Language Arts

Language of GOD for Little Folks - Level C, is Catholic Heritage Curricula’s grammar program designed for the third or fourth grader. It is a complete program in a spiral bound workbook and does not require any additional text or teacher’s manual. The program focuses on gradually building language skills. These skills are very naturally presented within the context of the Catholic faith. Topics covered are sentence parts, nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, commas, apostrophes, tense, and subject- verb agreement. These topics are all covered in a slightly more challenging manner than in the previous levels.

We have been using CHC’s Language of God program for two years. It presents the information in a regular and comprehensive manner without being needlessly repetitive. Each topic is introduced and the child has the opportunity to practice the necessary skills with reviews included every few lessons. We normally supplement the exercises by discussing the concepts as they apply to our literature and writing assignments. The program is designed to be easy on the teacher and easy on the student without sacrificing quality (speaking plainly, it is easy for me to call out, “Start your grammar.” while attempting to redirect a mischievous toddler and my eight year old begins the lesson joyfully). Furthermore, it teaches grammar while focusing on the ultimate goal of salvation. In the very first lesson it is necessary to read through and discuss several passages from the Gospel. This is a very balanced program for the Catholic home schooler.

The Little Angels Series are four soft cover readers that teach all phonics sounds using word drill pages and phonetic stories. It teaches letter-sound relationships systematically, beginning with the easiest letter sounds. The word drill pages provide practice in decoding words containing the letter sounds. The stories with phonetically-controlled vocabulary follow each word drill page. They provide practice in decoding words in context and build comprehension skills. The stories are about Catholic family life, Bible stories, and Saint stories as well as fables and folk tales. The illustrations are well done and many are in color. Review pages are provided at regular intervals.

The workbooks are consumable and accompany the readers. They reinforce the lessons from the readers with exercises in phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension and handwriting.

The Teacher's manual provides detailed lesson plans and suggestions for related activities. The manual provides daily lesson plans for teaching the entire series. The lessons cover reading readiness, phonics, listening skills, vocabulary, handwriting, comprehension and spelling. There are also multi-sensory activities included to accommodate children who have different learning styles. The pace is very flexible so you progress at *your* child's speed. The manual also contains progress test after each review to assess how well your child is doing.

Sequence of Phonics Reader A - Consonants, short vowels Reader B - final blends, -ed, -ing, long vowels, two-syllable words Reader C - Beginning consonant blends, Y as a vowel, Consonant digraphs, R- controlled vowels Reader D - vowel digraphs and diphthongs, soft c and g, Irregular sounds and spellings

The author holds a MEd in Reading from the University of Missouri-St Louis and is certified in Learning Disabliites. She has six years classroom experience and nine years experience in home education.

I am using the Little Angels in place of the MCP phonics that Seton sends with their First Grade Curriculum. If you need something for Kindergarten, with beginning sounds and letter recognition, I highly recommend Seton's Kindergarten Phonics for Young Catholics. I have had great success with the Little Angels series with my daughter who is now finishing Reader D. She is 8 years old. My son who is 7, could not wait to start the readers and is also on Reader D. The Little Angels Phonics Series is really a wonderful tool for teaching your children to read.

Little Stories for Little Folks is a Catholic phonics readers set that offers an inexpensive alternative to the Bob Books. The entire Bob Books set (5 sets of booklets retailing for approximately $15 each) costs about $75 retail. In contrast, Little Stories for Little Folks costs about $25 for the whole program. While the Bob Books and other readers might turn out to be helpful for some families (and are available at some libraries), many families have been very grateful for this charming Catholic set at such a good price.

The Parent's Guide offers steps to prepare your child to read by using the enclosed flashcards (printed on card stock) to gain letter and sound recognition and then proceeding to work on pre-reading blends (with the pre-reading sound blend sheets that are included in the program and printed on card stock). After these steps are accomplished, the child will be ready to proceed to the phonics readers. The parent's guide also offers discussion questions to help your child get more out of each story.

There are four sets of readers, each set being identified by its own color. The booklets and flash cards come as an 8 1/2 x 11 pad. Each booklet starts out as a regular-sized piece of paper which you fold into four to form a child-sized booklet.

Level 1 contains 15 booklets. The story titles are: "At Mass", "Stop! Hot Pot!", "Sad Nip", "Mud on the Rug", "The Hot Pup", "Mom Gets Help", "The Rat", "Little Ann", "Bat the Ball", "Funny Ann", "The Campers", "God With Us", and "Messy Room".

This set starts with simple words such as "pat" and "sat" and progresses slowly to more complex words like "tent", "small" and "under".

Level 2 contains 10 booklets. The story titles are: "Dad's Cake", "Mrs. May is Sick", "Mike's Bike", "Visit the Sick", "We Hope to See the Pope", "The Little Goat with No Sense", "The Cold Rain", "Feed the Hungry", "The Tease", and "Noon Potluck."

This level starts with words like: "cake" and "taste" and progresses to words like "salad", "baby" and "table".

Level 3 contains 10 booklets. The story titles are: "Ann Cleans the Church", "Blessed Sacrament", "St. Paul", "A Toy for a Boy", "At the Beach", "The Found Rosary", "Run the Race", "School, Where?", "The Quake", and "I Didn't Know".

The starts with words like "kneel" and "holy" and progresses to words like "receive" and "neighbor".

Level 4 contains 10 booklets. The story titles are: "The Bright Star", "The Caught Calf", "Mr. Brown's First Holy Communion", "Kim's Adoption" (in two parts), "In the Match Box", "Badge Fudge", "Squirt", and "Our Lady's Secret".

This level starts with words like: "night" and "follow" and progresses to words like "cheerfully" and "enough".

This second volume of stories is very similar to the first. Volume 2 is a larger book 7" x 8" and geared for slightly older children.