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cottagechick

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About cottagechick

  • Birthday 03/31/1967

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  • Website URL
    http://theharveyfiles.blogspot.com/
  • Location
    NE Indiana
  • Interests
    reading, decorating, homeschooling
  • Occupation
    mama, teacher, friend, comic
  1. Happy Birthday! Only the BEST people are born on March 31. =)

  2. Nope, we are just finishing Grammar Island. We got thru the parts of speech, and they still couldn't tell the difference between an adjective and an adverb. They also struggle with prepositions. Going thru it a second time seemed to help. We'll start Practice Island next week. I'm glad to hear it will help cement the ideas. :001_smile:
  3. I'm currently using MCT Island level with 3rd and 5th grade boys. The only downside I've seen with it so far is that if we miss even a day, they have a hard time remembering the information. I had to go thru the Grammar book 2 full times for them to grasp what MCT keeps saying is simple and logical. To me, yes, it is. To my boys, it's hard. They have gotten frustrated with the material on more than one occasion because these *are* higher level concepts. I heard several gals talk about how their kids just love snuggling on the couch with them and won't miss a day of MCT....my boys groan when I pull it out. The only way we get thru it is by letting them compete and challenge each other with the analysis sentences. They do enjoy the quirky humor, and the pages where they can make up their own silly sentences....but they aren't fooled. It's grammar, it takes brain power to understand, and it's work to recall all those terms. Basically, it's schoolwork that needs done each day. They definitely don't look forward to it, even though we're snuggling on the couch. :001_smile:
  4. Getting desperate here. Need to find something for a 10th grade boy who hates writing. We're also doing remedial work with SWB's recs for history and literature writing.
  5. I think that's the box I've jumped into. Me likey. Discovering my son's right brain learning style, I'm finding several disconnects with a purely classical model, much as I love WTM. Memory work is a dirge for him. Reading for an hour a day is torture. Physically writing is H-E-double hockey sticks. Spelling rules are as difficult as a foreign language. So we're dropping memorywork for now, he reads for 30 minutes, and gets to listen to audio books while he builds his LEGO creations. He's learning to type with Typing Tutor for kids and practices 2 lines of cursive copywork a la Pictures in Cursive A. Spelling is off the radar. Not even gonna mess with it. If he decides somewhere down the line he needs to know spelling rules, he can do it himself as my hubby has. I will say that WWE (we're in level 2 and he's 11) has been fabulous, as have MCT's materials (using the beginning Island level). Up next we're trying Life of Fred with a bit of Math Mammoth division remediation....though he balks at some of her 'tricks'. History....all set to begin logic stage fact finding, outlining, timelining, summary writing with the Kingfisher Illustrated History of the World. Just trying to fit that within a framework that will click with my son's VSL paradigm. I'll be going thru SOTW 2 with his 9yo brother, and I'm sorely tempted to just have him use that as his spine and forgo the KIHW til next year. Spanish. Ain't gonna happen this year. Music appreciation. Nope. Logic, maybe 1 day a week. LOTS of games. Many, many games. A plethora of games. Science.....hmmmm, still thinking on this one as the boys LOVE all things science. Was going to get Noeo, but am questioning that. Open to suggestions. Just my ramblings after a month of school. :lol:
  6. AWesome! Would love to have a big chalk or whiteboard like that...no more wall space in my school room :) I just finished up most of our school room too...we've been slowly adding a subject or two each week. Pics of my schoolroom are on the blog....I LOVE seeing other's learning spaces:001_smile:
  7. Granted, I haven't started this yet, but I will be doing SOTW with a grammar age son, and the logic rec's with my 11 yo. I wrote about it on my blog right here. Non-fiction reads are done Wednesday and Friday during history time (90 minutes), historical literature is read daily during the assigned reading time (as per SWB's recommendation in WTM). Read Alouds or books on audio are done after dinner or before bed. hth!
  8. I have 3rd and 5th grade boys, and a friend's 10th grade son will also be joining us. I joined the WTM blogring yesterday. Hoping to get posting more in the next couple weeks...we're adding a couple subjects each weeks, so we'll be into the full swing pretty quick.
  9. I joined too...should motivate me to keep posting on a regular basis, which will be easier once school starts full swing in a couple weeks. ;)
  10. After 12 years of homeschooling, I'm coming back to more of the methodology and resources in TWTM. I'm also using lots of Peace Hill Press materials...except for FLL, which I just didn't care for. We also don't do latin (we're going to do spanish). We're using Math Mammoth too, which isn't listed as a resource. My older kids are all but raised, but I have 2 little guys left at home, so I get a 'second chance' with them. Knowing what I know now, having graduated three so far, I think the principles in WTM serve our family best with the goals we have for educating our kiddos. Her methods are a good fit for us, and I can tweak to accomodate learning styles, etc. I haven't found a better fit than WTM, though LCC comes in a close second.:)
