I'm interested in this as well. I was planning on using NEM after PM6.

I'm curious as well - please let us know what you think. Thanks!

GWG is very straight forward. My daughter does the lessons independently, and has had no problems retaining the information. She's done grades 3,4, and 5, so we'll take a break from it next year (the format is the same for each level.) The program has served her well by giving her a great grasp of age-appropriate grammar.

Thanks Bill and Mam Lynx. I thought maybe it was just me. I really, really wanted to use the Aristotle book this year, but I just couldn't read it. And I've tried to read the US History books, but I had a hard time with those as well. Glad to know it's not just me!

Spy Car - would you mind elaborating on the "rewrite" thought? I suspect we might be on the same page...

Hi Melissa, For my daughter, CW worked because of the daily writing/grammar exercises. Working with the model, playing with words, manipulating sentences, etc. all seemed to work nicely towards the final writing project for the week. (We used the student workbooks with Aesop, which was the key for me.) I just wasn't able to make that (or anything like it!) happen this year. I agree that the student workbook needs to be spiral bound. (Our old Aesop workbooks were spiral.) I'm planning to do that with our OB workbook. I'd love to hear how you make out with rearranging your Core by level - it sounds like everyone has a method that works for them (piecemeal, read the whole Core, leveling...) I'm hoping this summer I discover my method!

Hi Melissa, I feel your pain... I have all of the OB books - I just need to take the time to sit down and read them. I'm planning to do this during the summer, when things are less hectic. We didn't use CW this year (my daughter completed Aesop A&B, but we took this year off from CW.) With CW, writing actually got done every day (which it didn't so much this year), and my daughter's writing was just...better. I'm hoping that between the encouragement of so many knowledgeable ladies using CW, and my own perseverance, I'll be able to not only use OB, but enjoy it as well!

:iagree: We're reading The Story of the Greeks right now, and will read The Story of Rome in the fall. I can't wait!

My daughter has been memorizing the poems, with a once-a-week review of all previous poems. She's been so-so about it. I love the idea of having a poetry book with illustrations. I think that might make things a bit more fun for her. Thanks for sharing!

My daughter loved the LfC Primer A DVDs (the revised ones.) We're using Primer B this year, but she still goes back and watches "How the West was Unus" from the Primer A DVDs. I e-mailed CAP about their plan to revise B&C - per customer service, they're hoping to have revised chant CDs (YAY!), but not revised DVDs (which is okay.) For B&C, the chant CDs currently have the vocabulary, but not the weekly chant. Unfortunately, my 40+ brain needs to hear the chant over and over again...The chant is on the DVD, but it would be so much easier to have it on the CD. Just thought I'd share that for anyone who might opt not to get the DVD/CD set because the CDs weren't quite the same as Primer A.

Thanks! I was able to find samples of the Memoria Press Guide on ChristianBooks.com (I couldn't find any on the MP website or RainbowResource - they only had a table of contents.) Anyway, there seems to be a bit more to the MP guide, so I'm going to go with that for next year. Thanks again!

Is anyone able to compare the two? Is one "better" than the other? If so, why? Thanks!

We're using All About Spelling as well. I feel like I've finally found the perfect spelling program. Over the years we've tried a variety of programs, workbooks, etc, and my daughter just wasn't retaining anything. I was about to give up, then I found AAS. It has phonics, spelling rules, and lots of review - and the teacher manual has everything you need to do for every lesson. I love it!

I agree with Julie. It has given me the confidence to discuss literature in a more meaningful way.

Definitely the Standards Edition.

I can't write in a book either, although I can see where it would be very helpful with your "teaching" copy. As I was prereading Chapter 1 of The Call of the Wild, there were quite a few vocabulary words that my daughter will most likely not know. And a few things that I want to make sure we discuss. I usually take notes, but maybe...maybe, I can try to write in this one. There are a ton of copies of The Call of the Wild at our local used book store. I could practice on one of those...

