforce the rules very well which is what we were missing with Rod and Staff...reinforcement of the concepts for retaining. Mad Libs were not really successful in doing this last year. However, I miss the comprehensiveness of Rod and Staff English. I love having capitalization, punctuation and formal writing included within our grammar which is missing in Winston. My children love Winston and it's definitely working so we are certainly keeping it as a supplement. Winston Grammar and Rod and Staff English are among Cathy Duffy's 100 Top Curriculum Picks so I don't think we can go wrong by utilizing both programs. :-)

So our new Language Arts schedule consists of:

Rod and Staff English (grammar and writing) 4x week
Winston Basic (our grammar supplement) 3x/week for 10 minutes
Story Starters (our creative writing supplement) 1x/week.
Simply Spelling (our spelling program) 4x/week


By the way, if you ever need any schedules for Rod and Staff English, you can download them here.