New Curriculum Discovered!

I found a new Literature and Composition program that I like for middle school and high school. It's by Hewitt Homeschooling (www.hewitthomeschooling.com), and it's called Lightning Literature. I love it that it uses short stories, novels, and poems, incorporates biographies of the authors, and discusses things in depth but in an interesting way. My 7th grader previewed it for next year and thought it looked good, if she must be homeschooled. She would really like to go to private school full-time next year. We're not sure about that yet- she has to prove herself by actually getting her homeschooling work done for us, and not continue to ignore our timelines, etc. That's a posting for a different day. Literary Lessons from Lord of the Rings is another good curriculum, but after finishing the first book and set of unit studies, she was a little sick of Lord of the Rings. (I was actually thankful for that, since I was sick of it before we began the study! But it was a small sacrifice I was ready to make to ensure high interest and self-motivation for my students.)

Anyway, we liked this one a lot. Gracie, our 7 yr old, loves LLATL so we're going to stick with it. It seems super easy so she works a grade above and it's still not very challenging. I think it just seems easy because it's so contextual and uses books or unit studies that are interesting. My kids are all big readers so I'm particular about the content in the Language Arts curriculum they use. It has to be as interesting (or preferably more) than the books they choose on their own. LLATL has utilized books that they've already read, but they're books the girls don't mind reading again. I'm keeping my eyes open for something similar, but more interesting. This is working though- she likes it, she's learning, and still reads a ton of interesting books on her own. Her favorite series are by Carole Marsh- the Real Kids, Real Places history mysteries, and Around the World in 80 Mysteries. I like their Write Your Own Mystery book, so we're going to do that and use their teacher guides. Since LLATL isn't big on creative writing, we also do "Just Write" every day or so. When we start the Write Your Own Mystery, it will take the place of Just Write. (The Teacher Guides we'll use as Unit Studies.)