March 13, 2025 • 25 mins
Curious about how to make Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts Level 1 work in a secular homeschool? This program is unlike anything else, and I’m sharing exactly how we use it for 3rd grade language arts. From grammar and vocabulary to writing and poetics, I’ll walk you through what’s included and how we fit it into our routine.
Thinking about using MCT? Or already using something else? Let’s chat! Drop a comment and let me know what’s working for your homeschool.
🎧 Listen now and get inspired!
#3rdGradeLanguageArts #MichaelClayThompson #HomeschoolCurriculum #MakingEverydayMagic #SecularHomeschool
How I Use It: Start with Grammar Island (1 chapter weekly) and Building Language (1 Chapter Every 2 Weeks)
Follow Grammar Island with Practice Island (1 Sentence Daily) & Sentence Island ( 1 Chapter Weekly) Continuing on with Building Language
After Sentence Island, start Music of the Hemispheres (1 Chapter Weekly) Start Reading Mud Trilogy
At Your Leisure, Continuing Practice Island & Building Language
Complete All Books Except Practice Island, Just be done with it when all else is done
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is
often requested.
Rarely understood.
Let's get a look at third gradelanguage arts.
What then? Hello.
My name is Shanna.
Welcome back to Making Everyday Magic.
As many of you know, we arein our eighth year of homeschooling.
Today I want to share with youwhat we are using for third grade
(00:24):
language Arts and how we are using it.
It is the Michael Klay Thompson level
one island level.
Let's go over.
Before we go any further, please scrolldown and hit the big red subscribe button.
Turn on that bell for notificationsand give this video a thumbs up.
(00:45):
As always, you can find mewriting down in the comments
or over on Instagramat Making Everyday Magic
Today.
Today we are going to talk about MichaelKlay Thompson, often
referred to as Mikey LanguageArts Program.
The level one from published by
put out by Royal Fireworks Press.
(01:06):
Just a very, very brief overview.
This is marketed
as Language Artsfor the Gifted and Talented
and is available to homeschoolers
as well as any educator.
(01:27):
I do not think of my childrenas gifted and talented.
They're wonderfuland I think they're great.
But I'm not labeling them.
I just teach to them where they are.
And so because of that,there is no standard.
There is no bar.
I just teach them we're there.
We got to Michael Klay
(01:49):
Thompson fromwe did all about reading with my oldest.
Well actually we started another languagearts program early.
It was through,
Texas Tech ISD
is where we originally started.
And then we moved on to
all thatreading with our timber doodle kits.
(02:12):
And with that came,
I want to say
first to language lessons, which was likethe grammar portion where is reading?
Was the reading portion.
And word roots,teaching stems, word stems.
And then from there we moved into,
(02:33):
Oh man, I'm blanking hard.
Mazda's Mazda's
first language lessons more,I want to say it's like building language
or building something,but again, stems things like that.
It just it was good.
It's fine.
It's great. Whatever.
But it was the best fit.
(02:54):
And so I looked around for something elseand came across Michael Klay Thompson.
I originallythis is the level that I started, Michael
Klay Thompson with my oldest daughterwhen we started, Michael Klay Thompson.
And I want to saywe were in like fourth or fifth grade.
Fifth grade.
And I started her at level one
(03:17):
because I don't want to miss any gapsin this program.
Because again,it is built as gifted and talented.
And I wanted her to start
from the beginning, and my intent was justthat I would let her go own speed.
And so we did do thiswith her in a semester
and then moved on to the next level.
And now she's kind of I think she's ontrack in the range that they give now.
(03:37):
She is in the fourth level.
So for my youngest,
we actually sothis is Michael Klay Thompson.
Level one is what she isusing for third grade.
Her language arts history is all about
reading from pre-readingthrough level four all the way up.
When she
was in all about reading level three.
(04:01):
We had gotten because by this pointMichael Klay Thompson had released.
He has his levels of language artsstarting at level one,
but he had released the poodle series,which is like an introductory.
It is narrative style to give kidskind of the basics of grammar.
And now it just expandedto the sixth book,
(04:22):
which is clauses, and I am so temptedto buy it because I love the poodle books.
I've got videos here on on the poodlebooks.
Go check them out.
Love the poodle books.
So I started her in an effortalso to help my oldest.
We started when she was in All AboutReading level three, which I believe
was first grade.
(04:44):
We read the poodle series,which at that time was only
three books, four books, four books.
We read the poodle series togetherjust as an outlet out
loud reader reading about poodlefor my youngest tribe.
She then in her second grade year,
alongwith doing all about reading level four.
(05:06):
We then added that in the poodle series
as her grammar,so we would read a chapter a week
and she would do the activitiesat the end of the week.
At the end of the chapter.
