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Poetry/Picture study – group or individual?
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Hi – I am just starting out with homeschooling. My oldest recently turned 6 and we’re doing phonics, math and handwriting with lots of read-alouds. If we did 100% CM, we’d probably start a Y1 in January. And I’ve got a question about poetry and picture study and whether it is better as a group time or individual time. I’ve always thought they’d be a group time activity. But now I’ve fallen in love with English Lessons through Literature (ELTL) by Kathy Jo DeVore which has poems and picture study in each volume. I have only 2 kids (and I’m an older mama so that’s it) so having them do their own poetry and picture studies would be feasible. It’s just different from what I was thinking to do. Has anyone done ELTL different volumes with different children so that poetry and picture study are different? Does that work?
Thanks so much. (p.s. I’m not a store – that’s just my non-personal email id.)
We are using ELTL this year. I’m using levels 2, 4, & 5.
I am combining them for picture study. I asked Kathy Jo if this was going to be an issue…if there were related lessons to go with the picture study and she said it was perfectly fine to combine them. There are no related writing or grammar lessons that will interfere with combining them. Since the pictures are available as a free PDF on Lulu, you can choose artists from all 5 levels.
I was originally going to split them up for picture studies, but it was taking really long with 4 DC! We tried it one time (for our first week of school), but instead of 5-10 minutes, it lasted 30 minutes! My DC also seem to do better when they can work together to describe the picture…I think a bit of competitiveness enters in that isn’t there when they do picture study individually.
For poetry and memory work, they each have a index card notebook. One section of it has grammar definitions or other memory work (my 8yo is memorizing months of the year). The 2nd section has their poem they are currently memorizing. Each time we do our poetry readings, they read their poem aloud and work on their other memory work. We’re on our 4th week of school and they mostly have their first poems memorized just from reading it aloud 3 times per week! For the other poems, I just read all three of them aloud (there is one per lesson from each level). That gives us 9 poems each week to read (plus their additional poems for memorization/recitation). I thought about having them read aloud all their poems, but some of them are rather challenging to read, especially in levels 4&5. They will be hearing the same poems repeated as their other siblings go through the same levels of ELTL, but I don’t see a problem with that. It’s nice to hear favorite poems being re-read!
My 5yo (who turns 6 next month) also has a poem to memorize from the Wee Folk Art Simple Seasons program. She’s currently working on Little Boy Blue. She loves joining in with her own poem! I’m not sure what age your younger child is, but mine have really enjoyed learning some short poems at ages 4 & 5.
I’m finding ELTL to be a very flexible program. We divide the lessons up throughout the week. We do copywork 3 days per week, dictation 2 days per week (using Spelling Wisdom instead of ELTL), and the grammar/writing/folktale portion of the lesson 3 days per week. The literature readings I try to fit in throughout the week. I’m only reading the Level 2 selections aloud and my older two read their chapters on their own time. It usually comes out to 3 chapters per week.
Holly – thank you soooo much. This helps a lot. It begins to make sense that separate poetry would be fine because I realized my 3 year old loves Mother Goose and my 6 year old likes different rhymes. But I love the idea of using the same picture study for both of them. And it’s great we can get all of the pictures from the levels and either choose a different artist and picture every 2 weeks or pull from the same artist. Actually since I’ll be starting volume 1 with my 6yo, we’ll just use her level picture study and go from there.
p.s. we loved Wee Folk Art too. I used half of it for my daughter’s kindergarten and will use all of it once my son is 5.
Hi 🙂 My son is 13 and he hasn’t had much grammar exposure other than some through his latin and reading of course, and I recently started reading Robert Frost poetry to him. I am only now seeing the ELTL and I’m wondering where I would start him? And also I am wanting to do Art picture study with him and we would be spending 12 weeks on the same artist. Would this complicate things with this curriculum? Thanks so much. 🙂
Simplemom,
My DD is 13 and I placed her in Level 5. Level 6 will be released soon, but I think Level 5 was a great place to start with DD. She has had some previous grammar, but not a ton. Writing was one area I felt she could use extra work with. Level 4’s grammar moves at a slower pace. You can download samples and get a better idea of where to place your DS.
For the picture studies, ELTL schedules 6 per term (one every other week). We’ll either be doing 2 artists per term or adding in some extra paintings, because my DC and I love having a weekly picture study. You could also leave out the ELTL picture studies and do your own seperate program like AO or SCM.
Thank you HollyS. Also how does the poetry work in this curriculum? Is it the same as the picture study (so many a term)? Thanks so much.
There are 3 weekly lessons and each lesson includes a poem. She also recommends having them memorize a poem. When they have it memorized, they choose another to work on. For this, I just have them read their poem aloud on days we read the lesson’s poem. After just a few weeks, they pretty much have them memorized!
I don’t see why you couldn’t include a poet study in addition to their regular poems.
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