Customer Reviews

English for the Thoughtful Child, Vol. 1

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's not your normal text/workbook. You have to really be willing to take your time in order to get the most out of it. After several trials and errors, I can now appreciate why it works so well.

At first glance, I wanted to toss this for something more "structured" and "self-directed". I couldn't figure out how a child was supposed to learn anything by using this book. It is devoid of the normal jargon found in most workbooks. And what was up with the pictures? How can I ask my child to analyze a picture and call THAT a "grammar" lesson? What were they suppose to be learning from THAT? Weren't they suppose to be studying nouns and predicates and doing daily drills and such? But, alas, good things come to those who...slow down!

This book makes heavy use of narration (the child telling back a story in his/her own words), or "oral composition". If this is a foreign concept to you then delay this purchase and buy books by Dr. Ruth Beechick and/or anything about Charlotte Mason and her philosophy. You need to understand narration and why it works so effectively. If you are not sold on this approach, then don't buy this book. If you are familiar with the works of these two pioneers of "natural learning", and you feel comfortable with this approach, then this may be a great grammar/composition book to use with your 2nd - 4th Grader. Jessie Wise and Susan Bauer mention narration in _The Well Trained Mind_ , but they don't expound on it the way Beechick and Mason do.

The beauty of this book is in its simplicity. It causes a child to think deep and answer thoroughly; hence the title. This is not a book to rush through. Every page, every lesson is to be savored, and chewed thoroughly like a good meal. I realized this after changing my homeschool program into one that is more relaxed and focused on the joy of everyday learning. This book causes you to slow down and think. Think REAL hard. You may or may not want to put that much time into a grammar/composition program.

Having said that, I must say that I agree with some of the complaints mentioned here, but it took a second purchase (after selling my first copy) to force me to look at it more closely. I wouldn't exactly call this a self-directed, independent program. You have to like working closely with your child. You have to be willing to work slowly and thoughtfully. If that's not your style, then don't buy this book! Also, remember that some kids read better than they write. This book encompasses a lot of writing exercises, but they can be done orally.

My 8 year-old daughter and I loved working through this together. It was a struggle for me to slow down the pace and enjoy it, but I realized that she needed this time with me so I forced myself to stay cool and slow down. It was tough, but worth it. That relaxed pace has spilled over to other areas of our homeschool and I have found it really works well for us.

Hope that helps. Enjoy this one (if you can!)

Cris

I can't say enough about how wonderful English for the Thoughtful Child is. I purchased this book because it is the recommended 2nd grade English text in the homeschooling book The Well-Trained Mind, A Guide to Classical Education At Home (another great book!). There was no description and no reviews here, so I wasn't sure what I was in for! This is most certainly a "thoughtful" book. While it covers the standard requirements for English ~ punctuation, nouns, verbs, abbreviations, etc. ~ the joy of this book is the emphasis on creative writing. Beautiful illustrations are provided for the child to look at and think about. They are then prompted with questions about what might be occurring in the illustration and are then instructed to write their own story about what they think is happening in the picture. A GREAT way to spur creative writing! Plus there are wonderful poems for the child to memorize and recite. A nice change of pace from humdrum grammar lessons!

Like the reviewer below, I bought this book because Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer, the authors of The Well-Trained Mind,our family's bible for supplemental school work, recommended it as a first grammar book for young children. It was refreshing to find a book that was instructive yet entertaining, rigorous but not overwhelming and -- partly because it was written a long time ago, and recently re-printed -- faithful to traditional grammar basics for the young child. Finally, we were also enormously relieved to have a book that was completely unconcerned with being politically correct. Some people may be put off by lessons on "Christian names and surnames," and the roles to which little girls are relegated, etc., but, frankly, this card-carrying Democract was relieved not to have to wade through multicultural content which, sadly, often seems to have nothing to do with learning.

As a postscript, there is no better endorsement than our seven-year-old; it is the only homework she likes to do!

