[Rethinking SOTW 4]

Rather than focusing on the curriculum, perhaps what your dd needs is an outlet for her compassionate nature? Volunteer somewhere? Giving her the opportunity to do something about the suffering/injustice that she sees is what I'm getting at. 

[WWE Dictation Quesiton]

I ask dd if there are any words in the sentence she doesn't know how to spell before she starts writing. I'll name some of the words I think she might have a problem with, and she'll say yes or no. If I question her yes, I might have her spell it for me to be sure. Any words that she needs help on, I write out for her at the bottom of the page so she can copy it. I usually do this before she's committed the sentence to memory. I don't want any conversation to lead her to lose the sentence once it is in her head. 

I go for exact wording here, but it is a personal judgement call. As SusanC said, the skill you're trying to develop is for them to keep their thoughts in their head long enough to get it down on paper. When it's their own thought, of course they should have the liberty to change it as they write. But when it's someone else's thought, I feel that it should be copied exactly. But that's just me. Ideally, we should be watching over their shoulder as they write so that we can stop them as soon as they start to make a mistake. But in real life, it's too easy to take the opportunity to run into the kitchen and do some cleanup or start lunch. If a lot of writing follows the mistake, then I have to make an individual judgement call on how much work I'm going to make her go through to correct it.

[What would you change if you could]

I would be more relaxed and realize that there are twelve whole years in which to cover all that must be learned and read all of the wonderful books there are to read.

I started my first at 4 1/2. He would have had to wait an additional year to start K in the public schools, but I felt he was ready. Plus, my dd was newly born and I was ready to stay at home... homeschooling was what justified me only going back to work part time with my husband. "Just" being a SAHM with two kids wouldn't have done it. 

I was such an overeager teacher. I wanted him to become proficient in first grade level stuff by the end of K even though he was already a year younger. I was anxious to get to all of my favorite chapter books that would be better enjoyed at an older age. I became so frustrated when he didn't have all of his math facts memorized by the end of K.

I am happy with how I did things with my youngest. I was more relaxed. My son was older so he's my outlet for reading more advanced books. With my daughter I allowed myself to sit back and enjoy all the wonderful picture books that are out there. We did a math curriculum, but lightly - only a few days a week. We read lots of math literature (Math Start books) to supplement. Also, instead of starting the four-year cycle for history in 1st, we did a survey of American history just reading a bunch of picture books. We started ancient history in grade 2. I feel this was also an improvement over how I did things with my son. I like that she had an early introduction to American, and she was also better prepared to give chapter narrations a year later. 

What I don't regret at all was making learning phonics our number one priority. Both of my kids were reading fluently by the end of K. 

[Marine biology for an 8th grader?]

There's always Apologia's elementary level  text. Might be below your daughter's level, but I've always found the Apologia texts to be highly informative. (I learn a lot myself!). Possibly for an 8th grader it would work as a spine and then you could beef it up with MinivanMom's suggestions.

My daughter reads the Apologia zoology books for leisure. (She's almost 9 so take that for what it's worth...). 

Also just throwing this out there... last year my son (then 12) and I read 20k Leagues Under the Sea. It references a lot of sea life, so we were using the Apologia book a lot looking up creatures we had never heard of, and then Googling the ones that weren't listed. Might be an interesting inclusion in a marine science course for a literary-minded person.

[All about spelling past level 2?]

It depends on what you mean by "complicated". Are you equating that to teacher intensive, or is your student struggling with it?

I found it to be more teacher intensive than necessary, because both my kids seem to pick up spelling naturally. So after level 3, we switched over to R & S. If your student isn't a natural speller, I'd tough it out. AAS is a lot of work for you, but I think it is an excellent breakdown of all the phonics rules (why I used it in the first place). 

[Rod & Staff Grammar Question]

We use R & S... my son works fairly independently and I couldn't tell you off the top of my head specifically what grammar concepts might be new and what might be review. What I can tell you is that even if a grammar concept is being reviewed, the level of complexity of the exercises grows at each level. I did what you are thinking of doing for grade 7. I tried to jump from book 6 to book 8 and just go slowly. That did not work out for us. The grade 8 book was way over his head. He was lost and confused and not succeeding well. I broke down and ordered the grade 7 book and all was well. This year he's back to the grade 8 book (almost finished!) and no problems.

[Free sources for scratch paper?]

I used to keep a stack at work of my mess-ups and bring it home. Dh does the same. But you know what? It always happened that my kids' most brilliant works of art, the ones that go in the "save for posterity" drawer, ended up on scratch paper. I don't like that. And a pack of copy paper is only $3 at Walmart and lasts quite a while. So that's what I do now. 

