Does anyone have a curriculum for the mechanics of language arts? I have Shurley English, but i'm not thrilled.

I'm not sure this is quite what you're looking for (I haven't seen Shurley, so have no basis for comparison), but we love Michael Clay Thompson's language arts series (from Royal Fireworks Press: www.rfwp.com ). There are grammar, vocabulary, poetry, and writing components; they are written specifically for gifted students. Might be worth a look?

peace
minnie

You know about Michael Clay Thompson, right? I haven't used him, but I know he has a strong following.

If you're looking for an all-in-one approach, I've heard really good things about Michael Clay Thompson, unfortunately it is also fairly pricey and it didn't have a literary analysis element, which I really want for my DS7.

We're using a 3 pronged approach to L.A. this year for DS7. We're doing KISS Grammar, which is free. Even though it looks very basic and it says it starts with 2nd grade, the exercises are deceptively simple. There are no "See spot run" types, they're real sentences taken from classic children's literature and can be fairly tricky. It does include quite a few practice pages for each concept, but we do 3 pages a week and it takes him 5 minutes. The website is a bear to navigate, I've linked directly to the printable workbooks, but the site really is a mess!

For writing practice we had been using Igniting Your Writing, we just finished it up on Thursday, actually. It was great for my DS, who has been reluctant to write. The prompts are fun and engaging, each lesson focuses on a different part of the writing process and it includes 3 levels of exercises so one book can accommodate multiple writing abilities.

Finally for literary analysis, the only program I could find was through the College of William and Mary. It's written for gifted kids and amazingly it does a very good job of estimating appropriate grade levels. We're using Journies and Destinations, which is the 2nd-3rd grade curriculum. Though DS7 reads at a much higher level than 3rd grade, they pick literature that is challenging to analyze, even if it isn't necessarily challenging to read. There is also an integrated writing component, though it doesn't have any grammar. It also is only a semester course, but I just haven't found anything else like it.

When we're done with the Journies and Destinations, we're going to move on to Igniting Your Writing II and Suppose the Wolf Were an Octopus, which is grade leveled and has a range of different books for each level, with discussion questions that are based on Bloom's Taxonomy.

I hope that something in there is helpful! It's taken me a year and a half of homeschooling to put together a L.A. curriculum that I'm happy with!

Kimberly

Thanks for sharing the info on Suppose the Wolf Were and Octopus. I think the list of books listed there by age level will come in handy at the library for my younger child. Thanks!!!