And then she went through at the timeall five books,
because then they had added,
prepositional phrases.
(05:27):
So now she is in third grade.
We have mastered reading.
We are all done. We learned how to read.
We know all about reading.
And this year she is using
Michael Klay Thompsonlevel in the Island package.
Now if you have followed mefor any period of time,
you know thatwhen I very first bought this program,
(05:51):
I opted for the e-books.
Two reasons.
One reason cost.
It is much cheaper to buyjust the e-books.
The cost is I've got itwritten down here on my notes.
Okay, so for the homeschool packagefor all print, all paperbacks, it is $325
for 14 books
or $284 for like paperbacks
(06:13):
for the student and ebooks for book
the instructor, I think.
I don't remember how I price that.You have to check it.
I will have their site linkbelow. Don't worry.
But they have like options you can do likejust half paperback, half serious,
just student books thatif you have a second learner like I do,
or allall paperback, all digital whatever.
So the first reason was cost.
The second reason,as I just mentioned, is 14 books.
(06:37):
There's a lot of books in this set.
And I was like,where will I ever put all of these books?
It's so many books.
I don't even know if I'mlike this. Why so many books?
So I have now since negated
number onebecause Flippen hated using the ebooks.
Hated it.
(06:58):
I did not care for this programthe first time around.
I could see glimmers of greatnessin our use of it
that then care for itbecause of the stinking ebooks
using the ebooks and andand this is where I'm going.
Rogue.
If you buy homeschool package.
(07:19):
So all of any of it,
they send you an implementation guide.
It's like six pages front and back,just a little stapled
telling you how to use it.
And they will say for week one,
do this much for this book,this much of this book,
this much of this book, this muchthis book and that is Shauna's nightmare.
(07:41):
Did not know I'm using this prescribe.
No thank you. Nope.
Just like everything else, I was like,this will not work for me.
How can I make this work for me?
So what I have done in my secondgo round of using this level
when I did not care for itthe first time, is
I stuck with the digital instructor books,
(08:01):
but I went
back and purchased these studentonly books for my learner.
So I am now spent
much more money than I would have hadI just bought the books first time.
But here we are.
Lesson learned. Don't repeat my mistake.
I also do not use as prescribedbecause it just was not working for us.
(08:22):
So yes,I'm going to give you a look inside
the few books that I havebecause I don't have them all.
Again, some of them are ebooks.
But as far as using the program,
what I do is we start
first.
I feel like I need a visual for that.
Okay, so I might put little graphicson the screen.
(08:43):
We start with grammar.
Okay. The grammar book.
Once we've madeit through the grammar book,
we will then add a practice sentencea day, one that's better
once we've added a practice of the day,because we finished the first book.
And when I say I use the book, what I do
(09:03):
is I read one chapter a week.
That's it.
One chapter weeks, ten chaptersare really long, so I'll put it in half.
We read one chapter a week.
So we start with Grammar Island.
Okay, reading one chapter a week.
When we are finished with that,they now know their parts of speech.
(09:23):
Okay.
So now the idea iswe then do one practice sentence a day,
one practice sentence a day,but we also start reading one
part of a sentencesentence island one chapter a week.
Okay.
And then she'll do those activitiesat the end of the week.
That's it.
We also in the beginning startwith building language.
(09:47):
So from the beginning of the yearwe start building language
which is the vocabulary,which is the stems.
Okay.
This stemsand we will take because there are only
ten chapters of that.
We will take two weeks.So we will read it one week.
And we will write the simile or metaphorfor the stem the next week.
And then we continue on very simple,very easy.
(10:07):
We also start the readers.
So for level one,Michael Klay Thompson offered the readers
they are the mud trilogythat go along with the story.
Now, they do not recommendthat you start the readers
until after you have finishedSentence Island.
So after I finish Sentence Island,we pick up and start
(10:29):
reading them a trilogylike a Bedtime Story, just for fun.
Whenever makingsure that we get through the three books
once we are done with Sentence Island,
which I have not started yetbecause we moved like a little crazy.
And I know it's not very long.
I pick up
the poetry study and again,one chapter a week
(10:52):
and then do the activity at the endthe week. Is it?
So if you are following along
the three main parts of the program
okay, so grammar, parts of sentence
and poetry, I do those three oneand then the next and then the next.
Okay.
So that is how I do thatvocabulary the whole time.
(11:13):
The readersafter we pick up on the readers,
which in every other levelwe just start at the beginning.
But in this level you startafter the parts.
A sentence,and then practice sentence a day.
It sounds complicated.I don't mean it to you,
but I'm gonna write itphysically out in the description.
Very easy, very easy to follow
alongdoes not make you want to drown soup.
It's just you don't.You don't have to stress.