Most mornings we watch CNN Student News. We also read articles from the Time for Kids website. My daughter keeps a journal of "noteworthy" stories (date, what happened, where...) and then she puts a corresponding sticky our world map. Over dinner, she tells her dad what's going on in the world. At the end of the year, she'll compile a list of the "10 most interesting/important events of the year" and do some sort of writing project/presentation.

I was wondering the same thing...

We used LfC Primer A last year, and Primer B this year. Although derivatives are a part of the program, there's not much practice using them. When my daughter makes her vocabulary cards each week, we find derivatives for each word (this is recommended as part of the weekly routine.) But as far as the workbook goes, the derivatives are given in each review chapter (every 4 chapters or so), with the assignment being "Choose 4 latin derivatives and write sentences for each." This is definitely not the same as what I've seen with Roots workbooks. Now, there are additional worksheets available on the LfC website, but I've never had any luck adding those into our week (and I don't recall seeing any derivative worksheets.) If anyone has had a different experience, or found a way to easily incorporate derivatives with LfC, I'd love to hear about it.

We used Calculadders early on alongside Singapore. The program worked very well for us.

Was it Paragraph Writing Made Easy?

Thank you! I appreciate you working through it. I'm going to contact Mindware - I'll let you know what they say. Thanks again!!

Is there a forum or somewhere that I can go if I just can't figure out a Mindware Grid Perplexor? (When I'm stumped by a Singapore Challenging Word Problem, I go to the Singapore Math forum...) I'm stuck on #21 - level C. Obviously I must be missing something... :confused: Embarrassingly enough, it's not even at the end of the book! Thanks!

We haven't used Teaching Textbooks, but... We use the Singapore Intensive Practice and the Challenging Word Problems in addition to the Workbook. The IP has plenty of computational problems (and a lot tougher ones than the Workbook) as well as word problems. We're using the 5B Standards Edition (for the Textbook and Workbook), which has more review, more often than the US edition. It's working really well for my daughter. I tried to supplement with Saxon 7/6, thinking that she could do 1/2 of the practice problems for "homework" and that would give her daily review. But it just seemed like busy work. She'd much rather do extra CWPs. We do use the the Saxon Daily Drill (since it came with the Saxon kit, might as well use it...) In the past, we've used Calculadders for drill.

I'm sorry that I don't have a written schedule to share (I'm going to e-mail Beth for hers!) but I can share the few things that we do to tweak SOTW to make it work for us. For the SOTW chapters, my daughter reads a chapter, tells the story back to me, and then we do a corresponding map activity. Instead of the SOTW activity guide map work, I use Building Skills by Exploring Maps - Ancient Civilizations (Creative Teaching Press.) There's work with cardinal and ordinal directions, latitude and longitude, distances using scales, and using the map key. And if there's an event or person that we need to add to her timeline, we do that. I don't try to sync up SOTW with The Story of the Greeks. Because this is my daughter's first Ancients cycle, I chose to hover on certain civilizations (Egypt in the fall, Greece this spring) while moving along with SOTW (she doesn't have a problem with the time periods being off.) For The Story of the Greeks, I read aloud a section or two (or three, depending.) Then she reads the corresponding section(s) in FMG. Then we discuss the questions in the FMG Guide. (We do this 3-4 times per week.) Since my daughter is not a fan of the history notebook, we do this: At the beginning of a study on a particular civilization (in this case Greece) I make a transparency of a map of Ancient Greece, project it onto a posterboard, my daughter traces it and colors it. There's also a timeline at the top of the map. So when she wants to add, say Aristotle, she goes to our World Book CD (or the internet), finds a small picture of him, prints it out, and adds it to her timeline. She also adds things like a picture of the Parthenon, highlights of the Persia Wars, etc., and adds notes that will jog her memory (example: Draco-Draconian punishment.) It's a nice visual, and something that she enjoys doing. And we add A LOT of historical fiction. Again, sorry I couldn't help with a schedule.