I agree with all the positive comments. The approach here is not a copy of other workbooks. There are stories to create, poems to read and memorize, and generally learn English in a lovely, thoughtful way, just as the author suggests in the title. I used it with my son who is nine. His handwriting was poor, and he hates writing of any sort. The unique little lessons in this book are so different that he never realized that we were doing "English". The book offers a holistic way of helping a child and I am glad to have purchased it.

I love this book, but I almost gave it 4 stars just to draw attention to my review. We have been using this book for only a week in our homeschool, but we have had to interrupt our grammar lessons several times to do research before we could practice the day's grammar lesson. One exercise told us to "Write a statement telling where the sun rises."--this required a little instruction about the rising/setting sun. Another day, we were to respond to these questions: "How often do we have a new moon?" and "Where have you seen the new moon at sunset?" I had no idea, so we ran to the encyclopedia. If this bothers you, just be aware that you may want to look ahead at lessons to see if you should "do a little research." Otherwise, I love this book!

I used this book with my 8yo daughter for her 2nd grade year (we are eclectic homeschoolers). I am so thankful to the person who recommended it to us! After almost a full year of it, my daughter actually enjoys the lessons!

If you are looking for a traditional textbook full of busywork that will likely turn a child off to language arts, this is not the book for you. If you want a traditional workbook that you can just plop down in front of your child and say "Here, do it" then this is not the book for you. It requires, for the most part, that you at least begin the lesson with your child and participate along with her/him (which is very simple and fun!). If you want a lot of wordy explanation, this book is not for you. It is very self-explanatory and will not require a lot (if any) preparation. If you read the short Introduction at the beginning of the book, there should be no confusion as to what to do for each lesson. It is very simple to follow. It gets straight to the point in short enjoyable lessons. Lessons are usually just 1 or 2 pages and are easy to understand. The picture lessons are a favorite in our house. For example, a page shows a small painting of children along with a list of questions that will help your student evaluate/critique it. There are a few lessons that use too much copywork for my taste (ie: read a fable and rewrite it from memory) but we altered it to our liking (ie: write a continuation of the story, imagine what happened next), which is what the authors suggest we do anyway. I appreciate the respect parents/teachers (and students) are given, there is no "talking down" and there is no "you have to do it our way". The parent and child are allowed the freedom to be creative and thoughtful. We have been very pleased with this creative fun "workbook"! I recently bought Vol. 2 for next year and am equally pleased with it.

I was refered to this book by "The Well Trained Mind". I am not homeschooling, but supplimenting. This book is a great overall start to teaching your child about the english language. It covers all areas incluing compostion, sentance structure, dictation and has a handy list of grammer rules. Is great for first to third grade or even could be adapted for kindergarten use.

As a previous reviewer mentioned, there are many specific science questions in this book for which you need to know the answers and will have to do some advance research. If you want to combine unorganized science topics with your grammar lessons, this book will be great for you. I already have another organized science program I am using, so I find this irritating. I would prefer a grammar program that would concentrate on the grammar/language aspects.

Two of the four poems that are to be memorized seem too lengthy to be appropriate material for a 7-year old. One is a 21-line poem, and another is a 24-line poem from Coleridge. We are already memorizing Bible verses each week, so I just skipped those.

The majority of the lessons in this book offer one exercise to practice the concept, so if your child has some difficulty with grammar, you will probably have to make your own worksheets to make sure they've learned the concept.

This is the only homeschooling book we've used this year that has been disappointing.

By the time my child was able to manage the writing involved, she was far beyond the concepts taught. While we enjoyed a few of the first lessons, the end of the book makes very heavy weather of what should be simple, intuitive grammar. Any child who reads will pick up on the basics being taught here -- the difference between a question and a statement, paragraphing, what a noun is, etc, without needing to be taught the specific terminology. Later, when more formal grammar is taught, these concepts will be second nature. However, if you have a young (5 - 7) yr. old child who enjoys doing lots of writing, this might be very enjoyable.

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.