  11. The lessons were shorter than what say, SWB, says they should be. I gave them assignments, when they finished, they finished. Most of the time it was 30 minutes or less because they were motivated to get it done and move on to stuff they liked. My son led a band, wrote music, and loved to read and write stories, create stuff on the computer, etc. Math was barely tolerated, science was a bore, history just got done. And not everything was done each year. IME, colleges weren't as interested in credits for homeschoolers as they were with SAT scores and a list of the course of study used. They want to be sure this kid can hack the work at a college level. I will mention that my olders were pretty self-motivated, didn't require a lot of hand-holding to get their work done. My 5th kid is a dreamer, VSL, whole-to-parts learner so I will obviously need to spend more time helping keep him focused. But short lessons are a MUST for him, and will be I"m sure til he is graduated. :D
  12. We just moved slower thru the books. We took almost 2 years for each of the SOTW books because we wanted to savor the great extra stuff. Not that we did everything or read every recommendation...just that I didn't stress about getting a book done every year. That was with my older kids. I'm starting over again with my youngest two. By the time your boys are past the grammar stage, they won't need to necessarily need to do history together anyway. Logic stage work can be done independently for history for the most part. You've got time to enjoy the history rotation.... I am doing the Medieval history (SOTW 2) with a 5th and 3rd grader...but the 5th grader will also do the logic stage outlining/summaries/timelining. I have it laid out on my blog under the label 'history' if you're looking for how it practically plays out at my house....or at least how I hope it will pan out when we start in a few weeks :)
  13. I have a bit of an advantage having graduated three now (two of them got full scholarships is that means anything...) I do short lessons everyday in skills (writing, math, reading...technically foreign language would fit in here too). EVERY DAY. The content subjects and humanities are gravy. Seriously. Short lessons means less than 20 minutes for my rising 5th grader, less than 15 for my rising 3rd grader. My goal is to give my kids the appropriate tools and show them how to use them at the appropriate time as they grow. IMO, kids who read well (and read well-written stuff), can articulate their ideas in writing, can extract info from non-fiction in order to learn something, and do math thru algebra 2 are WAAAAAAY ahead of the game. It's not important that they remember the Greeks came before the Romans....it *IS* important to know how to find that information, how to organize that information, and how to write about it coherently. My job is to teach those skills the way that makes sense for each kid so that they can succeed in whatever they want to do with their lives. Sure, I'd love for my kids to speak several languages, read all the Great Books and write amazing literary essays on them....appreciate great poetry, great music, great art......but there is plenty of time in their lives to pursue that stuff once they've grown. *I* am only one person. *I* didn't get a classical education, which means I'm learning right beside them. There just isn't time enough, energy enough, motivation enough to do it all. One thing I've always appreciated about SWB and TWTM is that gives parents the confidence to teach those needed skills (readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic) within a context of chronological history study. I hope to give my kids a broad taste of the world, but not stuff them so full of unconnected tid-bits of info that they lose the desire to simply enjoy all that life offers. If I give them the skills and the confidence to use them....they can take them and run. Sorry so long-winded.....I still panic after 13 years of doing this, but each year I get better at knowing where my focus should be. The rest is gravy...or Little Debbie Oatmeal Cakes. Whichever.
  14. I'm using WWE 2 with my 11 yo son. We do two lessons per day. Grammar is a totally different animal, and we'll be using MCT materials for that. We've only been doing WWE for 3 weeks or so, and he's already getting the hang of dictation and narration....I'll prolly start skipping some lesson, so we can move quickly onto WWE3 and hopefully finish WWE 4 by this time next year. If you want to do diagramming mostly, you could look into the diagramming books SWB mentions....as well as outlining too. I'm taking a year to transition into the 5th grade logic rec's in WTM with my son. He doesn't find WWE babyish or too easy. It's been a great exercise for his brain. I will say that he is picking it up faster than his younger brother (9), so eventually I think they'll be in different books. hth.
  15. Thanks so much Leanna! I appreciate you breaking down how each age group can benefit from using the program. I am schooling a friend's son...they pulled him last year around Thanksgiving during his freshman year. He was basically failing everything. We spent the rest of the year detoxing from ps. This year, I really want to teach him to write and also read some classic literature. I will only have him 3 days a week, though. Would using LTOW work for us? I'm a natural writer for the most part, and am confident I can use the program, but I need to be sure it would work within a 3 day week. I'll also be having him do some literary essays and narrative essays a la WTM to get him up to speed. I figure if we can do a speed course thru the logic stage this year, that will give him 2 more years for full-on rhetoric study. Thanks for any input!
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