(11:34):
This is a great way to do that.
Now, a lot of people feel like thereis not enough writing in this program.
But now that I have a childwho is writing point papers
in the fourth level,
I can tell you for us it works very well.
The reason I love this program
(11:57):
is that after the first level,they will read classic literature.
Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland,Peter Pan, The Invisible Man.
They are reading and studying,and even my older daughter's sentences
that she is looking at are sentencesfrom classic literature.
You are analyzingwhat the authors are thinking.
(12:23):
It is not
formulaic writing,which I find very dry and very terrible.
It is teaching my childrento love the word
before asking themto produce their own works.
And I think this is wonderful.
It starts with,you know, parts of a sentence,
(12:43):
then writing a good sentence,taking a sentence
and making a good paragraph,taking paragraphs and making good essay
is taking essaysand conveying your message to the world.
It does not say, you know, a sentencemust have this, this and this,
and as they must have a body or,you know, an intro, three
supporting body paragraphsand a conclusion, it lets children know
that a paragraph can be one sentence,and it's how you're using the words.
(13:08):
It is how you are buildingwith the blocks that you have.
And I feel like itgreatly teaches my children
to appreciate the words, the meaning.
It is art in a written word.
It is an appreciation of artin the written word.
(13:29):
And for me, I absolutely love it.
My children are doing very wellwith this program.
Again, I'm going to insert some videoand give you a quick look into the books
because again,there's like a million of them.
And I do probably have
looks inside the booksfor almost everything else.
I still need to do level four.
(13:49):
That'll be coming up soon,but there's a lot of ideas out there
about like, physically,what's in the book.
I would like for you to consider
giving the programa shot or giving a program
a little bit more research,because it is amazing.
And yes, I'm the cost is high for me.
It is worth it.
Absolutely worth it.
(14:10):
I love this program so much.So so so much.
It is beautiful.
It is
written in a way
that makes you truly appreciatewhat you're reading.
The study of languageI think is beautiful.
So that and I am also goingto insert my daughter doing just today.
(14:31):
Her sentence analysis.
So her one practice sentence for the day.
So that so let's pop on over I'll give youa little look inside these books
and then we'll come back.
Okay guys here is my stack of thingsto show you for Michael Johnson level one.
Full disclosureI have two more of these books.
Do not know where they are.
(14:51):
One has already been read.
One we are currently reading,so it is probably somewhere near.
But now she has been making her ownvocabulary
flashcards, which I think is super cute.
And she started doing itbecause big Sister is doing it.
But she
doesn't care.
So we've got our flashcards here.
Now, as I mentioned, the readers for this
(15:13):
level are narrative basedand they are based on a fish named mud,
something that I likeabout the Michael Klay Thompson readers.
And even though in almost every levelwe own the books
that I am then purchasing for herto read in the package, and that is
because they are broken downreally nicely.
(15:35):
I like the print size.
I like that words that might be hard are
defined in the bottom.
I also like, for example,
a placid is a vocabulary wordthat she will learn next year.
Okay, I like the illustrationsand I like notes from the author.
I like when they break downwhat this in and sounds like.
(15:58):
They tell youwhy that sentence is special.
I especially like this
when we are doing the classic literaturein the older series, because it gives you
a little bio about the authors,and I think it's really cool.
Okay, so music of the hemispheresis poetry, so we'll get to it in a minute.
Practice Island, I will show youGrammer Island is where we start
building language.
Okay. So we go, are you ready for this?
(16:20):
These go at the same time.
We go like this. Okay.
Can you see like this.
All right.
And then these start here okay.
That's the order.
And I'm going to show you okay.
So I already showed youthe reader building language.
Is this tense okay
I really, really, really love the focus
on Roman architectureto explain the Greek and Roman root words.
(16:47):
I like it very much.
Now, there are no activitiesphysically in this book and that is okay.
There are
prompts to go ahead and do a simile
metaphor.
At the end of every Stem chapter,I love these.
(17:10):
And then they are repeated throughoutthroughout, throughout, throughout.
And I like that.It reinforces it. Love this.
Okay, Krammer Island Michael Johnsonis an incredibly good grammar program.
I know this because I also am learningthose hard, tricky grammar things.
So grammar islands, as you can see,
are to speechhard to sentence phrases, clauses.
Some of these parts of speech is very,very, very long.
(17:33):
We went over one part of speech each week.
I considered that like a chapter.
Now they've got these QR codes and codeswhere you can actually get printables
and things like thatwhen you've purchased it.
In as narrative style,I like the way that it is written out.
Now. This is the student book,but I like that they use color.
(17:53):
I love these little bubble chartsthat help you understand how things work.
Now, as this progressedon, there were options for her
to do some of the work in the book.
