Inside the Guide: LHFHG’s Language Arts Box of Plans
This “Inside the Guide” series provides a quick snapshot of Little Hearts for His Glory (LHFHG)! It’s a handy “how-to” reference, just one box of plans at a time. Have you ordered Little Hearts for His Glory from Heart of Dakota? Thank you – so fun! Are you getting excited to start? Totally understandable! Well, here’s your quick-start “Inside the Guide” for…LHFHG’s Language Arts box of plans!
Quick Start Info
Time It Takes: 10 minutes
Days It’s On: Days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
Description: LHFHG’s Language Arts box of plans can be found on the “Learning the Basics” right side of the plans. Seven well-loved books by author Thorton Burgess and Peter Rabbit and Other Favorite Tales by Beatrix Potter provide the eight read-alouds for this box of plans. Parents read aloud approximately a chapter a day and teach a rotation of five follow-up skills. Each chapter takes about 5 minutes to read, and each follow-up skill takes about 5 minutes to teach.
A Handy How-To for LHFHG’s Language Arts Box of Plans
Begin each Language Arts lesson by reading the assigned pages aloud to your child. Then, teach the following rotation of skills using the plans in your LHFHG guide:
- Day 1: Basic comprehension discussion questions
- Day 2: Retelling the story in a variety of ways
- Day 3: Critical thinking questions including some vocabulary discussion
- Day 4: Early writing practice emphasizing names and simple words
- Day 5: Moral connection questions with personal application
These timeless, well-loved books provide the ideal living books to teach language arts to 5 – 7 year-olds. Short chapters with engaging stories keep children’s attention, while higher-level vocabulary exposes children to new words.
Since each chapter focuses on one main character and the many different (often witty) problems the character encounters, children begin to know characters better and better. As children “meet” new characters in each subsequent book, old characters from previous books make cameo appearances too. This helps children begin to eagerly predict what may happen next, as they begin to know the characters on a deeper level.
This ‘family’ of characters teaches valuable lessons about animals, nature, and the environment. Children gain needed language arts skills by discussing provided questions, retelling parts of the story, practicing early writing skills, making moral connections, and relating personally to the characters.
Sample Pages
The purpose of LHFHG’s Language Arts box of plans is to help children develop listening comprehension. The goal is for children to be able to listen to short chapters read aloud without the aid of colorful pictures. (Keep in mind there are MANY books with breathtakingly beautiful colorful pictures in LHFHG! The Storytime books, the Visual History books, and the Science books all include full-color pictures because they teach different skills than the LHFHG’s Language Arts box of plans.)
Colorful pictures are not necessary in these books because Thorton Burgess simply knows just how to tell a story! Growing up in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Thorton loved roaming Cape Cod’s woods, fields, and marshes. He knew the birds, animals, and plant life so well that when he became a father himself, he told tales of his outdoor adventures to his son at bedtime.
Thorton’s book The Adventures of Reddy Fox was first published in 1913. These tales that began as bedtime stories for his son soon became the read aloud stories for millions of children all around the world.
Each short Thorton Burgess book includes 80 to 90 pages of reading with 5 black-and-white hand-drawn illustrations. Each illustration includes a caption, and each caption references a key thing that happened in the reading.
Below, you can see samples of The Adventures of Reddy Fox, and you can also click on the link to see readable PDFs of the samples of the book:
 
Box Specific Notes
I liked to read these delightful books on our comfy couch with my son tucked under my arm. This helped him wiggle less, listen more carefully, and follow along better. As tempted as you may be to read more than the short assigned pages each day – don’t! Little ones can only focus for so long, and the follow-up skills take concentration too.
Little ones’ answers to the provided questions after the readings may not be that great at first! The new skill they are learning is to listen to a read aloud without the aid of lots of pictures to help them decipher the meaning. Some little ones might just say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” in answer to the questions or oral narration prompts. Keep in mind, this could be an honest answer! They really might not know! They have to learn to truly listen to the words you are reading aloud, without the aid of illustrations.
Before beginning to read, it helped to tell my sons they needed to listen carefully, as I would be asking them questions about the reading after I finished reading. My sons’ answers were so much better then! The whole reading, they knew the intent was to listen carefully, as opposed to just sort of listening for fun.
I remember vividly one my sons did not realize there were TWO foxes in Reddy Fox. He somehow completely missed Granny Fox’s presence until he saw her in a picture quite far into the book! He wondered why Reddy was wearing a skirt. I told him he wasn’t! I said that was Granny Fox. He said, “Who’s Granny Fox?” Yikes.
So, be patient! Children’s answers and narrations get better as their listening comprehension gets better. Then, they enjoy the books all the more! They can eagerly anticipate what will happen next because they “know” the characters, and they are mindfully thinking about what’s happening in the story. These books turned out to be favorites for ALL my children! So much so, they begged me to find more of them to read for fun later on their own when they were older! I did. And they still line my bookshelves for grandkids someday.
