I want to teach my children how to do some basic research and write a short paper. I have The New York Public Library Kid's Guide to Research, which I will use for the beginning stages, but it doesn't teach how to pull everything together. I am looking for a good source to actually help write the paper from the index cards they have written. Is there something that is written for upper elementary children? Or do I just go ahead and teach a simple form of the five paragraph essay to pull it together?

Thank you for this link! I love the idea of typing my DC's work in so they can practice their typing skills.

We started CC Fable(MP's version) after Christmas and we are just finishing Lesson 4. My DD is finally enjoying writing. My plan is to go up to Lesson 8 or 9 of Fable, before switching to CC Narrative. We will do 8 or 9 lessons from it before we switch to CW A/H for Older Beginners in the fall. My plan is to go back and do a lesson in CC Fable and CC Narrative every semester for the next few years, while we work on CW. It will be a nice break and a refresher as well. I, too, have wondered whether or not I should skip CC Narrative and just move on to doing Homer A this spring, but we are really enjoying CC and I think that switching to CW at this point might be counterproductive. We will start CW in the fall. This will also give me enough time to study my CW books so that I am sufficiently prepared to teach it.

Thank you for this! I just pick our Art Reed DVDs up from the post office and my DD will start using them tomorrow. I am hoping for some "ah ha" moments for her, too.

I ended up ordering Art Reed's DVDs. I am expecting them in the mail this week.:001_smile:

We use Horizons Math a grade level below to get exactly what you are asking for. My eldest son is in Epsilon, so he is using Horizons Math 4, my twins are in Delta and using Horizons Math 3, and my youngest is in Alpha and Horizons Math K. My only regret is that I didn't do this with my DD12. She started MUS Pre-Algebra at the beginning of this year, and found that it went over her head. I think that she needed a more spiral approach than she received with MUS, or perhaps she needed the mastery and spiral approach that I am using with my sons. I have since moved her to Saxon 7/6, to get more review of basic elementary math. We will probably move to Saxon 8/7 from here.

I started all of my kids at Level 2. Their ages are 6, twins that are 9, 10 1/2 and 12. My DD12 has taken a year of piano lessons, but that was a couple of years ago, so she is doing this as review. One component of the program that was a nice surprise for us, is that you have a new 'teacher' every few lessons. These 'teachers' are animated versions of Handel, Chopin, etc.. At the beginning of each lesson they play a portion of something they have composed and talk a little about the background of the piece. My children love having Mozart or Tchaikovsky as their 'teachers'.

Hi Amber...are you looking for actual music instruction? Piano? The reason I ask is because we just started Children's Music Journey - http://adventus.com/store/childrens-music-journey/?vm=r, and my DC are really enjoying it. CMJ is a beginning piano instruction program that you can use online with a subscription, download, or buy the DVD. All you need is an inexpensive midi keyboard that you can plug into your computer. We bought a 66 key one, but a 49 key one would work fine. We jumped in at Level 2, because the gentleman I talked to on the phone said that Level 1 is for very young children, and the first few lessons of Level 2 review Level 1. They also have homeschool plans that you can purchase to go along with the levels. I have ordered one, but I do not have it yet. Your DC can go on to Level 3, then Piano Suite Premier and Ear Training programs, that can take you through to Grade 4 Royal Conservatory. My disclaimer is that I do have my Grade 6 Royal Conservatory, but that was eons ago. I did go out and buy the first couple of levels of Piano Adventures, fully intending on starting my children on lessons at home, but after I thought about the cost and the time it would take me to teach all five, I took them back and started searching for something that they could do on their own. The neat thing is that they will pull out my old beginner Leila Fletcher books and play songs on our regular piano. I am seeing results and the best thing is, they don't complain when they do their lessons.

I will preface this by saying that we are using and enjoying Growing With Grammar, put out by the same company that produces Soaring With Spelling. We tried Soaring With Spelling, but quickly dropped it. I felt that some of the words in the lists were totally inappropriate for the grade levels, one example is that in the Level 3 Book, Lesson 3, one of the words is eulogy. Is there a 3rd Grade child on the planet that needs to spend time learning how to spell eulogy? I have the books for Levels 3, 4 and 5 and this is not the only instance in the books where I felt the words were off base, but maybe the are more in line with what public schools are doing. I wouldn't know. The books also include assignments where you have to unscramble wrongly spelled words. I am in the Charlotte Mason 'camp' on this. I do not want my children to visualize wrongly spelled words. We have switched to Spelling Plus, with the Spelling Plus dictation book, which utilizes 1000 of the most commonly used words for elementary-aged students.

Thank you, Karen...do you happen to know how long each lesson is? I, too, would like a Biblical worldview.

Thank you all for your responses. Regarding the Art Reed and Saxon Teacher DVDs, can you tell me approximately how long each lesson is? My DD does not enjoy learning on a computer, but with 4 other children, I need to be able to pass some teaching time off.

