This is a complete English program written for 7th grade, but can easily be adapted for 6th and 8th graders as well. Although it is written to be used in one year, the author has given details of how it can be broken down into a two year program.

Margot Davidson has taken beautiful Literature pieces, paintings and poems, and incorporated them into a program to teach English. By using narration, copy work, Literature analysis, discussion, and grammar, your child will come away with an understanding of how sentences, paragraphs, poems and stories are put together. The approach is gentle yet the writing assignments require higher order thinking than any comparable English program on the market. Lingua Mater would be a wonderful next step for those using Primary Language Lessons, Intermediate Language Lessons or Stories with a View. Lessons are perfect for your Middle School child and the text is a wonderful preparation for the High School years which will require more in-depth analysis and writing.

The student book is broken down into four Units and each Unit has nine weeks. The student book is not meant to be written in, but there is permission for you to photocopy for your own family. (Or you can purchase the supplement from Hillside Education, which has all the work done for you, photocopies would cost you much more.)There are rubrics to help you determine your child's writing abilities and checklists for your child to use himself to evaluate whether he has completed his writing assignments accordingly. The teacher's guide is wonderful and includes examples of the types of answers you are looking for from your child's grammar and discussion work.

Hurray to Mrs. Davidson for putting out a product which will be a treasure to Catholic home school parents for years to come!