Dictation Dictation is a wonderful tool that homeschooling parents use for learning language. What it does is it mixes handwriting, spelling, grammar, punctuation, proof-reading, listening, and anything else that has to do with the language arts. You must always use high quality literature for your dictation so that your child will be exposed to good examples of writing as well as building a higher vocabulary in use.  Younger children can look at the book and copy the words themselves and then check it for any mistakes. Older children can also start out by copying; however, they will later switch to listening as you read the selection a sentence at a time. They will decide from hearing your voice about how to punctuate the words.  Dictation is hard for anyone and you may encounter some serious complaints from your kids, but it is worth it.  There are writing and grammar lessons that can be taken after a dictation lesson. If the selection has a lot of adjectives, your children can learn what an adjective is and how to pick out the adjectives along with the nouns that the adjectives describe. You can have your child read the words out loud without the adjectives and then again with the adjectives. Have your child compare the two to each other. For creative writing, you could have him change some of the adjectives for different ones as a fun activity. You can plan similar activities with nouns and verbs too. If you want to focus on the punctuation, try to pick selections that have plenty of punctuation such as quotation marks and commas. Plan to do dictation as many times as you want each week. If you plan to use dictation as a way to teach grammar, then get a good college grammar reference book such as Harbrace or Warriner's. Reading Reading out loud should be a daily activity as well as reading quietly to yourself. Of course, during the school years, reading includes phonics instruction and learning the alphabet. Later on your child will read as a means of getting information, for textbook reading and reading for pleasure. Reading for information purposes includes reading things like food labels, road signs, maps, newspapers, etc. Textbook reading would likely have to include learning some study skills, learning the vocabulary of the text book, speed reading, and more. Reading for pleasure would include reading things like poetry, literature, thought provoking articles, and even comic books.  You will want to plan for your child to do plenty of reading every day. You should also plan to read out loud to your children every day. You must also listen to your child when he/she reads aloud because this will give him an opportunity or improve his reading and will give you an opportunity to help him with his pronunciation, tone, and rhythm. It can also help with easing the fear of public speaking. Writing If you are using a writing curriculum such as Writing Strands, Easy Writing, Wordsmith, etc. you are going to have to decide how many times a week that you are going to have a writing class and make your choices from there. Avoid over scheduling for writing because some children may need extra days for their lessons.  For example, each assignment in Writing Strands is spread out for a certain amount of days. If you plan this program in advance, you will have to skip several days between each assignment just in case your child needs extra days for study and review. If you plan all of the writing classes in advance, like always, you want to use a pencil and leave plenty of days in between assignments. It may be better to plan one assignment at a time and write the lessons that you child completes in your planner as you go.  If you are going to design your own writing classes instead, you can plan one assignment for every two weeks or longer if necessary; which makes it a total of up to 16 assignments in all. This plan will give you 4 weeks of flexibility to work with, which could be just the thing you need to get your child up and running. Handwriting When your child is learning the alphabet it would be a good idea to also impress how necessary it is for him to form the letters well. This would likely add up to a short 5 minute class that doesn’t pressure the child. There are a lot of good handwriting programs that you can get from libraries, bookstores, and online. All you have to do is decide which one to use and then stick with it.  You will want to plan to do handwriting on a daily basis until your child can remember how to form the letters and do it legibly. After you do that, you can have handwriting classes as they are needed and you will decide that based on how well your child is doing.  You will know that your child is doing well if: · the letters in the words that he writes are spaced just right (a pinky finger apart). · all of the short lower case letters are the same height. · all of the upper case letters and tall letters reach the top line. · his words are spaced properly. · the letters have a similar slant. · all of the letters are sitting on the line. Make sure that you go gentle with the criticism of your child’s writing. You must remember that there's a lot of time for your child to practice and become better at handwriting. I would recommend short classes. Fifteen minutes should be the most amount of time spent daily on it.