Please help me with dd9's schedule.

[Night Elf]

My dd9 is using Sonlight 1+2 as her main program. Though it's light, we chose this because it uses CHOW and has lots of books. She wanted to read World History and I wanted her to read lots of different literature. She was in public school from Aug. '06 to Sept. '07, and the idea of American History just didn't appeal to her. She's reading the books at her own pace and it definitely won't last 36 weeks. I'll likely move her into Core 3 when she finishes 1+2 unless DH decides to put her into K12 which our son is using.

 

Anyway, she finished Writing Tales 2 working at her own pace. She basically flew through it. She started Wordsmith Apprentice this week. She's using Sonlight's Grade 3-5 LA, but the daily assignments take her 5 to 10 minutes. I need to beef up the work so I'm putting her back into Growing With Grammar Grade 5. She only got halfway through Chapter 1 before the holidays.

 

Using the materials we have, how can I make her program challenging for a 5th grader? I simply cannot buy anything else right now. What would you do with this child? :)

[Chris in VA]

Actually, do you have to beef it up, if you add in the GWG and Wordsmith Apprentice? Sounds like she is really a writer, and LA is her strength. Perhaps just allowing her to be really good at it w/o turning it into something super challenging?

If you do add, maybe add chapter summaries or open ended questions (add a new ending to this chapter or this book, write a letter to a character, how would you have reacted to this character's situation, etc). Perhaps googling "writing prompts" or something of that nature would lead you to a list. On the other hand, you don't want to suck the life out of every book.

Just my $.02!

[Night Elf]

I'm not sure how to schedule Growing with Grammar and Wordsmith Apprentice. Are these programs that she can do daily? That's what I was planning to do.

 

SL has only one day of dictation. I think I may add in a 2nd day with something random I choose from her current reading.

 

She's reading CHOW rather quickly, going for a chapter a day. I don't know how much she is retaining but she absolutely loves it. I haven't asked for narration but I'm thinking that I should ask her to write at least a few sentences in a special history notebook just for the purpose.

 

She's not much of a Science person so the Science 2 package is appealing to her. It's really light and fun. I don't see pushing this subject. I'm just happy she's doing it at all.

 

She's not doing narrations on any of the Sonlight literature. We talk about it as we read it and we go through the SL guides for questions, vocabulary and mapwork.

 

I didn't want to push her too hard this school year. We started this program on Jan. 8th which was only a couple of weeks ago. I expected light but now that we're into it, I'm not happy with just how light it all seems. I hope adding in GWG, WA and some history narrations will help it seem a bit more like she's actually doing something. So far over the past couple of weeks, we spend most of the time reading aloud and talking and she spends less than an hour on all other work that includes LA, Science and Math. It just hasn't felt like she's doing much I guess. I could be worrying about nothing.

[Rhonda in TX]

What about having a notebooking day? Have her pick one of the CHOW chapters she's read that week and make a notebook page. Write a paragraph, look for some images to print off the internet, and put it all together. It sounds like something she would really enjoy.

[Chris in VA]

I don't know about WA, but we did use Wordsmith Craftsman for a while with my ds in high school. It was easy to schedule--just follow the directions. But we gave it up, b/c I think it's hard to edit my son's writing (this is a sticking point for me in any writing curriculum). Anyway, I would assume you could simply sit down with WA and take a good look at it, and you'd be able to come up with a schedule.

 

I would definitely add in history narrations. She could do as we do and add in a picture from the internet. I'd say go for two or three a week. Have her edit them afterwards for more practice--spelling, punctuation, agreement. She'll be doing a lot of writing with WA, but I think some writing and regurgitation (iykwim! lol) every day is good for the soul.

Do you test at all? You might want to have her read several chapters of CHOW, then answer some written questions. Discuss these with her, or simply have her answer in complete sentences, then read and return them to her. Of course, you will have to read it, too, but it's really pretty interesting.

Anyway, hope this helps--I'll be interested in what you decide.

[Night Elf]

Rhonda - thanks for the suggestion. We actually just received an Ancient Greece lapbook kit from In the Hands of a Child, or something like that. My dd9 is very excited about working on that. I also love the idea of adding more things to her History notebook such as photos or drawings.

 

Chris - I appreciate your suggestions as well. For now, I've scheduled her to work in Wordsmith Apprentice 15 mins. a day. She's really enjoying the book and the assignments are really short so far. I am working on a schedule now that will have her doing narrations 3 times a week and dictation the other 2 days. We'll ride that out for a while and see how it goes. I'm also interested to see how quickly she's going to work through SL Core 1+2. She's basically doing 2, sometimes 3, days worth of work in one day. I feel good about her program now. Once we get into a routine with this, I want to get back to a language as well. Thanks so much for your help!