Memoria Press has a great writing curriculum that my daughter and I have been checking out the last few weeks. Specifically, the curriculum is a set of two books: Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) and Simply Classical Writing Book Two: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) with Teacher Key.
There are 34 weeks of lessons in each of the books, designed as a 4 day week if you are following the lesson plan suggestions in the book. In book one, it has more of the basics. It begins by teaching the main “rules” of writing… always capitalize the first word of a sentence, a sentence must be a complete thought or it is considered a fragment, types of sentences, and so on. And, of course, the Teacher’s Key is just as you might imagine it. It has sample answers for the questions in book two.
It has a listed skill level of about 1st-3rd grade. That being said, if you have a child a little older that needs help with writing skills, I personally think it serves as a wonderful review and writing practice. Also, since this is the Bible story edition, it’s a great way to study those stories in a new way.
Writing Lessons
Book one has lessons that will give your child a foundation in basic grammar. Using copywork and reading, your child will practice writing sentences with proper grammar, as well as their reading comprehension skills.
I loved that aspect of this curriculum. I had planned on working with Olivia this summer with both writing sentences and reading comprehension and then this curriculum landed on our doorstep. It was perfect timing.
If your child already knows a little about grammar and sentence structure, I would recommend skimming through the books to find the right spot for them to start. Or you could just have them work through it quicker than they are intended to so. For example, there are 34 weeks of lessons. If it’s super easy for your child, then have them work through two to three lessons per week until they are at a point where they are hitting new material or material they need more help completing.
I went ahead and started from the very beginning. On day one, I sat down with Olivia and we read through all of the “rules about sentences” pages together. At first, she was frustrated because she “already knew” all of them, but I just explained that it was a review for her and she was fine with that. I should have explained that before we started, so to avoid that mistake with your child, I would definitely recommend telling them ahead of time that the beginning will be review. I also told Olivia the first few lessons would be super easy and we would just work through them really quickly.
Since we were treating the beginning as a review, we decided she needed to work on it for a designated period of time each day. Usually, you would just do that day’s activities and be done with it. When I have my kids review or practice previously learned topics, I usually have them do it for a period of time, instead of a certain number of problems or pages. I hope that helps you.
In book two, it just goes deeper into all of the rules of identifying the different parts of sentences.
It also teaches them how to write by challenging them to create new sentences to describe pictures. This helps them learn how to tell a story and use descriptive words.
Overall, I think this is a wonderful curriculum and we plan to continue using it daily during the summer and beyond to make sure skills are not lost. So often, kids forget things over the summer, so I’m thankful to have this to use. Just to clarify, though, this is not made to be a summer curriculum. That’s just the way we are using it for now.
Other TOS crew reviewers checked this curriculum out as well as some other things from Memoria Press. I recommend you click the banner below to see what they had to say.
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