Home Schooling

On the web site “The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home,” home-school teachers rave:

Teacher One: I love how it teaches and I’ve seen my dd [dear daughter] use what she’s learned in her writing. For example, she’s learned how to use prepositional phrases and appositive phrases from the Killgallon book. Just last week, she wrote a short 5 paragraph paper on some scientist (I forget who) and I was able to see her use the skills she learned from the Killgallon book to really nail the writing in her paper. It was concise, descriptive, and used the appropriate phrases, which she had worded beautifully. I was really impressed. Those little books are worth their weight in gold, IMO. Teaching more complex sentence writing has always been an issue for me–how to get them to that next step in their writing–and the Killgallon book is taking her there. I guess I should add that they’re likely not for everybody, but they’re working really well here. One of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

Teacher Two: I saw a dramatic improvement in my DD’s sentence-writing after she finished Story Grammar for Elementary Students. She went from writing very basic S-V-O sentences to much more complex ones through all the practice in the Killgallon book. I definitely plan on continuing her in the Killgallon series and using it with my younger kids as well.

Teacher Three: The samples really looked brilliant. I’ve never seen sentence composing taught like that.

Teacher Four: We just started using Grammar for Middle School: A Sentence-Composing Approach yesterday so I can’t say much about it, but my dd likes it and to me, it looks brilliant. Don’t forget that you can download a teacher’s guide off the [Heinemann] site.

Teacher Five: I bought the Sentence Composing for Middle School and Sentence Composing for High School and have used them both. I can honestly say that it is the one and only writing book I have purchased that I would recommend to anyone (and everyone). You just have to get past the quirky nature of the book! For what it is worth, I give these books my highest curriculum rating.