Review- Writing With Ease Level 2

About the book:

• This book uses passages and sentences from classic children's literature, Workbook 2 allows young writers to practice their skills while absorbing the style and grace of great authors. Charming illustrations by Jeff West add a visual element that will spark your child's imagination.
• This book is scripted
• It provides dictation exercises
• This book helps your child summarize passages, focusing on the main topics.
• Each week is broken into 5 days, with each day building on the next.

 What we liked:

• I like the way the book is laid out. It’s easy to navigate through, because it’s broken down into small chunks.
• I like the passages that have been chosen. They are fun and quirky, and usually teach a moral of some sort.
• I like that the passages are not simple and kiddy, but rather pieces taken from classical books. There were times that I would read a passage and think, “that’s way above her head”, but she understood it.
• I liked how it challenged Hailey to think about the important details of a story, rather than rattling off the entire story.

What we didn’t like:

• I really like this book, and feel that it is a great component to our curriculum. But, Hailey did not do well with it. She has an extremely hard time summarizing the passages. She can tell me the entire passage, but to summarize seems very difficult for her. I continued on with this book hoping that would get better, but it was only a source of frustration for both her and I. So we discontinued the use of the use of this book. That said, I don’t have any real negatives about it.

My thought overall:

I think this book is very well laid out, and I love the thoughts of using it. I plan to keep it on my shelves, and maybe start with level 1 with my son, moving on to level 2. I would recommend this book. As always, my suggestion is to follow the child’s lead. I did not feel that it was worth the frustration it caused my daughter, and would not force it at such a young age. There is still time to work on summarizing in a way that works for her.