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joyfulhomeschooler

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Posts posted by joyfulhomeschooler

    MFW ECC, Finding a lot of varying reviews...?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    We ditched ECC about 2/3 if the way through. Not because it is repetitive , it is, but then again, it's a pattern, a way of learning about countries and cultures so I expected that.

     

    I didn't like a lot of the crafts and activities in the included books, so I found better ones online.

     

    I didn't like the science at all, so used something else.

     

    The coloring page with the costumed child from each country, ehhh, my boys hated coloring that.

     

    My library didn't have many of the book basket books so I just had to choose others.

     

    ECC didn't cover some of the countries I wanted to cover. It did cover some I didn't think were necessary.

     

    I went with Galloping the Globe. It's the same concept as ECC, without the cost and without the unnecessary parts. I much preferred GTG.

    This is what we did to fix the same dislikes we had with it.

    Used crafts or projectss that I found on pinterest instead of the scheduled ones.

    We actually loved the science, but this could be because our library had most of the book basket books.

    My kids didn't like the repetitive nature of the coloring pages and became bored with them so we started adding drawings of things we remembered about each country to them. Just around the outside of the child. It is so fun to look back on them now.

    We chose to add Italy as our optional country and had so much fun with it.

    I bogged about some of our time with ECC on my blog listed in my siggy line You will have to go back to last school year to find them though as we are now using HOD and loving it!

    MFW ECC Questions

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    We did ECC with an 8yr old and 6yr old. Our 6yrold (at the time) is VERY sensitive! There were parts of the missionary read alouds that we had to be careful with. Looking back now, I am so glad we read them anyways though. It is better for them to be exposed to that stuff with the comfort of Mom/Dad there to talk with. That being said, you know your child best and some kids may need to wait a little longer.

    Question for horizons and/or Singapore math users

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    In Horizons I believe adding and subtracting fractions is in 4. That is reviewed in 5 and then multiplication and division of fractions is introduced.

     

    I could be wrong, but we did Horizons 3 last year and I seem to remember doing some adding and subtracting with fractions. Do you remember doing it that early? I'll have to see if I can find our workbook from last year and take a look.

    For those who take a year off of HOD

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    Ok, I'm now looking at MFW... I see ECC includes Hero Tales, which is one of the Preparing books...

     

    So for those who use it as a filler, are you using it as a filler after Bigger? So, it would be Bigger, MFW ECC, then Preparing?

     

    We did ECC, Bigger, and will be doing Preparing. I can't wait to read Hero Tales again! :)

    For those who take a year off of HOD

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    We may have to take a year off from HOD with my daughter. She would be nine when we hit CtC and I am not sure how well taht would go. If we do take a year off we will do a fun relaxed year of homemaking skills. Cooking, baking, sewing, crafting, meal planning, etc. Basically all that fun stuff we never get time for. :) We would continue our normal math and LA of course.

    Before starting SM 2A could your child solve these problems without manipulatives?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    We have not used singapore math. I've been thinking of switching to it though. I just asked my kiddo to do the first problem. She did it fairly quickly and when I asked how, she said 27+3 is 30 and then 30+35 is 65. So she took 3 away from 38 and gave it to 27 to make 30 first.

     

    The reason I am posting this is because to me this eems much easier than the way your son is being taught to do it. Am I missing something? I don't want to switch to singapore if it is going to bring my child backwards in math.

     

    Sorry to hijack your thread. Hope you and your son figure it out soon. I bet he just needs to solidify the facts.

    Alpha Omega Horizons Math

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    I have to suggest the TM's. There is SOOOO much drill. There was too much in fact. Starting in grade 4 I think the drill is set aside because the fats are already mastered and practiced throughout the program in grade four. In grades k-3 though there is a TON of drill, including drill sheets to be copied in the manual.

    In 4th grade, I switched over to Horizons from CLE for my dd, and it's been a good switch. My son has started with Horizon's K and he's in 1 now. I like Horizons and their spiral approach. There's always review of previous concepts. I do feel that it is weak in the word problem area, and there are no "mastery drills" for those initial basic math facts. Children in our co-op - in my dd's 4th/5th grade class - that have grown up in the co-op starting in K did not have mastery of the simple math facts. They spent the first month or so of this year reviewing flash cards because they were still doing multiplication counting on their fingers. With my son (he'll be home next fall and not in the co-op except for one enrichment day), I plan on continuing with separate timed drills of simple math facts to get those memorized, and a separate word problem workbook. We use Singapore's challenging word problems for that. For my dd, I'll be using Life of Fred to supplement word problems.

     

    All that being said, I think I liked CLE better because it had the drills in the back that my daughter and I used, as well as a few more word problems - but she began to hate it because it wasn't colorful enough, and we were switching to a co-op that used Horizons. I've considered going back to CLE, but I don't really want to be switching back and forth every couple of years. Of course, I've also considered switching to MUS and Saxon (I even started another thread on that) because Horizons doesn't go into high school. I was thinking starting something new in middle school that would carry on to high school might be the right thing to do - but that's a whole other thread and not what you were asking about. Sorry to get off course!

     

    When to start new curriculum if you school year round?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    We've found that what works best for us is to start in September. We then take three month long breaks during the year. So we start in September, take the months of December, April, and August off and start up in September again. I used to just take breaks whenever we felt like it but soon figured out that when doing it this way we always ended up not finishing and getting no summer break. So of course we took the time off in summer and just skipped the last of our curriculum. Scheduling it like this helps me stay accountable to keeping on track.

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