maptime
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Posts posted by maptime
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We're heading into our 7th year of homeschooling, and while normally I've spent the summer obsessively researching and planning our next school year, this year I haven't been feeling it. But I'm staring down the barrel of another school year starting in just a couple of weeks, and I need to figure out spelling for DS10.
My rising 5th grader has completed AAS 1-4 and most of 5. I want to move to something more independent next year, as Mom Time is already maxed out with other subjects (and siblings :-)). Would Spelling You See work for this? Can you start in the middle, or do you need to start from the beginning (likely a deal-breaker, lol). I looked online and found a lot of info about developmental stages, but no clarity on which level to put him. Any placement tips? I'd say he's an average speller for his grade.
Thanks in advance for any input 🙂
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On 4/3/2021 at 5:53 AM, HomeAgain said:
I found a program on Amazon Prime last night, too, where they were recreating historical outfits using only the techniques available to them at the time.
Would you mind sharing the name of this show? It sounds like something my kids would love!
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We ran into something similar when my oldest was in second grade. We weren't ready to delve into the heavier parts of history, but I didn't want to just wait until he was older to start enjoying history together. I ended up putting together a year of "Important Inventions and Discoveries", and it was super fun! We started in ancient times, and worked our way through a chronological list I put together of important inventors, scientists, and the discoveries they made. It turned out to serve as both our history and science that year. Lots of biographies, and so many opportunities to bunny trail with science experiments, extra books, etc. I look back so fondly on that year in our early days of homeschooling🙂
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My ds has listened to various titles in the Horrible Science series via our library’s digital lending library.
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Have you taken a look at Memoria Press’ Kindergarten enrichment? Each week is centered around a different read aloud picture book, with a coordinating craft and often a light science or history tie-in all planned out for you. Each week also introduces the child to a poem, a musical piece, and a piece of art work, often (but not always) loosely tied to the topic of the week. It really is a sweet program. Here’s a peek at the read aloud books and science books they use so you can get an idea of what kind of books are scheduled. Obviously a lot of these can be found at the library so making a huge purchase isn’t necessary🙂
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How does he do with the physical act of writing?
I haven’t used OPGTR, but I have used FSR. It combines the teaching of letter sounds with learning letter formation, etc. It worked splendidly for my daughter who was ready (and eager) to start writing in workbooks, but it may not work as well for a writing-phobic kid, or one whose writing ability lags their reading readiness. If he’s ready for both, FSR might work to kill two birds with one stone. My daughter really enjoyed it, and I found it to be a pretty efficient use of time🙂
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5 hours ago, Msweetpea2 said:
So, for the writing portion of AAS, do you ONLY use a whiteboard, or do you also keep a notebook? I know DD10 has enjoyed reading through past spelling lists as practice and also to feel confident in what she's already accomplished. I'm fine with not getting the student packet if its not any significant benefit 🙂 Thanks again for your reply! I guess I could have done a better search and spared a long-worded post 😂
A whiteboard or a notebook would work equally well. In fact now that I think of it, I have one kid who uses a whiteboard, one who uses a notebook, and one who uses whatever scrap of paper is nearest him😂 If a notebook would afford her a feeling of ownership, I say go for it. An added perk of using a notebook would be the ability to mark a section in which to keep a list of words she’s misspelled (either within a spelling lesson or in other work) and needs extra practice with- something I’ve always intended to do, but have yet to make happen😜
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I’m a huge fan of AAS, so personally, if money wasn’t an issue, I’d just go with that instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with something else. It’s a great program. There’s actually a whole thread about AAS over on the General Education board right now that you might want to check out!
That being said, I totally understand being in a situation where the budget is tight and you have to make do with what you have. Either way, hopefully someone with personal experience with Phonics Pathways can chime in with some thoughts!
If you do go the AAS route, there’s an app you can download in lieu of the physical letter tiles; it was $20 last I checked, but a HUGE sanity saver over here. It might also be helpful to know that the “student packet” isn’t actually a workbook, but is mostly comprised of flashcards used for review. Some people (myself included) find they don’t end up using much of the student packet, and just use the teacher’s manual and tiles. There’s more info about that in the other thread as well! Hope that helps🙂
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I’ve used both programs. Here are a couple of thoughts, based on what you wrote.
if you plan on using Fix It next year, I don’t think you need to squeeze in another grammar program this year solely for the sake of preparation. Fix-It starts from the beginning, and seemed to progress quite gently.