I am considering Saxon Math and I would like to know which DVDs are preferred?

I loved your DD's retelling, Dyan. I have sent you a private message. I hope you don't mind.

I think I am beginning to understand the differences/similarities between the two. Thank you for the clarifications, and I am :bigear: if anyone has anything else to add.

Thank you so much for your encouragement, Janice. You are right, I need to spend more time helping my DD plan out her writing. I am going to print this out so I can have it beside me when we do our sessions.

Wow, Ruth...I am amazed at the maturity of your son's writing. I can see that my DD has a long way to go. I am unsure as to where I need to go right now. I am wondering if I need to put WWS on the shelf and go back to do either CW or CC. I feel like my DD is really missing instruction in sentence structure, and it seems like either CW or CC may help with that. Please correct me if I am wrong. I also love the idea of having a tone for each assignment. Did you just come up with that or can I read about it somewhere? I honestly feel at a loss right now, and I do not know what to do.

The bolded is what I am interested in. ;) I think that I need to do some extra work with my DD, but I am unsure how to fit everything in.:tongue_smilie:My DD would probably revolt if I added another writing curriculum to our line up. I am wondering if I need to drop some other things. I just wish I had stepped things up a year or two ago, but with my crew, I was too busy making sure the younger ones were advancing with their 3Rs.

Can someone who has used both of these programs please compare/contrast them for me?

I will take a look at that book. I cannot imagine rewriting a story 99 times, but I can see that it would take an amazing amount of skill.

I guess I need to evaluate what I want from WWS. I 'think' that you are saying that you value the mechanics/skills of writing. Which is why you go over the sentences, using writing to reinforce your DC grammar. While I do value the mechanics, I enjoyed seeing my DD engaged in her writing, which is what happened in this assignment, as opposed to other WWS assignments, with the exception of the Alexander the Great assignment, which she enjoyed. I guess I want the best of both, but I am unsure as to how to get there.:tongue_smilie: Edit: I read over my post here and I am not sure I verbalized what I mean. Of course, we are doing a writing curriculum to learn the mechanics/skills involved in writing. I guess I haven't moved over to make the connection between our grammar curriculum and our writing curriculum like Colleen has. I can see that happening, it just isn't happening here yet. This is one of the reasons that I am disappointed that ALL is on the back-burner. I was looking forward to cohesively connecting grammar and writing. Now I have to figure out how to do it on my own. I can see that I have a lot to learn.

Yes, I do think that she will be even more engaged, but it may be hard to switch from the impersonal POV to the present POV. I agree that it will be a different skill. Hopefully she will be able to write a little more cohesive paper.

Thank you for your comments, Colleen. I agree that I need to go back over the mechanics. Honestly, I cannot see having the time to go over her writing assignments sentence by sentence, but maybe I have to reevaluate, and make the time. I am already 'doing' school from 8am to 4:30pm with my crew. I am not concerned with my DD going over the word count, but for most assignments she is literally one or two words over the minimum. I think she must count as she goes along. When she added the additional information about Pompeii, she was just about over the maximum word count. I guess the point that SaDonna was making, which I agree with, was that when the kids have an interest in what they are writing, they write better. I, for one, will be putting SaDonna's ideas into practice.

SaDonna...have you looked forward to Week 13? I was just looking at it and it has the students reworking Week 12's assignment using a present point of view. I am hoping that my DD can muster her enthusiasm up again for Pompeii, to write from a present point of view. I am going to look for some youtube videos of volcanoes to show her before she starts writing. Thanks again for your ideas.

I was hoping to switch to ALL, but since that is not an option now, I am looking at AG and KISS. The one thing that holds me back from KISS, is that lack of traditional diagramming. My DC seem to really enjoy diagramming a sentence in the traditional way. Would it be too hard to add traditional diagramming? I did see the post that had a shot of how the author diagrammed a sentence that was very advanced. I agree that it can be cumbersome, but at a lower level, my children seem to like the visual aspect of it.

Thank you so much for your comments, SaDonna. I think that are right about creating interest. Up until now, I have just gone over the instructions in WWS with my DD, expecting her to work on it on her own. Most of the time, she has just barely written over the minimum amount of words, and honestly, I can tell that she has little to no interest in what she is writing about. I like that she wrote about Pompeii, because I could tell that she was interested in it. I really like your ideas about how to create interest. I need to spend more time doing this. My problem is that time is hard to find around here with 5 in 1st to 7th Grade. I think I will have to look ahead and generate a plan to inject a little more interest into the assignments. I wish that we were not forging the path with WWS. I would love to already have a 'sticky' that might have ideas on how to generate interest for each week. Your examples of how you did the Titanic assignment and the effort you put into the volcano assignment would be invaluable to those that are coming up behind us in WWS.