So we see right hereshe's learning what she's,
labelingwhat she's learned up to that point.
Okay.
Now I'm going to show you in just a minute
where this comes to fruition with herdoing the, the sentence analysis
(18:17):
that she can do now,
the four part sentence analysisthat she can do now that we are over
halfway through this book, see,and it looks like this parts of speech,
parts of sentence phrases, clauses,four level sentence analysis.
Okay, so we did this.
Once we do this we start on PracticeIsland and I will show you,
one of her
(18:38):
doing the at the sentence this and it'sactually here in just a minute
okay. So just one sentence day.
It's that easy.
Look at it.
Boom. Pick 11A day.
So simple.
Okay. So then sentence island.
And this is explaining how it comestogether.
The two sidesthe parts of a sentence okay.
(18:59):
Agreement.
Yeah.
Proper tense complete thought.
These are all important things.
And as you can see there'snot a lot of activities in these books.
It's mostly reading and understanding,
linking verbs,
things like that.
I like the continued color scheme.
(19:21):
I like the illustrations.
They're very simpleand easy to understand.
And then after this is when you startreading the narrative books.
Okay, music at the hemispheres.
My youngest is not there yet.
We actually do need to start this soon.
And it coversthe importance of poetry, rhyme,
alliteration, meter,stanza, similes and metaphors, poems.
(19:44):
And then just there'ssome great poems to read.
Now, it does go back and forthbetween teaching you about a famous poet,
showing you some of the thingsthat they've used to help convey
their message, as well as original poemsfrom Michael Klay Thompson.
All of it has original worksfrom Michael Klay Thompson.
But I do love that you're learninga little bit about about the authors,
(20:08):
the poets.
I love thatyou get just that little bit of background
information that really helpsyou appreciate them.
So that is it.
Okay. There's a million books, but
my take on it is I absolutely love it.
Absolutely love the approach.
I like thatthere's not a lot of fussy busywork.
I like that it allows you to be free
(20:29):
and what you're writing,as long as you're doing it well.
And that, I think, is just what I wantmy kids to take away from this.
The biggest thing I want them to take awayis to be able
to convey their message well.
So let's pop over.
I'm going to give you a look at herdoing her sentence.
Grilled tail smiled.
(20:50):
Okay.
Yeah.
You want to read me the sentence summary?
Sanjay, who rambled on the gray clouds?
Okay, great. What do we got?
Sunny?
What is suddenly wanna. No.
It's not a verb,but it's modifying our verb.
(21:13):
So what does thatbecome? Handy? Great job.
The person
sun is a noun.
Grammar.
These are words.
Great job.
He she.
(21:36):
Under is preposition.
Correct.
So he just can't get it.
I got this thing.
You see me? Did,
What?
Gray's anatomy.
Gray is not a noun is an adjective.
(21:57):
It is an adjective.
Oh, but he plans in.
What have we got?
Oops, sir, I.
Oh, okay.
So this is our subject, correct?
(22:22):
There should be songs and then mine.
Cleaning closets.
Dang.
Good job.
Okay, that was easy.
Guys.
I hope that you found this helpful,entertaining or informative.
If you did, please scroll down.
Hit that big red subscribe button,turn on the bell
for notificationsand give this video a thumbs up.
(22:43):
Like I said, I didn't even like itthe first time, but once I figured out
how to make it work for me,work for my learners.
It is a complete game changer.
And I love the Michael KlayThompson program.
I absolutely love it. I just it is
it's so good.
It's just a
really, really good fit for myselfand for my learners,
for the style of high school that I haveand tweaking their recommended schedule.
(23:05):
Really mejust such a huge difference for me.
Plus ebooks that I just,I don't I'm not an e-book person, okay?
It's just not for me. That's okay.
I'm at peace with it. I'm okay.
But you get what I'm saying.
Anyways, guys, I hope that you found thishelpful, entertaining, or informative.
If you did, please scroll down,
hit the big red subscribe button,turn on the bell
for notificationsand give this video a thumbs up.
(23:25):
As always,you can find me down in the comments
or over on Instagramat Making Everyday Magic.
Just let me.
I feel like I should get one more recap.
So this program covers grammar,
parts of speech
mechanics, little prepositional phrases,this level
specifically prepositional phrasesand very basic clauses.
(23:48):
It also covers vocabulary and poetry.
It does not cover spelling.
It does not cover.
Teach your child to read thererule of thumb is your child needs to start
using level one when they are no longerlearning to read, but are reading to learn
so it does not cover spelling.
And if you are somebodywho super focuses on the busywork
and the repetition of writingand a writing curriculum,
(24:11):
this may not be for youor you might feel the need to add.
Personally.
