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MCT Caesar's English


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We are finishing FLL 4 today. I'm not sure where to go from here. DD has liked FLL but hasn't loved it. I have been on the fence about switching over to MCT for a while now. She loves grammar, spelling, writing, and reading. She loves learning new "big" words. As a trial, I thought we would give Caesar's English a try. She says she likes learning the new words but it is "just TOOO boring!" It isn't over her head and she has learned quite a bit. We are a little more than half way through the book and she is fine with finishing it but she is less than thrilled. I'm beginning to question more than ever that MCT will be a good fit for her. CE is mostly a "cuddle on the couch and read and discuss together" type of book. It doesn't require much output on her part. I don't want to force her to work through grammar and writing assignments if she hates it. Aside from FLL we haven't done any "Language Arts" programs. She reads a ton and seems to just pick everything up on her own. Should I give the full MCT program a try even though CE has been "boring" for DD?

 

Cost is my main concern. I have no problem spending money on a good program but not if it is a bad fit for my child. I have no other alternatives at this point for Language Arts. I've looked at a few things and nothing seems quite right. 

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I would be reluctant if she is not excited about it.  As far as I have heard from other posters, CE is a major high point with many MCT families.  We are just using the vocab words this year and will start full MCT next year.  So I cannot be a significant help, sorry.  The MCT stuff for next year is definitely not "fun."  Ds is highly excited and really wants to start doing it now, but he likes the rigor.  To him, diagramming sentence and 4 level analysis is fun.  He's a wierdo :)

 

 

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Thanks for the responses. I think we will hold off another year and see if she picks up interest by then. DD found some cheap grammar and vocabulary workbooks that she is really excited about. They look pretty "fluffy" to me but if she enjoys it then I don't mind taking a break for a few months until I can find something better. 

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Killgallon's books are on the cheap end and really begin to talk about how the parts of grammar fit together to change the style and tone of the writing. They are more "fun" than MCT. There are mixed up sentence things, try it yourself sentence parts, and a couple other more games sorts of things. The sentences he uses are all from classic lit as well.

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Killgallon's books are on the cheap end and really begin to talk about how the parts of grammar fit together to change the style and tone of the writing. They are more "fun" than MCT. There are mixed up sentence things, try it yourself sentence parts, and a couple other more games sorts of things. The sentences he uses are all from classic lit as well.

Looks good. I'll check it out. It looks like she'll burn through the books I purchsed pretty quickly. Thanks!
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Just some thoughts -- we're scheduled to start Analytical Grammar next year, following FLL4/MCT Island Level this year.  A. does not love the vocab component of MCT but he doesn't hate and it's part of the bundle so we're doing it.  -- not saying you should!  if A. loved ANYTHING I'd do it with him, he is simply not a school-lover. 

 

I really liked the vocabulary books from VocabuLit, working a few years ahead a la the recommendation from Great Books/Angelicum.  We did part of Vocabulit F this year, which is 4th grade for A; we set it aside for time reasons, but I hope to incorporate it this summer/next year.  I haven't seen the Common Core versions yet, but one thing I really really liked about the program was that it had many strong punchy non-Latin words.  I think the finest English writers pull strongly from the non-Latin section of the English language.  This isn't very popular, though, and is entirely workbooky and some exercises are not worthwhile.  Still: I really like it. 

 

One weakness, IMHO, of the MCT materials is the cerebral quality of the poetry and vocabulary.  I'm glad that the Latinate vocabulary reinforces our classical studies and happy that the poetry builds formal analysis ability; but I avoid working Latin vocab into A.'s writing and am teaching A. that the strength of poetry is its emotive force. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

My DS loved MCT Paragraph Town, and really liked Grammar Voyage and both Caesar's English books, but I think he was 8 when we discovered them and did them. We did WWW1 the following year, and he thought it was worthwhile, though it's a significant step up in difficulty, esp. the analogies. He wasn't as keen on the other MCT books, but those listed above were very, very worthwhile for us. My DS didn't like Killgallon Sentence Composing for Elementary School. Your mileage may vary, and probably will.

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