[How far do you let supporting one child's strength encroach on the rest of the family?]

That's a tough one that I have been wrestling with myself lately. There is so much that goes in to play. Not just time and money, although those are definitely the biggest factors. But also personality. Some kids NEED activity, like my daughter. Some do not, like my son.

My daughter is in ballet. It's a bigger commitment than I thought it would be, at least this early. I knew that as she advanced she'd need to increase her lessons. But every year her school does the Nutcracker and that's rehearsals every Saturday, on top of her 2 x week class. Now she's got Saturday rehearsals for the spring recital, which she didn't have last year. And just last week, her teacher told me she'd be moving up to the next level class next year, which is 1.5 hours per class instead of 1. I thought that might not happen for another year. 

On the one hand, there's dh. He thinks we already do too much. On the other hand, there's me. I was just like her as a child. I wanted to do everything. I was never happy unless I was out of the house DOING something. And dance/theater was my thing. My mom drove 40 minutes each way taking me to ballet. Dd's school is 25 minutes away and it is such a pain, but I also feel like it's my due because of what was given to me. Since I love ballet so much myself, it isn't such a great sacrifice taking her because I love just sitting and watching class. And Saturday rehearsal... it's too long of a drive to go home, so I just sat in my car and watched the first DVD of the Teaching the Classics seminar I just bought. I'm actually newly excited about my 1.5 hour QUIET time I have every Saturday :). 

I think what really makes a difference is my son. He doesn't really care about being able to do anything and is happiest when he is alone in his room. If there were an activity he wanted to get involved in, then there would have to be serious choices, because we couldn't afford what we're paying for dd's ballet for both of them. Not to mention, I don't think I could handle any more driving than what I do. And if he were more extroverted, I might feel guilty about the time I spend away from home. But he doesn't care. He's totally happy with how things are. 

I do draw the line with ballet, though. Dd would do more if she could. She wants to be in plays and whatever other opportunities might come her way, she wants to do it. I tell her it's ballet or that. We don't have time for additional activities since ballet is so demanding. 

Also, I work part time, and Dh is at home with the kids while I work. They spend a lot more time with their dad than most kids do. If he worked a traditional schedule and was gone all day, that might change things.

[visiting campuses after acceptance: accepted student days, or not?]

We pretty much use the term admitted and accepted interchangeably here. Visitors to our event day are a mix of people who are already committed and still making up their mind. Most visitors are traveling long distances to attend, so we aren't going to host another event to take care of registration and so forth. They do it online from home. There's nothing else until orientation right before classes start. Sorry, I didn't realize I might confuse people. Remove my reference to registration and student IDs, and you'll probably have a good description of what most colleges do. Or better yet, contact the specific colleges you are considering and ask them. I answer for people the pros/cons of attending the event day vs. a campus visit all the time. 

[visiting campuses after acceptance: accepted student days, or not?]

I work in the admissions office of a private university, and coordinating our events such as the accepted student day is my primary responsibility. Of course this answer will vary depending on the college, but I would suspect most would be like ours:

 

On the planned day, we have all kinds of events planned. There's a big welcome in the gym that's sort of a pep rally, then there's presentations by the academic colleges presented by the deans and faculty, there's campus tours, most of the labs are open and doing demos, the RA's are giving tours of all the residence halls, a bunch of the campus clubs have tables set up, and yes, we give free breakfast and lunch!! also the big draw for us is we let students get their student ID card and register for classes. Everyone who doesn't come has to wait until summer for that. 

 

Drawbacks to attending that day is there is not a lot of one-on-one time. So you might be able to grab a professor for a quick five minute discussion, but you're not going to be able to make an appointment for an extended visit in their office. Also it's Saturday so you're not going to be able to attend a class. (A lot of people arrive on Friday to try to get some of that in. Since sooooo many people do, individual attention is still limited).

 

If you schedule a campus visit at some other time, you'll get more personal attention, more one-on-one time with Admissions and whoever else you may request to talk to, and a chance to attend a class (unless it's during the summer or finals week). The daily campus tour does not include as many of the facilities as are open on the event day. There won't be demos going in the labs. 

[Pilgrim's Progress question]

Answers in Genesis has an audio drama that is pretty good. It's the original language and my son did not have any problems understanding it most of the time, although he was older than 7 when we listened to it (I can't remember how long ago it was anymore... he might have been 10 or 11). He had already read Dangerous Journey, so it helped that he was familiar with the story going in. Also, I think it helped that it was an audio drama and not just someone reading it. 

