We will soon complete our 1st grade year in My Father's World. It did not include grammar or spelling lessons though it did include copywork which is a wonderful introduction to composition. We are going to use Adventures in My Father's World for 2nd grade history, geography, Bible, science, and drawing, but I am going to do something different for language arts.
MFW recommends Spelling by Sound and Structure, and Primary Language Lessons, and has them available for purchase on their website; but they are not included in the thematic units so we can easily choose another method.
While at a homeschool fair last summer, I picked up a copy of Hearing and Reading, Telling and Writing, by Sonya Shafer at Simply Charlotte Mason. Shafer points out that in the early grades, children learn correct English grammar by listening to their parents. The formal study of rules are better left until they are a little older and can grasp the abstract concepts and logic involved. I plan to teach Turtle some basic parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, preposition) so that he will become aware that language has structure. From time to time we may use sentence from our read aloud books to talk about how the parts of speech are used; but that is all we will plan to do in 2nd grade.
Similarly, our spelling will be combined with copywork selections from the books we read together while using Adventures in My Father's World. Charlotte Mason says, "Transcription should be an introduction to spelling. Children should be encouraged to look at the word, see a picture of it with their eyes shut and then write from memory." I am looking forward to a more formal study of grammar and spelling with my sons in the future, but for now they are learning so much more effectively by careful observation of the world around them.
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