LLATL

Product: Learning Language Arts Through Literature
Subject: Language Arts
Levels Used: Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange, Tan, Purple
Dates Used: 1997-2007

Likes:I have taught 4 children to learn to read with their wonderful Blue and Red books. It makes it so easy. I begin when they are 5 on the Blue book, and by the time they finish the Red book, they are almost 7 and reading fluently. They love that they can tackle little books every week that slowly get harder.

For the older levels (Yellow on up) They have 180 lessons/book. It is VERY Easy to use, it all laid out for you and it has a lot of fun activities. This really is all you need to do all of language arts.

Dislikes: I don't like the Yellow Book because it starts doing cursive in the book and my children are usually 7 when we start and not ready for this. I prefer to use Handwriting Without Tears, so we skip those pages in the book.

I don't care for how there are 36 weeks of lessons in each book. For most, this is a blessing because it's all you have to do for the year, and you're done. For us, though, we prefer to do other things for LA's through the year like have my children write their own stories, proof read them, make a final copy in a bare board book and illustrate them. They learn so much LA's this way.

With LLATL though, I never felt that I could take the time to do other fun things or we were behind. I still use LLATL for Blue/Red books but have switched to Total Language Plus which is more flexible with our time after the Red book.
If you want a 180 day curriculum though, it's awesome. If you want some flex time, it might not be for you.