[Are Colleges Pushing Students to Do Too Much in High School? (good Foreign language -side thread)]

In my own life experience, I'd lay the blame with high school counselors. I remember when I was a senior in high school, the counselor would come talk to us about college admission. Even though I really, really wanted to apply somewhere out of state, the end result was that I was too afraid to apply anywhere but our state universities because I didn't have a 4.0. 

 

Now I work for admissions at a small private university. And now I know that my GPA was high enough that had I applied, I probably would have gotten scholarships. 

 

I know that there are colleges out there that are so competitive that all those achievements really do make a difference. But at my university, we base admissions decisions on 1) GPA 2) standardized tests - which are now optional to submit and 3) math prep for technical majors. If the student meets a particular threshold in those three areas, they are automatically admitted. If they don't, it goes to director or possibly faculty review, and then they will most likely still be admitted. Only in the case of academically borderline students do we then fine tooth comb how prestigious their high school is, how many honors/AP classes they took, honors, achievements, leadership, citizenship, etc. 

 

To put that into perspective, while my university isn't Ivy League or super competitive, we are still considered the very best school to go to in the nation for those fields that we specialize in. In other words, your job prospects wouldn't be better going to school anywhere else. 

 

I am always having to talk down students who are so worried about whether they are in enough clubs or have done enough. I always tell them that succeeding academically is always the most important thing and that they should not jeopardize their performance just so they can list a bunch of activities on their resume. 

 

Personally I don't see taking honors/AP classes the same way as being pressured to join clubs and build their resume. Because while taking all those rigorous courses may not make a difference on whether or not you get admitted to college, I think the student is better prepared to handle the rigor of college level work. I agree though, that there is still a reasonable line where a student can challenge him/herself without becoming enormously pressured and stressed out.

[Elementary History & Encouragement]

I find SOTW to be the most concise and easy to follow with. For year one, you can read it alongside a Bible story book. With my first, I actually did all the work of looking up dates and figuring out which Bible stories correspond with which periods in SOTW. With my second, I winged it. For volume 2 and beyond, I pair SOTW with Trial and Triumph. 

 

There are actually book recommendations in the SOTW activity guide for Bible stories, when one is relevant to the passage. 

 

I don't have personal experience with TOG. I looked at it, and it looked like too much work and too much money. But if you've already invested a lot, I would encourage figuring out how to make what you've already paid for work for you before buying another curriculum. 

[My child having hard time with Writing with ease narration]

The purpose of Writing with Ease is not reading comprehension - although that is a side benefit. The purpose is for the student to have the opportunity to compose sentences. The story excerpts serve to give the student something to talk ABOUT. So, if you have to go back and reread the passage that the answer is located in, that's okay. If she can ultimately give you an answer in a complete sentence, then you've met the goal. 

 

WWE is hard. It's very common that the questions will ask about minute details no one would remember after a casual read. I often do not remember, and I don't have your excuse of English being a second language!

 

One tip that I found to help in the first two levels is that I let my children read along with me, rather than just listen to me read. They are both visual learners and I think that helped a lot. (In level 3, the passages are in the student pages for them to read themselves). If it's a particularly difficult passage, I might even read through it twice before asking questions.

 

There are a few lessons that are so difficult I had to go back and read the passage with the answer in it for EVERY question. But for most lessons, I only have to do this for one or two questions. Sometimes none. I'd give it a few weeks to see if she catches on. If you are having to review the answer for every question every time, then maybe waiting or switching would be better. 

[Geography read aloud book lists?]

All Through the Ages by Christine Miller

 

Has booklists sorted by era, then broken down by grade level. Then, booklist is resorted by geographic region and broken down by grade level.

[WWE 2 summaries]

I try to make sure the summary length matches what the book says. I will force her to condense down to the limit if she goes on to long. Also that it is an actual summary, and not overly focused on one detail. 

[How to arrange department visit at college?]

The benefit to going through Admissions is that they can coordinate your appointment with all the other activities they are setting up for you.

[Writing With Skill 3 - Worth it?]

I posted almost this exact same question in the high school forum a few months ago:

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/662673-wws3-or-rhetoric-for-9th/

 

I've decided to continue with WWS 3 next year.

