Tuesday, May 8, 2012

English Made Easy

English Made Easy
Published at DK Canada

About the books

Help is at hand to get that all-important head start in English. DK's new English Made Easy series covers reading, writing, spelling and grammar. Children can follow their exercises on a progress chart, score themselves then reward themselves with gold stars for their efforts! English Made Easy supports the Canadian curriculum and each workbook includes answer pages and Parents' Notes explaining common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

9781553630685HKindergarten

Geared for children ages 5 to 6, this workbook will give your child a head start, with easy-learning skills that include discovering the shapes, sounds, and names of letters as well as how letters go together to make words.

9781553630692HGrade 1

This workbook has been designed with the child of 6 to 7 years of age.   It will provide practice in all the major topics for Grade 1, including identifying similar sounds, becoming aware of simple spellings, and broadening the vocabulary.

9781553630708HGrade 2

This workbook is perfect for children of ages 7 to 8.  It will help him or her to practice all the major topics fro Grade 2, including vowels, consonants, and letter grouping in words, using phonics as a learning aid.

Grade 39781553630715H

This workbook is perfect for the kids ages 8 to 9 and will provide practice in all the major topics for Grade 3, including compound words, similar and opposite meanings, and working with different types of text.

9781553630722HGrade 4

Geared for kids ages 9 to 10, this workbook will cover the major topics of Grade 4, including dictionary usage, adjectives and adverbs, how to use apostrophes, and writing stories and plays.

Grade 59781553630739H

Especially designed for kids ages 10 and 11, this workbook provide practice in all the major topics for Grade 5, including alliteration, reported speech, punctuation, and writing for specific purposes and audiences.

9781553630746HGrade 6

Finally, the Grade 6 workbook (for kids ages 11 to 12) will provide practice in topics like descriptive writing, identification of clauses, usage of active versus passive voices, and analyzing text.

My Thoughts

I find this series of book for English a great addition for homeschoolers.    I hope that we could find these at Costco for my fellow homeschoolers because I think these would be great workbooks for children being schooled at home.   Why?   Because they would slowly build on the learning of the language and eventually give them tools to enjoy learning more about English.

The first book, which my daughter Jasmine was excited to start, will introduce the child to the shapes, sounds and names of the letters.    Slowly the child will discover that when you put the letters together it will form words. 

IMG_3355IMG_3357

In the book for grade one, you will find activities to reinforce the learning of phonics, start reading comprehension when an adult read a story, and slowly introduce the child to grammar rules.   The book for grade 2 will continue to build on the phonics, add on the vocabulary, reading comprehension as well as slowly build in logic and retelling events.

The workbook for grade 3 continues to build and expand in the grammar rules, phonics, independent reading, vocabulary as well as story writing and genre of literature.   The workbook for grade 4 will introduce the skills to use a dictionary, gives more grammar rules and how to apply it, give tools to the child to solve a riddle, pursue the reading comprehension and guide the child into writing more.

The workbook for grade 5 will provides exercises for spelling, dictionary research, grammar rules, reading comprehension which are getting more complicated as you go through the books, introduce the child to new genres of writing like the scientific explanation or myths and legends, as well as plan your writing assignments.  Finally, the workbook for grade 6 will continue to build on what the previous books have presented though in a more complicated way – word-building, discovering the origins of some words, reading comprehension, grammar rules and how to apply them, persuasive writing, summaries, and numerous writing assignments to explore.

All the workbooks also contains the answer keys at the end of each of them.  So mom or dad can verify the answers of the child.   I find that sometimes you will have to be flexible in the way your child answers depending on how he/she learns and writes.    For example, if the child answers a reading comprehension question by a single word, I would strongly suggest that you encourage him/her to make complete sentence by the time he/she is in grade 3.   However, keep in mind that it could take time for him/her to do so on his/her own.

Each of these workbooks have been tailored for the needs of the Canadian children.   It supports the language curriculum taught in schools, will help to increase confidence and understanding all the while enjoying the images and having fun at the same time.    They could be great for homeschoolers or for any families wishing to reinforce the learning done at school in the home.  

Next fall, the older kids in our family will go through their own level of workbooks though I am planning to use a trick to be able to keep them for the other kids behind because unfortunately these books are not reproducible.    Consequently, I need to be creative in how I can re-use these books without breaking the copyright attached to them.  Having four kids is fun but sometimes it could get pricey to purchase the same book four times.    My trick is quite simple, I will use a heavyweight sheet protector on the page and let the child write using an erasable marker.   Once the child has complete a page, I take a picture of his work.   This way all my kids can go through the books.

These workbooks are very interesting and will help you to teach English to your kids.   Whether your child has difficulty at school with this subject or you are homeschooling your kids, these workbooks can be a great product to consider during the school year or during the summer time to prepare for the next year.

The English Made Easy workbooks are available at your favorite bookstore, even amazon.ca.

Disclaimer: Thanks to DK Canada for sending me the above mentioned products for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.

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