I did take my ds through MP’s English Grammar Recitation the same year he was working through MP Latina Christiana. It meshed nicely with what he was working on in Latin and didn’t take too much time, but he would (and did) say that his conceptual understanding wasn’t great. I think the memorization component proved helpful in later years when applied to other grammar studies, but the exercises themselves did little to actually make the concepts “click” in such a way that he could apply them elsewhere. If you’re looking for a good list of grammar memory work that you flesh out in the context of other writing assignments, I could see it being a helpful resource.
In regard your question about whether Fix-it grammar is “enough”, I think that depends on your plans and goals. Some people use Fix-It all the way through as their primary grammar instruction and are perfectly happy with the results. I don’t think it ever gets into sentence diagramming, so if that is important to you, you may want to consider something else down the road. But I think it can certainly serve as a gentle introduction to grammar for a 4th/5th grader, if it seems like it will work nicely with the writing you’re wanting to focus on.
I don’t want to muddy the waters by throwing out more options, but if you’ve identified a need to make writing a focus next year and want to start laying the groundwork for it now, have you considered taking her through Treasured Conversations? The first section is a very gentle introduction to grammar, and the latter portion gets the kiddo writing in a very painless (and dare I say... fun?) way. You may not *need* to prep for IEW and/or Fix-It next year, but if you think it would be helpful to, I’d just go through TC and call it a day🙂
HTH!
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If she wasn’t required to give a narration at the end, would your 7yo enjoy what you’re doing now? If so, I’d be tempted to stick with what’s working and drop the narrations. If you’re wanting to work on her narration skills, you could always run her through something like WWE, which might give her that practice without killing the joy of history for her🙂
Alternatively, maybe she’d like to narrate another way? By drawing a picture of something from the lesson and explaining it to you, perhaps?
Just a couple of thoughts!
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I also wanted to add that in FLL 3, a student workbook is introduced to go along with the regular text. This helps give a visual component as the kid follows along and then applies what they’re learning in the written exercises (no colorful pictures though).
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I’ve used the first three levels of both programs, and I definitely don’t think you need to start from the very beginning. You can find the mastery evaluations for each level of WWE here:
http://downloads.peacehillpress.com/pdfs/samples/wwe/wweevaluations.pdf
Each evaluation gives you an idea for what type of work is expected of the student at the end of that level; if the kid does well, move on to the next one, etc. This should give you a good feel for where to put them.In terms of FLL, I’ll just say I put my ds9 (with no formal grammar experience) right into FLL 3 last year, and it was totally fine. The pacing is a bit faster than that of other levels, but it starts from the beginning with nouns 🙂
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Thanks everyone. I was gifted a copy earlier this year, so we’re starting this week. So far so good!
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Can anyone share their experience with Analytical Grammar? My ds11 went through Hake 5 last year and it was fine, but level 6 has become a bit of a drudgery. I’m intrigued by Analytical Grammar’s premise that formal grammar study can be completed in three 10-week “seasons”, opening up more time for us to spend on writing, etc.
Do you find Analytical Grammar to be “enough”? I don’t want to forgo rigor in the name of convenience, but I do love the idea of knocking out our formal grammar study at the beginning of the year and then spending the rest of the year applying it In the context of writing/editing. Is this too good to be true?😜 If we used AG through 8th grade, would he enter high school good to go, or would we need to follow up with another program?
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Awesome find, and perfect for my kid who asked to study chemistry this year! Thank you for sharing!
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For a first grader, especially with older children in the mix who also require teaching time, I would go with Mystery Science, hands down. In fact, that's exactly what I'm doing this year😂
In terms of beefing it up with a reading list, my plan is to just pull out the applicable book from the Let's Read and Find Out series for each mystery as we go. I feel like LRAFO books are perfect for that age, and I like the continuity of having a series like that as a "spine" to guide me. This makes it less likely for me to fall down the rabbit hole of researching the PERFECT book for each and every mystery- although sometimes that can be fun, too 🙂
I dabbled in MS with my K and 3rd grader last year, and I would recommend going by age and working up from there. You can play around with the age ranges a bit, but some of the lessons designed for the highest grades definitely went over my Ker's head. She still probably learned some stuff, but she got a lot more out of the ones that were targeted a little more toward her level. It probably wouldn't have made as much of a difference for an older kid, although then I would probably receive complaints about the very young levels being "too easy" 🙂
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4 hours ago, ieta_cassiopeia said:
Once your 5th grader is doing a good job using a cursive entence for curriculum tasks, and doesn't need an inordinate amount of time to do it, you can increase it to paragraph-length tasks, then multi-paragraph-length tasks, and so on and so forth. Eventually you will get to a point where both cursive and manuscript are comfortable. There's value in continuing to use both in appropriate places, as well as using typing for tasks where that's appropriate. A student who knows how to use all three to best effect for their own purposes is the #1 goal of including all three of manuscript, cursive and typing in a curriculum.
