Great suggestions!! Thank you for sharing how you used this curriculum and your tips for how to keep it going slow and steady. Sometimes it's not an all or nothing approach that's necessary for a curriculum. If it's not working, you may just need to set it aside for a time and revisit it later as you said. -Hana

That's great, Shannon :) I hope you find what works well for your family. -Hana

Kudos for the Video! Excuse me for butting in, I would love your opinion. Have you tried - Millawdon Future Ticket Trick (Sure I saw it on Google)? It is a smashing exclusive guide for teaching children to read minus the hard work. Ive heard some decent things about it and my cousin at very last got excellent results with it.

Wonderful Shaheen. I hope it works well for you and the kids.

My experience has been similar to yours in that my kids love to read and read often and probably above grade level, though they all learned to read late according to traditional academics (though my third read at 8 years old which is right on track with the Waldorf philosophy). The problem we encountered around early high school is that their leisurely reading took a nosedive because of the content in many teen books. I'm not literary enough to have suggested interesting books for them. I'm making a greater effort with my second son and providing him with historical fiction as part of his US History course. He seems to enjoy the ones I've chosen for him so far. How old are your children? I think you mentioned it before. How have your children been with the grammar once they use it in writing? My third can do all the oral grammar perfectly and still forgets to capitalize the beginning of a sentence among many other grammar/punctuation mistakes. -Hana

Yes, content is one to be careful with! We have a large library of good books, classics, historical fiction, fantasy, etc. I want the things they read to be uplifting and high quality. My kids do well bringing grammar and punctuation into their written sentences. We do copywork a lot when they are small, and I think that helps them more with sentence structure and punctuation than oral grammar. Most of our elementary language arts curriculum consists of reading lessons, oral grammer, copywork, and narration... with dictation and freewrite as they get older. My kids are 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 4, and 2. :) -Melissa

Melissa! I didn't know you had 9 kids!! Nice! My first two did a lot more copywork than my third. Maybe that was the difference between their writing abilities. What program did you use for copywork? We used Writing With Ease with my first two.

Copywork can be such a gentle way to teach grammar and sentence structure. Kids almost seem to absorb it naturally, though we do talk about it too. I love WWE! We use it pretty consistently, though I've also had kids do copywork from their reading lessons instead, and that seems to work just as well. Two of my boys are trying Fix It Grammar for the first time, and I'm quite impressed so far! They enjoy it and I feel like they are learning and retaining.

I feel the pacing is good, but I think it depends on the child. It is a little dry though, however it's very thorough. -Hana

Thanks for the video content! Excuse me for the intrusion, I am interested in your thoughts. Have you considered - Zanackson Pocket Buster (erm, check it on google should be there)? It is a great one of a kind guide for teaching your child how to read without the headache. Ive heard some decent things about it and my best friend Jordan got amazing success with it.

Yes, from what I gather it's similar to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, however, the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading is 230 lessons, so I wonder which lessons are added to the OPGR. While I think the program is perfect and complete, it's not inspiring, creative or imaginative. For these reasons, I'm thinking of using our Waldorf curriculum to teach reading and writing. But in my experience, children learn how to read in their own time giving they know phonics (which I think you've experienced as well). My concern after teaching three of my four children is that they all (myself included) lack spelling and handwriting skills. I'm glad I made this video inspired by your live stream because after so many years homeschooling, I forget to include some of the curriculum we've used in the past. -Hana

I can relate! I do love this book but it seems it's right for some and not so much for others. I hope you find success in whichever program you choose!

Haha!!! Regina, you make me laugh. You're spot on. This curriculum IS dry like 100 Easy Lessons. It is unlike Waldorf in this exact point. In the Waldorf lessons, the teacher takes great effort to bring phonics/grammar/writing to life in an imaginative creative way. I personally struggled with reading and spelling. I was an ESL (English as a Second Language) when I came here from France, though English was my primary language. I never had a good grasp on spelling. That being said, having OPGR is like a go-to resource for phonics and spelling. -Hana

I wondered how you would use curriculum. Is there curriculum in Braille or do you use your phone to picture read?

My phone and computer have something on it call VoiceOver that reads pretty much everything on the screen to me. I have an app that can take pictures and read it back to me, but it is not always the most clear.

Cara, great question. He was a late reader and was about 1-2 years behind grade level for some time in homeschool. Had he been in school he either would have struggled or figured out a way to learn the things he needed for school. A lot of academic development occurred for him between 5th and 8th grade. He went to community college as a sophomore in high school and passed his exit exam from high school to be a full time college student. He transferred to university this past fall after three years of community college. He's 18 and completing his junior year of university in the spring. In the end, he ended up being two years ahead of peers, though he started out 2 years behind. He never took ACT or SAT so I don't know what he would have scored on it, but I don't think it would have been really low nor really high. The test taking skills were learned in his first semester of community college. Study skills took longer to learn because community college was easy at first because we enrolled him in the most basic classes. He didn't matriculate on purpose. We wanted to 'fill in gaps' with the beginner classes. It was a good introduction to 'school' life, but gave him a false sense of what college classes were actually like. This year in university, he's finally with his academically competitive peers and that's good for him. My second son...we'll see. He's in 9th grade now. So yes, my kids were not schooled in test taking or homework skills. One of the biggest things that helped my oldest transition to college and the new workload was actually the absence of a rigorous homeschool workload. My oldest embraced the work...well, to an extent ;)

Awesome insight. You know, there was a study done, I think here in SoCal that looked at the difference between juniors enrolled at UCLA who had started as freshmen at UCLA vs. those who had matriculated from community college. Turned out the community college students outperformed their peers in junior year!

That's great, Hanna. I'm glad your kids are doing so well.

Caras Life on the Farm I think they just need to take the accuplacer test to get into college. ACT and SAT are probably ones needed for university or specialized programs in college. I'm not sure though how SAT and ACT is used for admissions though.

Oh wow! Your son is doing great. Do you do every lesson? Do you do two lessons a day? It's fantastic that this curriculum is working for you both :) -Hana

Hi, Hana! Yes, we do every lesson, but we do not do them every day. Some weeks we do 5 and some weeks we do 1, but my hope is that we do at least 2. I think this curriculum is fantastic and I have figured out a few ways to make it a bit more fun and also how to incorporate it with the rest of our work. You have inspired me to do a review of it~and I can share more about it on the video and not write a book here!!! BTW-I have been watching so many of your videos; they are all so great and inspiring, thank you for doing them! ~Mozey