[Accepted students day]

I work in an admissions office and coordinating our two big visit days happens to be my primary responsibilities. Of course every college does things differently, so bottom line is you should contact the admissions office and ask for an agenda or just ask them what's different from the fall event. I get your question all the time. The answer at my particular university is that the two event days are almost the same, except at the accepted student event, we offer the opportunity to have student ID card made and the opportunity to select fall courses. It is the first opportunity to do so. Everyone who doesn't attend has to wait another month to register. We also have a social event where students can start meeting each other. Whether or not it's worth it to attend a second time just for those added features is really an individual choice. For students who live within easy driving distance, I'd say it's totally worth it. If not, then, maybe. At my school, students who pay attention to their mail and hop onto course registration when it opens up for everyone will not have a problem enrolling in their classes. So to me it wouldn't be worth a second visit just to register. But I've spoken to plenty of people who found it worthwhile to be able to register with real people in the room to guide them through it. And talk to people in person about all their other questions regarding housing, meal plans, financial aid, etc. Sometimes the student is just so excited about being a student here that they are just thrilled for any excuse to be on campus again. So I could never really, truly answer for someone else whether or not attending a second campus event is worth it.

 

[Life after WWE3]

We did not use a formal writing program in grade 5 (in between WWE4 and WWS1). At first, I decided to use Creative Writer as a way to keep up writing but have sort of a "fun" break from formal writing. Ds actually liked it but I dropped it after the first couple months only because I felt like we were doing too much. Grade 5 turned out to be the year that I started transitioning ds from taking narration dictation to having him write out his narrations on his own. He started writing out science, geography, and literature narrations in composition notebooks. That turned out to be quite a lot of writing in and of itself. 

 

I also agree with the poster who suggested introducing typing. If you're going to move into WWS, I can tell you that it involves a lot of writing AND revising. I ended up getting a typing program for ds because I realized that having him rewrite his entire composition by hand after making corrections was just too much work. 

[Choosing a writing program for 8th Grade]

WWE/WWS is the only program we have used, and I recommend it. WWS is challenging, but since it has been two years for you it might be worth trying it again. In the beginning, we did have to really slow down so that we could take several days making all of the necessary revisions on on one "day" assignment. Just keep plugging away, and eventually she will get the hang of it. Now we are midway through level 2 (in our third year of using it) and I make very few corrections on each assignment. He has really come a long way. 

 

Also I think it is difficult not to want to grade the assignments to perfection. It's important to rely on the rubric  to help you realize what "good enough" actually is.

[How do you know when to scrap a curriculum?]

I ditched math curriculum twice. The first time was about a month into the school year. We'd struggled the whole previous year, but it took me until then to suddenly have this epiphany that the problem was that the curriculum did not provide enough opportunity for mastery. Our struggles were not simply because ds was having a hard time with comprehension. 

 

Second time I ditched math was when I realized that the curriculum was too difficult for him to handle on his own, and I needed him to be independent so that I could work with younger dd. So we switched to a program that had accompanying video instruction.

 

Another time I almost ditched a geography curriculum. It was very frustrating trying to figure out how to answer the daily questions. I had already sunk a lot of money in it so I posted a question here to see if I could make it work. That's how I discovered that all I needed was to buy an additional $10 atlas, and that's where the majority of the questions were pulled from. I still didn't love it, but it worked and we finished it.

 

I've also dropped completely several programs that were not essential. My day was just too busy and I knew something had to go to relieve some stress, and none were core subjects (foreign languages and creative writing). 

[Half year World History, other half American history]

I work in college admissions. I think as long as they can identify from the transcript that he completed one full credit of each, there shouldn't be a problem.

[Do Any of You Have Experience with College Consultants?]

Will they have information that isn’t listed on the website, or is the info that’s on there pretty much all there is?

 

I suppose that will vary by institution. Mine is intentionally vague in print, so someone who calls and talks to us will definitely get more details. 

[Do Any of You Have Experience with College Consultants?]

I am an admissions counselor for a private university. Admissions counselors do everything that consultants do, except they get paid by the college instead of the family. The primary difference being that we're only experts on the one college we work for, whereas you'd expect a consultant to be knowledgeable about a broad variety of schools. However, I would NOT expect a consultant in my area to be as knowledgeable about how to pay for my university as I am. I get calls from consultants who are helping out a client and they ask me pretty basic questions.

 

As a previous poster said, I think paying a consultant might be worth it if they are doing all the leg work for you, and you need that. Or if you are trying to get into extremely competitive schools. But otherwise, I don't think so. If you've got the time, I suggest contacting the admissions counselor who handles your region at each of the universities your son plans to apply at. That person should be able to tell you exactly what scholarships are available, how to apply, what criteria they are looking for, etc. They likely have a list of external scholarships to point you towards as well.