When we were diagraming sentencesand it just looked
like a giant web of insanity,
I knew that that was one of the reasonsone of the times we needed to change.
So for me,there's no sentence diagraming here's
labeling the different parts of speechand for level analysis.
And I love it. So
(24:31):
that's like it has everything I wanthear now.
I think that's everythingthat's very important.
If you have any questions.
If I was unclear eithercheck the description box down below.
Look for my other Michael KlayThompson videos here on the channel.
If you would like to hear
about any of the other levelsor my first experience with this level.
As always, you can find me down thereover on Instagram
making EverydayMagic guys and that's it. By.
This is
often requested.
Rarely understood.
Let's get a look at third gradelanguage arts.
What then? Hello.
My name is Shanna.
Welcome back to Making Everyday Magic.
As many of you know, we arein our eighth year of homeschooling.
Today I want to share with youwhat we are using for third grade
(00:24):
language Arts and how we are using it.
It is the Michael Klay Thompson level
one island level.
Let's go over.
Before we go any further, please scrolldown and hit the big red subscribe button.
Turn on that bell for notificationsand give this video a thumbs up.
(00:45):
As always, you can find mewriting down in the comments
or over on Instagramat Making Everyday Magic
Today.
Today we are going to talk about MichaelKlay Thompson, often
referred to as Mikey LanguageArts Program.
The level one from published by
put out by Royal Fireworks Press.
(01:06):
Just a very, very brief overview.
This is marketed
as Language Artsfor the Gifted and Talented
and is available to homeschoolers
as well as any educator.
(01:27):
I do not think of my childrenas gifted and talented.
They're wonderfuland I think they're great.
But I'm not labeling them.
I just teach to them where they are.
And so because of that,there is no standard.
There is no bar.
I just teach them we're there.
We got to Michael Klay
(01:49):
Thompson fromwe did all about reading with my oldest.
Well actually we started another languagearts program early.
It was through,
Texas Tech ISD
is where we originally started.
And then we moved on to
all thatreading with our timber doodle kits.
(02:12):
And with that came,
I want to say
first to language lessons, which was likethe grammar portion where is reading?
Was the reading portion.
And word roots,teaching stems, word stems.
And then from there we moved into,
(02:33):
Oh man, I'm blanking hard.
Mazda's Mazda's
first language lessons more,I want to say it's like building language
or building something,but again, stems things like that.
It just it was good.
It's fine.
It's great. Whatever.
But it was the best fit.
(02:54):
And so I looked around for something elseand came across Michael Klay Thompson.
I originallythis is the level that I started, Michael
Klay Thompson with my oldest daughterwhen we started, Michael Klay Thompson.
And I want to saywe were in like fourth or fifth grade.
Fifth grade.
And I started her at level one
(03:17):
because I don't want to miss any gapsin this program.
Because again,it is built as gifted and talented.
And I wanted her to start
from the beginning, and my intent was justthat I would let her go own speed.
And so we did do thiswith her in a semester
and then moved on to the next level.
And now she's kind of I think she's ontrack in the range that they give now.
(03:37):
She is in the fourth level.
So for my youngest,
we actually sothis is Michael Klay Thompson.
Level one is what she isusing for third grade.
Her language arts history is all about
reading from pre-readingthrough level four all the way up.
When she
was in all about reading level three.
(04:01):
We had gotten because by this pointMichael Klay Thompson had released.
He has his levels of language artsstarting at level one,
but he had released the poodle series,which is like an introductory.
It is narrative style to give kidskind of the basics of grammar.
And now it just expandedto the sixth book,
(04:22):
which is clauses, and I am so temptedto buy it because I love the poodle books.
I've got videos here on on the poodlebooks.
Go check them out.
Love the poodle books.
So I started her in an effortalso to help my oldest.
We started when she was in All AboutReading level three, which I believe
was first grade.
(04:44):
We read the poodle series,which at that time was only
three books, four books, four books.
We read the poodle series togetherjust as an outlet out
loud reader reading about poodlefor my youngest tribe.
She then in her second grade year,
alongwith doing all about reading level four.
(05:06):
We then added that in the poodle series
as her grammar,so we would read a chapter a week
and she would do the activitiesat the end of the week.
At the end of the chapter.
And then she went through at the timeall five books,
because then they had added,
prepositional phrases.
(05:27):
So now she is in third grade.
We have mastered reading.
We are all done. We learned how to read.
We know all about reading.
And this year she is using
Michael Klay Thompsonlevel in the Island package.
Now if you have followed mefor any period of time,
you know thatwhen I very first bought this program,
(05:51):
I opted for the e-books.
Two reasons.
One reason cost.
It is much cheaper to buyjust the e-books.
The cost is I've got itwritten down here on my notes.
