A Stable Beginning: Hake Publishing: Hake/Saxon Grammar and Writing 3 ~ a TOS review

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Hake Publishing: Hake/Saxon Grammar and Writing 3 ~ a TOS review

For the last few weeks McKenzie, my rising 3rd grader, and I have been working through the new Hake/Saxon Grammar and Writing 3 from Hake Publishing. I am excited to tell you more about it so let’s get started.

So, if Hake Publishing sounds familiar to you you are not being confused because they are commonly known by the name of Saxon in the homeschool community. Stephan Hake began writing for John Saxon way back in 1984 and is currently the lead author of the 3rd through 8th grade Saxon Math textbooks. Mr. Hake has long believed that students would benefit from a language arts program with the same model of incremental development and spiral review as the Saxon Math model utilizes. Thus began the Grammar & Writing series that is model after the ever popular Saxon math series.

This rigorous English language arts series is designed to help 3rd -8th graders become successful communicators. The comprehensive program covers:

~ English grammar ~ Writing ~ Punctuation ~ Spelling and ~ Vocabulary development

Each level includes development of the most common concepts of grammar including the eight parts of speech, sentence structure and diagramming, capitalization and correct word usage. There are two parts to the Hake/Saxon Grammar and Writing 3 program including a softcover teachers book, a consumable writing workbook, and a writing workbook. The 3rd grade level includes 111 lessons with 22 tests. A handy daily schedule is included inside the front cover to help you plan your year out.

The lessons are each scripted out for the teacher and an estimated breakdown of how much time should be spent on each section is given. I found these were not necessarily geared towards our homeschool day, but a helpful tracking so that we did not get sidetracked or stay on one section for too long. I did appreciate the scripted lessons for teaching I just wished the Teacher Guide also had a copy of the student pages in the consumable textbook.

Hake/Saxon Grammar and Writing 3 {Hake Publishing Reviews}

We are Saxon math users from K-12 so this program has been a great option for us for language arts instruction too. Since it is summer, McKenzie is able to work through the book 3 days a week around her gymnastics training. Because she trains mid-afternoon, it has been easy for her to get up and eat breakfast and do morning chores then hit her grammar lessons before we leave for the gym. Most days this was done without much complaint!

Overall, we have both enjoyed the lessons because they are short and to the point without much fluff. I was kind of confused on the first lesson when they discussed subject/predicates. The lesson seemed to be asking for the complete subject/predicate even though it did not say so. My daughter could not grasp the concept of the forms of “be” being a predicate at first and I had to pull out our other grammar books to break it down and explain it better to her. After this, the program has been smooth sailing.