This speaks to me 🙂
Thanks for your helpful feedback, everyone. I can't say that I have a firm resolve one way or the other yet, but you all have provided lots of good food for thought.
I do have a question for those of you in the use-it-or-lose-it camp who feel that cursive needs to be used across the board in order to be maintained: has this proven true with your kids in regard to printing? Put another way, have your children lost the ability to print because their school assignments are completed in cursive? I mean this with no snark. To be honest I'm still a bit dubious, but if that line of thinking does hold true, I would need to think carefully about whether I want his sole means of handwritten communication to be one that many of his peers will struggle to read.
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45 minutes ago, OKBud said:
Try writing papers by hand and p r i n t i n g them in block letters. It takes longer (which deleteriously effects your train of thought and flow while writing) , it takes up more space/paper, and perhaps most pertinently: it strains the hand a lot more.
Not doing cursive is cutting yourself off at the ankles for paper writing.
While block letters (all capitals?) is not the alternative I'd be proposing, your point about the speed of writing is one I am currently weighing. I wonder if this is a YMMV situation in which each individual has the style they find the fastest, or if cursive is objectively (measurably) faster. The latter is certainly possible. I just wish I knew by how much.
32 minutes ago, square_25 said:We haven't taught our daughter cursive yet, and I'm certainly not going to require it in assignments when I do. I want her to be able to write legibly and reasonably quickly. I find lots of people's cursive much more unpleasant to read, personally, as do most people I know. It's very easy for it to degenerate into chicken scrawl. But if it turns out that she wants to write in a beautiful cursive hand (or in a mix, like I write), more power to her.
This raises a point I hadn't considered. While the ability to read and write in cursive are non-negotiable to me, if clear communication is the goal, could legible print actually be the ideal default In light of the ever-growing population who find cursive writing a barrier to comprehension? Like, being understood might be more important than speed. More food for thought.
ETA: I didn't mean to imply that you are incapable of reading cursive. I was just connecting your point about the inscrutability of many cursive hands with the comments above about how many people no longer know how to read it
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14 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:
Well the first reason is signatures. I want my kids to be able to sign their names and on many documents, there's the signature and then the "printed" name.
Also, even though so many scripts online are print....occasionally you come across a website that has a mix of fonts.
And finally, many important documents are in cursive. Sure you can find a print version of the text online, but if they go to visit the originals, I want them to be able to read them.
3 minutes ago, Ellie said:Of course. They won't retain it if they don't use it. And that's the reason you teach it: so that they can write everything in cursive.
English has always been written in cursive, which is to say that all our source documents are written in cursive. If our children cannot write in cursive, they cannot read those. Or other documents that might be part of their personal history.
I have no proof of this, but I have read that people in other English-speaking countries write in cursive. I don't see why we would allow our children to be so ignorant when it's something so easy to teach.
I feel like these points illustrate my dilemma. It's important to me for my child to be able to read and write in cursive for all of the above reasons, but it seems to me that all of those bases could be covered with a dedicated "cursive page a day", without insisting on it being used for all written work. I do, however, know he would never gain lighting-speed this way. I guess I'm trying to figure out if there is something inherently important about using cursive instead of print as his primary means of writing in his regular life, beyond the baseline ability to read it and form a nice signature (I'm confident we've accomplished and could maintain both of these facets).
As a personal anecdote, I myself can competently read and write in cursive, but my printing is faster and neater, so I use that. It's never been a "problem", but I do wonder if I'm missing something. Faster note-taking, perhaps?
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I know that there are various schools of thought when it comes to cursive instruction. I decided years ago that my children should be taught to write in it, if for no other reason than I want them to have the ability to easily read it. I've done that, and my current 5th grader has acquired a beautiful cursive hand through various copybooks, etc, but is loath to transition to completing his regular school assignments in cursive. I think the primary reason for this is that at this point, cursive takes him longer than printing (which will likely continue to be the case until I enforce cursive across assignments). He also claims that it's harder for him to judge if a word is spelled incorrectly (an area in which he struggles) when he's writing in cursive, and I can confirm that seems to be the case.
