I’m linking to Amazon, they’ve generally had the lowest price, best return policy, and often free shipping but do your homework/shop around:

Spell to Write & Read, which is an entire kit and Amazon has the best price I’m seeing for that.

It’s two books, flashcards, audio CD, etc, etc. It’s a lot, fantastic program, runs K through high school/SAT word level, and I love it. But it’s intensive, and I attended a seminar to learn how to teach it. More on that later, or email me.

Along with that we use Cursive First, link to come.

For writing (creative, research paper, essay) we use the Institute for Excellence in Writing program, which has a teacher DVD set called Teaching Structure & Style. It’s a 10 DVD video seminar and you can borrow the set (which I did) but you’ll need your own seminar syllabus/notebook, which you can get on Amazon. The book itself is good but the seminar really helped it all click for me.

That’s a teacher’s guide, once you study the seminar/book you can teach this program to kids of any level, K through high school. It’s again, wonderful.

So both of those you use with all of your kids from kindergarden through high school. There’s no student workbook, no extra costs (though the spelling one you’ll need composition books) so it’s been a great deal I think. The spelling program obviously is an investment but once you break it down by year for multiple kids it’s a great deal.

For grammar (parts of speech, a bit of writing, memorization, narration, dictation) we like First Language Lesson for the Well Trained Mind. The blue book is for first and second grade combined and there’s no student workbook.

For third grade there’s a teacher’s guide and student workbook but we didn’t need the student book at all. Teacher book has the explanations and you can use regular notebooks for the student work.

There’s a fourth grade book but honestly we decided it wasn’t worth it. It was a review of everything in the prior books but it also got much, much more intensive as far as diagramming sentences which I honestly don’t think is necessary. Once a child knows the parts of speech and can diagram a sentence then great, but book four was coming up with stuff that Kit and I had never done and don’t anticipate we’ll ever need to do. I think stopping after book 3 is fine (for our family at least!) It may be worth pulling out every year or two to review some of the things, like the prepositions and parts of speech. And again those are books you can use over and over with your kids, they aren’t consumables.

For literature we use Teaching the Classics. Again, it’s a teacher guide/syllabus and a DVD. You can borrow the DVD so long as you purchase your own copy of the teacher’s guide. Here’s just the guide (which honestly would be wonderful even if you DON’T see the DVD):

And here’s the combo DVD & teacher guide set:

And from Amazon the price is now cheaper than when I bought it from the publisher directly. That’s a program to teach children about literature but you can start it literally with little kids storybooks like fairytales. We’ve done it with three year olds! But it’s a concept that works all the way up through high school and beyond. It explains storylines, character, plot, theme, etc.

I was able to borrow the DVDs for the writing (IEW Structure & Style) and for the literature (Teaching the Classics) from a local mom and buy the teacher guides to take notes as I listened. For the spelling program (SWR) I attended a seminar to learn more about implementing it. They can each be as simple and basic or as complex as you want to make them, we’re sticking to simple for now and adding more details as we can manage with kids and life and schedules. I love that once you get them that’s all you need for all of your kids from kindergarden through high school. I think it will provide them a wonderful foundation to be comfortable with reading & analyzing works of literature, writing creatively and for research papers or presentations, give them a good core of grammar, ensure they are comfortable with those crazy SAT words and have good spelling, and overall help them become better communicators!

If that didn’t make sense email me and I can call and try to better explain! You’re also welcome to come over and go through any of them to see what you think before you spend your money. 🙂

To give you a concept of cost –
spelling (SWR) was about $95
Cursive First was $15
writing (IEW Structure & Style) was about $15 (I got used copy)
grammar (First Language Lessons) was $10 for 1st/2nd grade
3rd grade was $20
literature (Teaching the Classics) was $30

And those prices linked to above (click on the images) are all less than what I paid (except when I got used copies.) And they are all things you can use over and over with different children and all (except grammar) are used for all grade levels.

If that wasn’t brain overload enough, here’s the layout of how we put all of that into action. At least in theory… 🙂

Mon: review spelling phonogram cards; grammar lesson; pick memorization work
Tue: new spelling words (10 per week, 20 for C); read story or biography & do writing lesson (they narrate & do notes for reading)
Wed: spelling enrichment; grammar lesson; review memorization
Thur: spelling enrichment if not done; read classic (doing Shakespeare) and kids narrate/outline/do storychart
Fri: spelling test; read history & kids narrate; C does book/story report

Cursive is something we spend a couple weeks focusing on with each new kid and then review as needed. You can see how it all ties together, the cursive is practiced with spelling and note taking, the spelling is practiced with their writing, the writing & literature are tied when they do note summaries/outlines for what we read. And whatever you read (like history or science) can be the material you use to practice summarizing, note taking, doing reports, etc. After learning the concepts from the teacher’s guide you really choose when and how you want to implement those in practice throughout the rest of your curriculum. The spelling and grammar lessons are more formally laid out but the literature and writing are very flexible.