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knitupstate

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  1. Hi Kristin - thanks for your comment - one thing that feels challenging to me is my ability to assess the work that my kid is doing at all and being her "writing partner" and Julie Bogart would advise. I find that role extremely challenging and want to offer my kid an opportunity to write and get feedback from someone who has more focus on it. I also want to observe a process so that I can be a better partner going forward and/or just let her take the online or in-person (someday!) classes with another instructor. (I can't get through the writer's jungle - so dense and more like a winding story to me. I still hope to, but my kids may be out of college by then...) The variety is good for us all. Thanks for your comments. Also - it is useful to be prepared for individual teacher communications with Christian content, but as long as the curriculum remains (mostly or all) secular, the rest is just learning to relate and work with all people.
  2. Hi Wendy - so interesting. I think I've been in a bit of a vacuum with our homeschool, so it's refreshing to read about your process and efforts. I will be taking the spring semester to regain some lost momentum with writing which will probably involve outsourcing writing. I think my kid will benefit from outside/objective feedback, too. I have Writing Revolution in a cart as I write, just in case.
  3. Thanks for your thorough response. Multiplying the Lantern assignment is an interesting concept that I honestly would not have considered. I feel like, as homeschoolers, we are always doing so much that I have been trying to cut back, especially during covid when it seems everything is on its head.. But requiring multiple versions to practice a skill makes a lot of sense to me. I have become concerned that I don't have enough work samples, especially for my older DD, in regards to writing. This is giving me pause and I want to try to make a correction before the year is out. I also just purchased the conference talks on writing at the different stages by Susan Wise Bauer and look forward to listening to them (you had recommended them on a different thread, along with The Writing Revolution). I am hoping they don't terrify me. We have tried IEW (Fix it and ATFF; I liked, she hated) and we tried WWS1 with my older daughter in 6th grade but I found it so dense and fiddly that we could not stay with it. She would have continued but I was falling behind keeping track of what she was doing and the steps felt so distinct and robotic - I could not see the big picture through all the tiny details. We use Michael Clay Thompson for Grammar and vocabulary and love it, but his writing lessons and parent guides are disappointing and lacking almost all direction! Extremes. I am hopeful that Lantern will be a good fit for this spring, though - still looking through their site. I looked at WriteatHome, too, but found it so expensive and the samples seemed weak in substance. Too bad I won't get a coven retreat update, though - that would be pretty fantastic! Thanks again,
  4. Hi wendyroo - wow - it sounds like your boys have gotten a lot out of classes with Lantern! My 7th grader is currently taking her first online writing class (not at Lantern English) and I am considering one or more Lantern English classes this coming spring to work in a more focused manner with her writing, specifically. It sounds like you've put a not insignificant amount of time with your son on his classwork - can you say if/how the materials support you in this role? You wrote about modeling the steps of choosing a topic and researching and doing it side by side. I can tell you that feels a bit daunting to me. Also, are class samples/materials from Lantern primarily, or partly, Christian-specific? Many thanks!
  5. Hi Kristin - that makes sense - I did contact the school as well and Cati responded that it was initially part of their live classes, but no longer - it was just not updated on their website. Thank you!
  6. Hi - I also had never heard of them - I see their site mentions needing flash. We have a mac and I think I can no longer use flash as of Jan. 1 - we were switched to a new format with Teaching Textbooks...Is Flash still required? Their website seems to indicate yes. I contacted them just now, but was curious of your experience as a user. Thanks!
  7. Hi - we used the EBBS text only in 1st, then text and lab book in grade 3. The books introduce topics somewhat randomly. The author likes to introduce big science words but explains concepts in odd ways. The pictures are cartoons which seem out of place. The lab books are good in that there is a step by step lab process for each lab, but there is one lab per chapter and honestly it's too many and the teacher manuals are not useful and without much support for parents on concepts to focus on, etc. If you buy new (which I did), they're very expensive. I've always wanted to love these books because she includes the 5 major sciences in one volume, has labs, etc., but I just didn't feel the content was very well presented. Half way through the year we picked up a used "Science - A Closer Look" text and workbook (not lab book, just a book with short Q's for the student to answer) by McGraw Hill. Even though this was clearly written for public schools, it was way better for my kid. Lots of reading, though, and so maybe not the best fit for your daughter. We ended up not doing many labs and skipped over the busier pages at the beginning of the chapters, but I think my kid enjoyed reading about the topics and just answering some questions as she went along. If you go with EBBS, I'd suggest to just pick a few experiments per topic area and not get overwhelmed with trying to do every one, unless your daughter really enjoys them, then that would define how many you did. The earlier EBBS books are broken up into intro and conclusion chapters at the beginning and end of the book plus 4 chapters per 5 science areas for a total of 22 chapters. That was one thing I did like - we could do about 1 chapter every two weeks across the school year. We got more out of it if I collected relevant topic books from the library to be reading and checking out at the same time and/or you could search out science videos, trips to museums/science centers, etc. If you are not super interested in doing a bunch of labs for 8th grade, then just get the text to use as a spine and skip the lab book/teacher manual altogether - that will save some money and hassle and you can use videos/trips to dive deeper into the topics your daughter is most interested in and/or design experiments using other resources (Janice Van Cleave, for example). All in all, I didn't love this curriculum and don't plan on using it again, but if you can get the text used, then it might be good enough to give your daughter a fairly straightforward spine with a range of topics to explore as she wishes. Hope this helps. Good luck!
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