I'm torn. On the one hand, I keep finding reasons why forcing cursive within particular subjects isn't a good idea. Spelling? See above. Latin? Same thing. Writing? It slows him down and hinders his ability to get his thoughts down on paper during the drafting process. But on the other hand, I know he won't become faster without being forced to practice to the point that it becomes easier than printing, and there may be a short-term cost in other areas to achieve that.
That leads me to the question: if a child knows *how* to read and write in cursive, how important is it for him/her to adopt it as his personal mode of writing? Do you require your student to complete his/her assignments in cursive once it is taught, or leave it up to them? I think I'm wrestling with whether this is a hill worth dying on (or at least fighting for), and hope hearing how others have thought this through will help me to either fish or cut bait 🙂
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On 1/11/2020 at 4:57 PM, annegables said:
This is where I wish there was an instructor's guide for WWS. I found it really useful to look at WWS1 to see what was covered and then modify my writing instruction to make sure that was covered. As I mentioned in the (for reasons unknown) ridiculously bolded post of mine from Jan 5, I saw that WWS1 is covering plagiarism and how to correctly reference sources. So I read those lessons, saw how WWS does it, and then planned it out for how to cover those topics within my writing assignments. Thus far, one week in:), this plan is working so much better. My son and I much prefer having writing incorporated into what we are already doing and learning, rather than as a totally separate activity.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you are using WWS1 for your own reference as a scope and sequence of sorts? That's a great idea, and one that could spare me from the temptation to run two programs at once (which over here, would likely result in two programs done poorly).
Keep us posted on how this goes! I'm particularly curious how well the two approaches mesh with one another.
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On 12/31/2019 at 5:47 PM, annegables said:
Here is my spring semester plan. My kids grades are 6th, 4th, and 2nd. My 6th grader is 2/3 of the way through WWS1 (we started in March of 5th grade). My 4th and 2nd have done some WWE and we do those types of assignments but self-created. My 4th grader spent the fall summarizing science info into a paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting details, and concluding sentence. He also does Killgallon daily. I consider myself a fairly good writer but I had limited skills in teaching how to write well.
The first week or so after break, I am going to teach all my kids how to actually write a quality topic sentence. I have taught them to write a topic sentence, but could never figure out what all needed to be included in it to make it a well-written one. My plan is to do this all together. I now know how to scaffold this.
Weeks 2-4 I am going to teach sentence-level quality writing, adjusting for writing level. We will focus on lots of because, but, so; question words, and transition words. We will also work on expanding kernel sentences.
After this, I will have my 6th grader finish out WWS1 using what we just learned.
My 4th grader will move on to writing single paragraphs using their outlining suggestions, rough draft, revise, edit, final draft. This will be writing across the curriculum with a focus on Ancient Rome, as per his request.
My 2nd grader will also move on to single paragraphs with a dominant focus on outlining what we know and coming up with strong topic and concluding sentences. The focus will probably be on rocks/fossils, as per his request.
Thank you for sharing this. I have kids of similar ages/levels and it’s really helpful to hear how others are planning to implement this in real time. Do you plan to continue the WWS series with your oldest along with TWR?So far my plan is to start incorporating the because/but/so exercise within content subjects for my 5th and 3rd grader, as well as a daily run-on sentence remediation exercise for the kid whose writing needs to take a breath🙂
We started the year with IEW (5th grader) and WWE (3rd), but I plan to slowly add to/modify/replace those with TWR activities as I get deeper into the book. My goal is to be officially ready to strike out on our own by next school year, though I do have WWS1 waiting in the wings if I feel we need more.
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It’s not a curriculum per se, but my favorite science “spine” for that age is the Let’s Read and Find Out series. My K-2 kids have generally found them engaging, and they’ve served as a great springboard for further questions/discussions/investigation.
You can simply pick a book that interests your kid (there are a ton to choose from on a variety of scientific topics), and have that be the topic for the week. There are usually instructions for a simple activity at the end of the book if you want an easy hands-on component. Throw in a couple of related library books that look interesting and/or some cool YouTube videos, and you have yourself a solid (and arguably more interesting than a textbook) 1st grade science routine!
We’ve dabbled in other things, but we really enjoy the whole books approach to science when they’re little. You know what will work best for your family, I just wanted to throw the idea out there lest you feel like you *have* to do a formal program with your 1st grader in order to have your bases covered🙂
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*adds The Knowledge Gap to Amazon cart*
Spelling You See Placement / Starting in the Middle
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
This is helpful, thank you!