My HiveFam knows that my unschooling son studies using old textbooks of 1950s. These books were commonly used in the USSR times, and they show brilliant results in education.
Modern textbooks have nothing in common with them. They are a total nightmare of teachers, kids and parents, that's why I've chosen old Soviet books for our unschooling.
Russian, Maths, and now - English!
At first we used an old fairytale book where kids are taught with the help of songs, rhymes and fairytales.
Now we're moving to a real school textbook that was used in the 3rd form (it was the 1st year of English studying at that time).
Now kids start to stusy English at the 2nd form.
But they start with reading at once - hey, how can kids read if they don't know letters?? A secret... The modern system thinks it's Ok just to see an alphabet and remember all complicated English reading rules at once...
This old Soviet textbook is different.
it's very thin (like all Soviet books), but thanks to a great system of info classification, it covers all necessary topics and let kids remember them fast and great!
I'm inspired when my son gives to English 30 min a day, but he can read, write, translate and speak simple sentences already!
Here are some pages of this book
At first letters, given not in the direct order but in the order we can combine them into the first words.
Then we have sentences and simple grammar constructions.
Later we have simple texts and writing exercises.
I was surprised but the 24th lesson is devoted to Present Continious already!
So this thin book leads kids from first letters to forst tenses!
Just for 22 lessons!
Now we're at the 17th lesson, and I am eager to know what results my son has after these 25 lessons.
Will he really speaks well using all these studied words and some tenses??
I am sure he will!