Okay, so for the homeschool packagefor all print, all paperbacks, it is $325
for 14 books
or $284 for like paperbacks
(06:13):
for the student and ebooks for book
the instructor, I think.
I don't remember how I price that.You have to check it.
I will have their site linkbelow. Don't worry.
But they have like options you can do likejust half paperback, half serious,
just student books thatif you have a second learner like I do,
or allall paperback, all digital whatever.
So the first reason was cost.
The second reason,as I just mentioned, is 14 books.
(06:37):
There's a lot of books in this set.
And I was like,where will I ever put all of these books?
It's so many books.
I don't even know if I'mlike this. Why so many books?
So I have now since negated
number onebecause Flippen hated using the ebooks.
Hated it.
(06:58):
I did not care for this programthe first time around.
I could see glimmers of greatnessin our use of it
that then care for itbecause of the stinking ebooks
using the ebooks and andand this is where I'm going.
Rogue.
If you buy homeschool package.
(07:19):
So all of any of it,
they send you an implementation guide.
It's like six pages front and back,just a little stapled
telling you how to use it.
And they will say for week one,
do this much for this book,this much of this book,
this much of this book, this muchthis book and that is Shauna's nightmare.
(07:41):
Did not know I'm using this prescribe.
No thank you. Nope.
Just like everything else, I was like,this will not work for me.
How can I make this work for me?
So what I have done in my secondgo round of using this level
when I did not care for itthe first time, is
I stuck with the digital instructor books,
(08:01):
but I went
back and purchased these studentonly books for my learner.
So I am now spent
much more money than I would have hadI just bought the books first time.
But here we are.
Lesson learned. Don't repeat my mistake.
I also do not use as prescribedbecause it just was not working for us.
(08:22):
So yes,I'm going to give you a look inside
the few books that I havebecause I don't have them all.
Again, some of them are ebooks.
But as far as using the program,
what I do is we start
first.
I feel like I need a visual for that.
Okay, so I might put little graphicson the screen.
(08:43):
We start with grammar.
Okay. The grammar book.
Once we've madeit through the grammar book,
we will then add a practice sentencea day, one that's better
once we've added a practice of the day,because we finished the first book.
And when I say I use the book, what I do
(09:03):
is I read one chapter a week.
That's it.
One chapter weeks, ten chaptersare really long, so I'll put it in half.
We read one chapter a week.
So we start with Grammar Island.
Okay, reading one chapter a week.
When we are finished with that,they now know their parts of speech.
(09:23):
Okay.
So now the idea iswe then do one practice sentence a day,
one practice sentence a day,but we also start reading one
part of a sentencesentence island one chapter a week.
Okay.
And then she'll do those activitiesat the end of the week.
That's it.
We also in the beginning startwith building language.
(09:47):
So from the beginning of the yearwe start building language
which is the vocabulary,which is the stems.
Okay.
This stemsand we will take because there are only
ten chapters of that.
We will take two weeks.So we will read it one week.
And we will write the simile or metaphorfor the stem the next week.
And then we continue on very simple,very easy.
(10:07):
We also start the readers.
So for level one,Michael Klay Thompson offered the readers
they are the mud trilogythat go along with the story.
Now, they do not recommendthat you start the readers
until after you have finishedSentence Island.
So after I finish Sentence Island,we pick up and start
(10:29):
reading them a trilogylike a Bedtime Story, just for fun.
Whenever makingsure that we get through the three books
once we are done with Sentence Island,
which I have not started yetbecause we moved like a little crazy.
And I know it's not very long.
I pick up
the poetry study and again,one chapter a week
(10:52):
and then do the activity at the endthe week. Is it?
So if you are following along
the three main parts of the program
okay, so grammar, parts of sentence
and poetry, I do those three oneand then the next and then the next.
Okay.
So that is how I do thatvocabulary the whole time.
(11:13):
The readersafter we pick up on the readers,
which in every other levelwe just start at the beginning.
But in this level you startafter the parts.
A sentence,and then practice sentence a day.
It sounds complicated.I don't mean it to you,
but I'm gonna write itphysically out in the description.
Very easy, very easy to follow
alongdoes not make you want to drown soup.
It's just you don't.You don't have to stress.
(11:34):
This is a great way to do that.
Now, a lot of people feel like thereis not enough writing in this program.
But now that I have a childwho is writing point papers
in the fourth level,
I can tell you for us it works very well.
The reason I love this program
(11:57):
is that after the first level,they will read classic literature.
Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland,Peter Pan, The Invisible Man.
They are reading and studying,and even my older daughter's sentences
that she is looking at are sentencesfrom classic literature.
You are analyzingwhat the authors are thinking.
(12:23):
It is not
formulaic writing,which I find very dry and very terrible.
