Questions & Answers

Yes, those are exactly the ages Grammar of Grace is for!  The core curriculum is the 250-page Grammar of Grace; it contains daily memory work, Bible reading assignments for mom to read aloud to the children, a copywork book, and instructions for how to do it all. At around age 10 (depending on each child’s readiness; some wait til 11 or 12), a pretty serious grammar school academic course is added, with the Christian Grammar School at Home: Later Knowledge Guides.  The child continues to practice everything from Grammar of Grace (memory work, copywork, listening to mother read aloud, etc.), but the Later Knowledge Guides add in planned-out grammar school academic work―Latin, English grammar, literature, history, arithmetic, etc.

Yes, Grammar of Grace is a full curriculum, but you’re welcome to use the subjects you like and leave off the subjects you’re already covering with a different curriculum.  I would recommend using the classical language memory work, and adding the Bible verses in English that correspond with that; I don’t think you would have any trouble fitting that into your main curriculum. Follow-up Question:  So, if you were to do that, what would a person buy from your curriculum?  I’m somewhat new to Homeschool and currently don’t use classical method but we do use phonics. Follow-up Answer:  Grammar of Grace only comes as a full curriculum, so you would want to get Grammar of Grace, plus the foreign language audios for all 4 cycles.  It’s only sold as the full curriculum because it’s only $89 for all 4 cycles (years)!  Even if all someone used was the Foreign Languages subject, $22.50/year is reasonably-priced. 🙂 In case this helps to clarify about the classical approach—for children under age 9 or 10, the full curriculum is built on doing about 30 minutes of memory work every day, teaching your kiddos phonics (as you know), teaching them to write via copywork, and reading aloud to them.  When you strip it down, for children as young as yours (1^st grade & Kindergarten), that’s all there is to a classical curriculum; we try to let them run outside and play or build with blocks and stuff like that, and really keep the written stuff to a minimum.  (There’s more to it as they get older, maybe around age 10, but for the young ones, classical education really doesn’t call for much; they do a lot of their learning through play!)  So Grammar of Grace has memory work for seven different subjects, a copybook for using to teach them how to write, and a Bible reading plan. I’m so glad to hear that you’re already onto phonics; you’ll be so thankful you guys did it that way from the start!  In one sense, that’s the very bedrock of classical education, so you’re doing that much with the old classical approach already! 🙂

We heavily emphasize that teaching phonics is a key element of a classical education, to make sure people don’t accidentally forget to add a phonics course to Grammar of Grace (or accidentally choose a sight words method)!  But since there are so many fine phonics curriculums out there, we figured it wasn’t necessary to reinvent the wheel; so, no, we don’t offer one as part of GOG.  I teach my children to read with Alpha-Phonics, but I have heard wonderful things about several phonics methods.

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