English for the Thoughtful Child, Vol. 1

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Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction / Language Arts / Grammar; English Composition; English language; Grammar; Language Arts - Composition and Creative Writing; Language Arts - Grammar; Study and teaching; Juvenile Nonfiction / Language Arts / Composition and Creative Writing;

Average Review: 4 stars

Review: Not for us : We bought this on the recommendation of The Well Trained Mind book by Susan Wise Bauer. I liked how inexpensive it was compared to other grammar programs, and I figured it would not require a lot of prep. on my part. Other than that, I found this book to be tedious and boring. My 7 year old dreaded it. The dictation exercises, where I read sentences that meant nothing to him, while he wrote them down, was like pulling teeth. I appreciated the narration exercises, and he was improving on that skill by the end of the book. But asking him to tell me about some picture or memorize a poem he doesn't care about (we memorize other things instead, like Bible verses and Baptist Catechism questions and answers), just seemed pointless to me. We finished the book, but it only took us one semester since we started skipping lessons I thought were useless. I've since bought the Abeka third grade language curriculum and love it. Call me more structured, but grammar is going much better now. I would not recommend this book to anyone--and I know the updated edition of The Well-Trained Mind recommends one of the author's books, First Language Lessons for Children, so maybe that's an improvement on English for the Thoughtful Child.