It is teaching my childrento love the word
before asking themto produce their own works.
And I think this is wonderful.
It starts with,you know, parts of a sentence,
(12:43):
then writing a good sentence,taking a sentence
and making a good paragraph,taking paragraphs and making good essay
is taking essaysand conveying your message to the world.
It does not say, you know, a sentencemust have this, this and this,
and as they must have a body or,you know, an intro, three
supporting body paragraphsand a conclusion, it lets children know
that a paragraph can be one sentence,and it's how you're using the words.
(13:08):
It is how you are buildingwith the blocks that you have.
And I feel like itgreatly teaches my children
to appreciate the words, the meaning.
It is art in a written word.
It is an appreciation of artin the written word.
(13:29):
And for me, I absolutely love it.
My children are doing very wellwith this program.
Again, I'm going to insert some videoand give you a quick look into the books
because again,there's like a million of them.
And I do probably have
looks inside the booksfor almost everything else.
I still need to do level four.
(13:49):
That'll be coming up soon,but there's a lot of ideas out there
about like, physically,what's in the book.
I would like for you to consider
giving the programa shot or giving a program
a little bit more research,because it is amazing.
And yes, I'm the cost is high for me.
It is worth it.
Absolutely worth it.
(14:10):
I love this program so much.So so so much.
It is beautiful.
It is
written in a way
that makes you truly appreciatewhat you're reading.
The study of languageI think is beautiful.
So that and I am also goingto insert my daughter doing just today.
(14:31):
Her sentence analysis.
So her one practice sentence for the day.
So that so let's pop on over I'll give youa little look inside these books
and then we'll come back.
Okay guys here is my stack of thingsto show you for Michael Johnson level one.
Full disclosureI have two more of these books.
Do not know where they are.
(14:51):
One has already been read.
One we are currently reading,so it is probably somewhere near.
But now she has been making her ownvocabulary
flashcards, which I think is super cute.
And she started doing itbecause big Sister is doing it.
But she
doesn't care.
So we've got our flashcards here.
Now, as I mentioned, the readers for this
(15:13):
level are narrative basedand they are based on a fish named mud,
something that I likeabout the Michael Klay Thompson readers.
And even though in almost every levelwe own the books
that I am then purchasing for herto read in the package, and that is
because they are broken downreally nicely.
(15:35):
I like the print size.
I like that words that might be hard are
defined in the bottom.
I also like, for example,
a placid is a vocabulary wordthat she will learn next year.
Okay, I like the illustrationsand I like notes from the author.
I like when they break downwhat this in and sounds like.
(15:58):
They tell youwhy that sentence is special.
I especially like this
when we are doing the classic literaturein the older series, because it gives you
a little bio about the authors,and I think it's really cool.
Okay, so music of the hemispheresis poetry, so we'll get to it in a minute.
Practice Island, I will show youGrammer Island is where we start
building language.
Okay. So we go, are you ready for this?
(16:20):
These go at the same time.
We go like this. Okay.
Can you see like this.
All right.
And then these start here okay.
That's the order.
And I'm going to show you okay.
So I already showed youthe reader building language.
Is this tense okay
I really, really, really love the focus
on Roman architectureto explain the Greek and Roman root words.
(16:47):
I like it very much.
Now, there are no activitiesphysically in this book and that is okay.
There are
prompts to go ahead and do a simile
metaphor.
At the end of every Stem chapter,I love these.
(17:10):
And then they are repeated throughoutthroughout, throughout, throughout.
And I like that.It reinforces it. Love this.
Okay, Krammer Island Michael Johnsonis an incredibly good grammar program.
I know this because I also am learningthose hard, tricky grammar things.
So grammar islands, as you can see,
are to speechhard to sentence phrases, clauses.
Some of these parts of speech is very,very, very long.
(17:33):
We went over one part of speech each week.
I considered that like a chapter.
Now they've got these QR codes and codeswhere you can actually get printables
and things like thatwhen you've purchased it.
In as narrative style,I like the way that it is written out.
Now. This is the student book,but I like that they use color.
(17:53):
I love these little bubble chartsthat help you understand how things work.
Now, as this progressedon, there were options for her
to do some of the work in the book.
So we see right hereshe's learning what she's,
labelingwhat she's learned up to that point.
Okay.
Now I'm going to show you in just a minute
where this comes to fruition with herdoing the, the sentence analysis
(18:17):
that she can do now,
the four part sentence analysisthat she can do now that we are over
halfway through this book, see,and it looks like this parts of speech,
parts of sentence phrases, clauses,four level sentence analysis.
Okay, so we did this.
Once we do this we start on PracticeIsland and I will show you,
one of her
(18:38):
doing the at the sentence this and it'sactually here in just a minute
okay. So just one sentence day.
