Language Lessons for a Living Education Review

Language Lessons for a Living Education is a Christian and Charlotte Mason inspired curriculum from Master Books.

This curriculum offers short lessons, is inexpensive, great for kids that struggle with focus and offers biblical copywork. Often times people wonder if Language Lessons for a Living Education is ‘enough’.

This post covers the pros and cons

I will also explain why I enjoy using this curriculum even as a non-Christian and how we adapt it.

My biggest draw was short lessons.

Our oldest daughter really struggles with focus. Long lessons are met with tears, or her shutting down. Language arts particularly has been a struggle. Spelling You See is working ok for her, but there are other elements of language arts that I wanted to introduce her to gently.

One of my favorite things about MasterBooks is the check off lists at the front.

I love that organization, and it’s easy for me to look back and see what we’ve done.

I like to ‘reverse’ plan, as in I write down what we did that day in my teacher planner  instead of making check off lists. The bonus of Master Books are the check off lists at the beginning to fill out the date and check off the lessons you’ve done (we don’t grade).

Many home educators are concerned with how light this language arts curriculum is compared to others.

I do agree, that it’s light, and we often do 2-3 pages instead of just one in a day.

But the because the pages are light, offers larger font, and has a lot of white space, it makes it far less daunting for kids that do struggle with learning or feeling overwhelmed.

Is LLLE enough?

For those that don’t feel like it’s not enough, people often move up ahead one level for their grade.

We didn’t do that, but I also don’t only use this curriculum as our sole language arts. We love the Brave Writer lifestyle and do other Charlotte Mason inspired copywork as well as Spelling you See. I also tried the Good and the Beautiful, but there was a lot of geography in it, and we like to do Poetry Tea Time for poetry which TGATB also has a lot of.

Biblical worldview

If you do want your kids to have Charlotte Mason inspired copywork with a biblical worldview then this curriculum definitely offers that

I love trying out different curriculum to try and find the right fit for my kids and their learning styles. As we enjoy adding in elements of Charlotte Mason into our homeschool, I had first tried Math Lessons for a Living Education. I found that even as a non-Christian homeschooler, I was able to adapt certain elements of this curriculum for my kids. *Please note * when it comes to curriculum I am ‘technically’ secular but I’m totally happy and ok using Christian resources if they are good. If you are a secular homeschooler that doesn’t wish to use Christian resources this likely isn’t the curriculum for you.

Biblical copywork

Personally (this is our family’s choice) we don’t do the copywork from the Bible stories ( I do read them to my kids, so that they have an open world viewpoint and understand many religions and their beliefs).

We do other copywork on that day, but we use the rest of the days from Language Lessons for a Living Education.

We also don’t always read the stories

The student reads the highlighted parts, the parent reads the rest.

Sometimes I read them, other times I don’t.

All of Master Books have a story line throughout their Language Lessons for a Living Education and Math Lessons for a Living Education. I would say I read about half of them. The stories in LLLE are a lot more biblical than the Math, I found the math I could tweak a word here and there, but not so with the LLLE.

As a non-Christian homeschooler, it might seem strange to use such a strong Christian program. 

I have yet to find something that my grade 4 daughter doesn’t feel overwhelmed with. This is working, so I am sticking with it for now.

Another reason is that a lot of our family members are Christian and I do want my kids to understand a biblical world point because of that. We also enjoy adding Waldorf inspired learning, and they cover creation and biblical stories in certain early grades. Every family is different, I also know Christian families that don’t wish for their religion to be incorporated into subjects such as math or language arts. What suits one family, won’t necessarily suit another. 

I truly appreciate the gentleness of this language arts program, to others, that is the major con.

Fantastic price

Lastly, another reason why I really liked this curriculum was the price. It’s not expensive and I feel like it’s a great supplement or full language arts curriculum for kids that struggle with language arts.

Have you tried Master Books Language Lessons for a Living Education?