Review: Brookdale House (TOS Review)

For this review we used Writing Through Medieval History Level 1 Cursive from Brookdale House.

Writing Through Medieval History Level 1 is a Charlotte Mason style curriculum.  Each lesson consists of a reading, then writing an excerpt from that reading, and also marking the grammar in that excerpt. 

There were several different ways that the lesson could be delivered, making it adaptable to many levels.  My 9 year old is still new to cursive, so we simplified it just a bit and used the easiest option.

We used this this 3-5 days a week, depending on how many days of school we had each week.  I would first read the story.  The first day my son would use the page that had the copy lines under the each line of the excerpt to copy the FIRST of the two sentences.  The next day he would copy the second sentence and the third day he would mark the grammar for the two sentences. 

Writing is a struggle for us, so this was the best way to tackle these lessons without discouraging him in his cursive writing.  It gave him the ability to copy cursive, practice reading the cursive and writing in cursive in words that constructed a sentence.  He had done similar grammar labeling in another curriculum, so that was easy for him to do.  There is a grammar guide included in the lesson book (in the appendix) to introduce/teach grammar to those who do not have history of it.

I loved how this curriculum tied in with our current history studies!  This brought history, language arts and handwriting together into one!

Other options for writing were dictation (blank sheets with no writing on them, you read to them what you want them to write), sheets with the excerpt written at the top and they write it on the lines below. 

This is an example of a page he did

You can see how it was written in with a line below each written line to copy.  He then marked the grammar in red.  He only marked what we have covered to this point, which is articles, adjectives, nouns, and verbs mostly.

Each story that was included is not very long, I read the story aloud for each lesson.  It is also suggested that you ask questions about the story to your child.  Some sample questions are given at the beginning of the book and also in the beginning of the appendix.

Also included with each story is a written summation page.  For younger students, they will dictate and the parent write, older students can write their own summary of the story. 

The manual is set up very step by step, with all instructions at the beginning of the book, prior to the stories and written work pages.  The appendix in the back is also quite handy.

I received an ebook; I loaded it into iBooks and printed sheets as I needed them.  It was very easy to use.  They also give you an outline of how each lesson should run, though they note that it’s best not to push your students more than they are ready, and to adjust the recommended schedule as needed.   Printed books are also available.

This ebook is $22.95, printed is $30.95.  They carry different levels, in both manuscript and cursive and have all 4 years of history study available.  They carry lots of other great products too, many of which were also reviewed by the crew!

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