We use WWE and it is most of our writing program. (I have children in 2 and 3 right now). We also do narration for science and history, but I only require what is required of them in WWE (1-2 sentences for my 7 y/o and 2-3 sentences for my 9 y/o). If you are using WWE you don't need Writing Strands from what I can see. Copywork, dictation and narration are the basis for writing in grammar stage. All the rest comes after grade 4.

You can print as many copies as you'd like... the beauty of PDF's...

:lurk5: I have the same question! I'm just about to go get it all copied for my kids... I can't even tell really how those models will all fit together. There are some bigger ones (like the model of the eye...). Is that a separate model or is that supposed to go on the body? I wish they had an illustration on how it fits together! Hopefully someone who's used it will pipe in! It looks grand!

Wow! We'd be deep in debt if I didn't use the library! We get loads of books each week!

I know we spent around $1000 for all 4 kids this past year up front. I've ordered a few things since then so a bit over. This doesn't include any field trips/activities... just basic curriculum. I see that number going down some though as my youngers cycle through and I don't have to buy teacher's manuals, pdf's etc.

Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback! I'll pass on these names to her...

I hadn't purchased one before so I have the newest one, but I checked it out of the library before I bought it. You might try that just to see the differences...

The curriculum itself does not have Christian references that I've seen... we don't own the CD's so I can't speak to those.

Sorry to hijack! To my knowledge SOTW is not from a Christian perspective. I have not used it though... My latest thought with MOH is to go over the "Pretest" questions and make sure we hit those in the reading and leave out other details. They can pick up the details next go around... maybe that would help you too? I'm guessing SOTW and MOH would just be too much material to weed through... Thanks Heather for your input! I will certainly check that out...

I just read your response... if she doesn't understand place value MUS will be excellent! He drills this over and over. Sounds like you have a good plan. Don't worry about starting in Alpha. My best friend had her dd doing Alpha in 2nd grade too because she wasn't grasping math concepts well. She'll get there! Kudos to you for finding something that will help your dd get the basics down! That's so important in math!

We love MUS... yes, it does cover time, measurement and money. We tend to do a lot of this in "real life" though so I don't depend on the book to be the only source of learning for these skills. I would be a little concerned with the pace if something else was too slow for your dd. Depending on what "slow" means... Alpha and Beta are all focused on addition and subtraction. Gamma is only multiplication and Delta is only division. (There are other concepts introduced, but the main ones are those I listed). For example.. DS9 is in Delta. He's focusing on division, however he just learned to find the area of a parallelogram. MUS certainly has a different scope and sequence! MUS is a mastery program which executes differently than other spiral curriculum. It seems the criticism I've heard of MUS tend to be people who don't buy into the "mastery" concept. I would make sure this is the route you want to take before you dive into MUS. That said, we absolutely love the curriculum! My kids all love math... never a complaint. They are understanding the "whys" of math and are getting a really solid foundation of basic skills that will take them a long way. My math competency is not great. I'm looking forward to finally understanding fractions when my ds gets to Epsilon! I've already ordered the books and fraction overlays and I have to say, they are amazing!

I have a friend (who follows much of WTM) who asked me if there are other models of Classical Education. I know CM is one. Are there others that have an outlined method like WTM does?

I had a friend (who follows much of WTM) ask me if there are other models of Classical Education. I know CM is one. Are there others that have an outlined method like WTM does?

We're not to logic yet, but something someone said in another post really helped my perspective. Remember that the expectations outlined in WTM are that the children would have these skills by the end of the stage. Very few 5th graders are going to be able to do ALL that is outlined in the text. My plan is to gradually increase writing load/other expectations over time. Start with expecting something just a little bit more than what you are now. Eventually, that will become second nature and you can up something else. Doing this over a couple years will bring him up to where you'd like him to be before rhetoric stage...

:lurk5: We just started MOH 2 and I'm finding it a lot for my young ones... we love it though so for now I'm condensing information.... thinking about the switch to SOTW, however we really love the Christian perspective of MOH. I think my kids would be disappointed to not have that.

We do 10 min. of online drill at MUS every school day. This has helped a lot!

I just started Latin this year with my oldest ds9. He's enjoying it. We're using Prima Latina and I'm learning alongside him. We're just studying it to help with grammar so no huge lofty Latin goals for us! :-) I think he was at a good age as it comes easily to him and he understands some sentence structure from his English grammar work... the work in Latin tends to coincide with what he's learning in English grammar. I'll most likely wait until 6 or 7th grade for a second modern language. Kind of depends on him...

I agree with Rosie. Some people can make it work. I, on the other hand, have learned I need to choose something and stick with it unless it is really not working. I would love to always bow to the "flavor of the month" trying this or that... but for me, in the end I know it would do my particular children injustice. My children are thriving right now on what we've chosen. They are in a routine and really enjoy learning. I don't have many discipline problems during school and I think it's because they know exactly what to expect. They can get down to the business of learning instead of always having to adapt to a new way of doing things. I have one son who has some autistic tendencies... so routine and knowing what to expect is very important for him. Also, it frees me up to spend more time with my children and less time researching curriculum. I still love the "hunt", but I will reserve most of that for when the kids need something else and there is a distinct reason for changing something. That's just me though... many can successfully try lots of different things and their children thrive too!

Be sure to model for him what you'd like to see. Have him imagine he's in the story and speaking as the characters would. Let him experiment with saying it monotone, then saying it to make the words come alive off the page. You also might want to let him listen to some good books on CD. He could hear how others read aloud as well. Sometimes I prompt them by saying... "that doesn't sound very excited... how would you say it and sound excited?" You might want to slow down the reading and concentrate on expression for awhile, not caring how much material he gets through, rather how expressive he is. You could also talk to him in monotone and let him see how that sounds... and then tell him when we read we should read as though we're speaking to someone.

No, I think you can only order it through their website. It's a homeschool mom who wrote it.

We use MUS and absolutely love it! I think I'm probably in the minority that I don't feel the need to supplement. The older two kids do 2 pages of math a day, the younger ones 1 page. I fully buy into the "mastery" concept of learning math, which means you'll progress in a different fashion than other curriculum. Just the fact that my oldest ds, after spending an entire book on multiplication, is now flying through division is enough to "sell" me!) As far as word problems... the newer editions have more complicated word problems and mental math in the teacher's guide. I do those with the kids for extra practice. I also have them do the online drill on the MUS website. I see all over the place that people are supplementing, but honestly I don't know why. My kids are learning their math facts, doing really well and loving math. They understand the **why** of math and I couldn't be more pleased. My eldest is really strong in math and he still loves his math. Why make things more complicated? Just my personal opinion....

We make our own, using premade figures. I think it is a valuable lesson for the kids. I use it to review our week of history. They LOVE to put the figures on. We started a new volume of history this week and I'm moving from one big time line to individual ones for the kids. They are SO excited to have their own to personalize the way they want. They will be able to color the figures and place them on themselves. I also had them narrate all week, so their narrations will be added to their time lines. This creates a very hands on fun activity to reinforce all our reading. My fear with a premade time line would be that it would lose it's "fun" factor. Just another thing to look at passively and read.... just my opinion.... and my kids are young... so that probably makes a difference!

I use Phonics Pathways, however with my 4 y/o hyper little boy I do it with the AAS tiles. He loves it and never complains. I tried AAS for reading, but I like it much better as a spelling program. I do have the Beehive reader though, and love it.

:iagree: I used them last year and was very satisfied. We ordered from them again this year. I ditto the CS... I had a problem and they resolved it quickly and very much to my satisfaction.