August Twelfth: TOS Review - Logic of English

What is Logic of English?

Logic of English is a curriculum that uses a multi-sensory approach to learning the whys of the english language.

I believe their name says it all, they truly teach the logic of the english language.

Their method uses 74 basic phonograms and 30 spelling rules that explain nearly all of the english words. There are no sight words to memorize, instead the student is taught the meanings of roots, suffixes and prefixes in order to gain an understanding of why a word is the way it is.

They offer material to teach students how to read, write and spell.

Logic of English offers the following material:

Essentials: Reading, Spelling, Grammar and Writing (Ages 8+)

Foundations Levels A-D (Offered in Manuscript or Cursive, ages 4-7)

Rhythm of Handwriting (Offered in Manuscript or Cursive, all ages may benefit)

... and much more. To see the rest of their products, click here.

What We Received and How We Used It:

For this review we received the following:

Foundations A Teacher's Manual (Hard cover)

Foundations A Student Workbook (Soft cover)

Large Whiteboard

Two Sets of Game Cards

One Set of Tactile Cards

One Set of Basic Phonogram Flash Cards

The ages for Foundations is 4-7, I chose to use this curriculum with Kolt (5).

Foundations is a complete curriculum for Phonics, Reading, Handwriting and Spelling.

As noted above we received Foundations A, which covers reading and comprehending phrases and teaches the child to write the lower case alphabet and much more. To view a more in depth look into this level, you may click here.

Kolt is beginning to learn how to read and can write fairly well for his age. He has been able to write his letters since he was around 3.5 years old. Although he can write his letters, they are more often than not sloppy. Don't get me wrong, they're readable - but sometimes the letters are big and sometimes they are small, sometimes his "s" is backwards and sometimes it is not. Kolt has always simply watched his older brother and myself write and in turn pretty much mimicked our letters. Until receiving this curriculum, Kolt has never been taught the correct way of writing his letters.

The first 20 lessons teach Phonemic Awareness and Handwriting. Reading is added after that. There are 40 lessons total.

For handwriting, the lessons start off teaching the layout of the whiteboard: the baseline, midline and top line. Once that was established the basic strokes of manuscript handwriting (cursive is also available) were taught. Within the first four lessons, Kolt learned the swing stroke, down stroke, roll stroke and straight stroke. The book offers so many fun activities like using shaving cream to practice his strokes. Kolt's attention drifts pretty quick, as I'm sure most 5 year olds do - this book offered so many great multi-sensory ways to learn the basics of handwriting.

Kolt's two favorite games were "Buzz" and erasing the strokes with his fingers - I'll explain. "Buzz" was a game introduced in the early lessons. Kolt would write one of the strokes he learned and I had to tell him the right answer. He was allowed to "Buzz" me if I was wrong. Of course the lesson encourages the teacher to get a few wrong so the student is able to "Buzz" you and to correct you. Another one of Kolt's favorite activities was using his finger to erase what I had drawn (picture above). I would write several strokes on his whiteboard and he would use his finger to erase it (and without knowing it, practice the stroke writing himself).

For Phonemic Awareness, Kolt learned to blend words together and recognized that two separate words can become one. He also began to work on the "th" sound.

Kolt worked through his lessons 3-4 days a week. Our lessons lasted about 10-15 minutes for Handwriting and 10-15 minutes for the Phonemic Awareness.

My Opinion:

When this box arrived, I am not going to lie - it felt like Christmas. The material given to our family to review was of wonderful quality. If you can't tell in the picture above, the whiteboard is huge and Kolt loves it. As we wrapped up lesson 4 today, I am stoked to say how well I think this curriculum works. Foundations truly captures the heart of children by offering fun, innovative ways of keeping their attention and making learning fun. Kolt isn't normally my "workbook kid", but because we were able to do games offered in the lessons - his few simple worksheets didn't seem so bad. We worked through the worksheets for each lesson together and looked forward to another fun activity, like writing our strokes on different surfaces of the room. I believe by Kolt being given the opportunity to use his different senses, his attention was kept much longer.