Tuesday, February 03, 2009

We LOVE Diamond Notes

Yep, Zach and I love Diamond Notes. Some of you are probably scratching your head at this point, right? What in the world is she talking about? Diamond Notes are part of our Sonlight curriculum, part of the language arts specifically. Diamond Notes can be seen on the Sonlight website, and probably purchased separately and can stand alone even if you don't use the rest of Sonlight. There are sample pages on the Sonlight website too so you can see what I'm talking about.

Basically it is for students to learn to write paragraphs. When I was in school I still recall we were supposed to do a topic sentence, blah, blah, blah. Well, you still need to do that, but diamond notes gives excellent visuals of a baseball diamond (hence the name Diamond Notes) to fill in first, sort of a brainstorming schematic. From there the student goes to separate sentences based on his baseball diamond. And from there he or she takes those separate sentences and forms the paragraph. The entire Diamond Notes program takes 5 weeks at 2-3 days a week. And it is miraculous for my kid who is ADHD and really has trouble organizing his thoughts coherently to write a paragraph. I really can't say enough good things about it.

So, if you are a parent trying to teach your child to do more coherent and concise paragraphs, this may be what you are looking for. Take a look! :)

3 comments:

Luke Holzmann said...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience. It's so encouraging to hear! [smile]

~Luke

Luke Holzmann said...

Oh, and if you wouldn't mind writing a review over on Sonlight, that would be much appreciated and help other homeschooling families [smile]. Thanks!

~Luke

Hen Jen said...

that sounds like a great idea. I am just about to click the 'buy now' button for sonlight language arts 2...you have given me another reason to feel good about it.

This is my first time visiting your blog, I am in Ca too...small world!