It's that easy.
Look at it.
Boom. Pick 11A day.
So simple.
Okay. So then sentence island.
And this is explaining how it comestogether.
The two sidesthe parts of a sentence okay.
(18:59):
Agreement.
Yeah.
Proper tense complete thought.
These are all important things.
And as you can see there'snot a lot of activities in these books.
It's mostly reading and understanding,
linking verbs,
things like that.
I like the continued color scheme.
(19:21):
I like the illustrations.
They're very simpleand easy to understand.
And then after this is when you startreading the narrative books.
Okay, music at the hemispheres.
My youngest is not there yet.
We actually do need to start this soon.
And it coversthe importance of poetry, rhyme,
alliteration, meter,stanza, similes and metaphors, poems.
(19:44):
And then just there'ssome great poems to read.
Now, it does go back and forthbetween teaching you about a famous poet,
showing you some of the thingsthat they've used to help convey
their message, as well as original poemsfrom Michael Klay Thompson.
All of it has original worksfrom Michael Klay Thompson.
But I do love that you're learninga little bit about about the authors,
(20:08):
the poets.
I love thatyou get just that little bit of background
information that really helpsyou appreciate them.
So that is it.
Okay. There's a million books, but
my take on it is I absolutely love it.
Absolutely love the approach.
I like thatthere's not a lot of fussy busywork.
I like that it allows you to be free
(20:29):
and what you're writing,as long as you're doing it well.
And that, I think, is just what I wantmy kids to take away from this.
The biggest thing I want them to take awayis to be able
to convey their message well.
So let's pop over.
I'm going to give you a look at herdoing her sentence.
Grilled tail smiled.
(20:50):
Okay.
Yeah.
You want to read me the sentence summary?
Sanjay, who rambled on the gray clouds?
Okay, great. What do we got?
Sunny?
What is suddenly wanna. No.
It's not a verb,but it's modifying our verb.
(21:13):
So what does thatbecome? Handy? Great job.
The person
sun is a noun.
Grammar.
These are words.
Great job.
He she.
(21:36):
Under is preposition.
Correct.
So he just can't get it.
I got this thing.
You see me? Did,
What?
Gray's anatomy.
Gray is not a noun is an adjective.
(21:57):
It is an adjective.
Oh, but he plans in.
What have we got?
Oops, sir, I.
Oh, okay.
So this is our subject, correct?
(22:22):
There should be songs and then mine.
Cleaning closets.
Dang.
Good job.
Okay, that was easy.
Guys.
I hope that you found this helpful,entertaining or informative.
If you did, please scroll down.
Hit that big red subscribe button,turn on the bell
for notificationsand give this video a thumbs up.
(22:43):
Like I said, I didn't even like itthe first time, but once I figured out
how to make it work for me,work for my learners.
It is a complete game changer.
And I love the Michael KlayThompson program.
I absolutely love it. I just it is
it's so good.
It's just a
really, really good fit for myselfand for my learners,
for the style of high school that I haveand tweaking their recommended schedule.
(23:05):
Really mejust such a huge difference for me.
Plus ebooks that I just,I don't I'm not an e-book person, okay?
It's just not for me. That's okay.
I'm at peace with it. I'm okay.
But you get what I'm saying.
Anyways, guys, I hope that you found thishelpful, entertaining, or informative.
If you did, please scroll down,
hit the big red subscribe button,turn on the bell
for notificationsand give this video a thumbs up.
(23:25):
As always,you can find me down in the comments
or over on Instagramat Making Everyday Magic.
Just let me.
I feel like I should get one more recap.
So this program covers grammar,
parts of speech
mechanics, little prepositional phrases,this level
specifically prepositional phrasesand very basic clauses.
(23:48):
It also covers vocabulary and poetry.
It does not cover spelling.
It does not cover.
Teach your child to read thererule of thumb is your child needs to start
using level one when they are no longerlearning to read, but are reading to learn
so it does not cover spelling.
And if you are somebodywho super focuses on the busywork
and the repetition of writingand a writing curriculum,
(24:11):
this may not be for youor you might feel the need to add.
Personally.
When we were diagraming sentencesand it just looked
like a giant web of insanity,
I knew that that was one of the reasonsone of the times we needed to change.
So for me,there's no sentence diagraming here's
labeling the different parts of speechand for level analysis.
And I love it. So
(24:31):
that's like it has everything I wanthear now.
I think that's everythingthat's very important.
If you have any questions.
If I was unclear eithercheck the description box down below.
Look for my other Michael KlayThompson videos here on the channel.
If you would like to hear
about any of the other levelsor my first experience with this level.
As always, you can find me down thereover on Instagram
making EverydayMagic guys and that's it. By.
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