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CindyJ

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Everything posted by CindyJ

  1. Yes, we are using Horizons for the first time time this year. But why would a publisher assume that children would have always used that particular curriculum? Why make it difficult to jump into a new grade? Both A Beka and Saxon start at the beginning each year, so any child can come into the program and quickly be up to speed. I am actually using it in a classroom, and 2/3 of the class did not use Horizons in the past. So maybe it is not a good choice for a classroom, where you have children coming in each year from different backgrounds.
  2. Get the CLE books for 6th grade grammar. Just get the first set (lightunits 1-5), and just have her do the grammar portion for each day, not the spelling or handwriting. They will teach her everything she needs for diagraming, parts of speech, etc. I think they are excellent. Every day there is review of old concepts and a couple of sentences to diagram.
  3. I'm using Horizons 5 this year and am extremely unimpressed. Compared to A Beka, it is very deficient, IMO. It constantly asks the student to do things that haven't been taught, and it barely touches fractions the first half of the course. They need to be proficient in fractions by the end of the year, but that won't happen if they aren't taught until well into the 2nd book. I am quite frustrated with it.
  4. This is interesting because as a Protestant, when I first started homeschooling years ago, my mother asked me what materials I was using. I told her BJU, because there weren't a lot of options and I decided to try them (as an evangelical), and she said, "Well, I won't tell your father you are using BJU." That's because of the negative history of BJU with evangelicalism. So it's not just Catholicism. I will say that I have used some of the BJU high school materials, because I taught in a school that used a few of them - American history, specificalliy; and I used their world history with my ds. There were times when I would correct what was said in the text because of an anti-Catholic bias. The world history text actually said that Henry VIII wanted a divorce because he was really concerned about being in an illegitimate relationship with his wife Catherine. I thought that even Protestants knew better; Henry VIII wanted Anne Boleyn, period. The other was just an excuse. But at the same time, I thought the American history was a well-presented history book, and in one passage which started out being somewhat anti-Catholic, it ended by being fair. (My take, anyway). I can't remember exactly what the passage was about now. But yes, you have to watch it if you use it.
  5. Oh, we also used the BJU grammar, which I thought was equally bad. Sorry to be so negative, but I don't do grammar the way BJU does. They don't diagram - they label; I prefer A Beka. It was unclear and difficult to use.
  6. I taught at a little school last year using BJU American history text and teacher's manual. I hated it. It was dry, dry, dry (I think American literature is not the most exciting - a lot of it is depressing anyway), but the TM was very little help. It ran in chronological order, so began with the Puritans. They are pretty deep for a lot of high school students, and don't hold their interest. I gave up after a while, and just picked out books for us to read and discuss. I had much more control over the level, interest, and content, although I had to write my own study guides. The BJU was just extremely difficult to use - nothing like the 7th and 8th grade books, which are written very differently, although even there, I much prefer just straight books. HTH
  7. I've used Spelling Workout with 3 of my children, and it is one of the few programs that I would use again and again. It seems to cover several different skills at once, uses the spelling words as vocabulary words also, teaches editing skills, analogies, etc., and my children liked it. I have started using it in a class that I teach, and the students all like it. However, I have not tried the other two programs that you mentioned. Spelling Workout is just one of only two spelling programs that I have every liked. The other program I liked was Calvert Spelling, because my kids could do it on the computer.
  8. Jann in TX, you are so knowledgeable about math, I am wondering if you could give me some advice. If my daughter is doing TT pre-algebra now, because that is what her little private school uses, but she will switch in about a year to a school that uses Saxon for Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Advanced Math, would you recommend that she use Saxon 1/2 next year, or that I try the Lial Introductory Algebra with her, if I use my own program with her next year? The little school would put her in TT Algebra 1, but I am uneasy about that. I don't know whether I should be. I am not sure either about switching into Saxon after using Lial. I have used the Lial with my ds in the past and thought it was very good, but the Saxon is so different. I can't figure out why Saxon is so different, unless it just has so much geometry in it. Thank you.
  9. I started using CLE language arts with my children a few years ago, and I love it. I have used R&S in the past, and think that it is excellent, but it was too time-consuming for me to use in a homeschool setting. I have been very pleased with CLE. We have used it at several different grade levels. At first I tried to do everything, and then found that if we got behind in spelling, we would get bogged down in grammar, so we gave up the spelling. We do the grammar only, and use something different for spelling. We also ignore the penmanship. It is easy to do just the grammar, because the grammar is first in each lesson; spelling comes after the grammar, and penmanship is last. If you do the grammar only, it really just takes a few minutes a day - maybe 10 or 15. They do a great job of including constant review. I am extremely happy with it. My older dd went to high school this year, and her English teacher has been very impressed with her grammar understanding; and this is a school that emphasizes grammar.
  10. If you think she would really be interested in homeschooling, why couldn't you try it next year, and keep her in the choir? I would enroll her in one or two online classes so that someone else is grading her work and making the rules, setting the deadlines, etc. And I think also that your daughter sounds very normal. I think girls in particular tend to need/want to break away from their moms and prove to themselves that they are independent creatures, plus, they have those hormones. But if I were you, I would take her to school every day rather than have her catch the bus; that way she can talk to you and vent, etc., and she will feel that you love her so much because you are driving her to school. :)
  11. You could do CLE for grammar, and BJU for writing. BJU is not very good for grammar, in my opinion, and CLE is excellent in that regard. I have used CLE for my children for their grammar instruction, but used other things for writing.
  12. I love Wheelock's. I was working through it last summer, but have been sidetracked since school started in the fall, (because I am teaching school this year and have NO time for studying). So I am teaching Latin and can no longer learn it - how crazy is that? But I don't know how easy it is because I have a foreign language background, so I am comfortable studying Latin on my own. I guess it just depends on the person. I like Henle also; I just especially enjoyed some of the quotes that Wheelock's includes.
  13. The main thing for college is that she needs 2 consecutive years of a foreign language. If she does Latin next year, then she will, I think, still only have one year of a high school language, because she is only in the 8th grade now; but if she switches to Spanish next year, then she can begin her two-year sequence, and she will have time to do even 3 years easily in high school. Sometimes colleges prefer a modern language; but I am not an expert on that. I think that the Latin study will make it much easier for her to learn Spanish, also.
  14. Well, thank you to Angela for that Wikipedia link. I didn't even know that Latin had locative case.
  15. Where are you using locative case? I learned that in Russian. It was the case of location. If you are talking about Latin, I didn't know it had a locative case, but if it does, it would be used with certain prepositions, I expect.
  16. I can give you two perspectives. My ds used this last year in his Christian school. He had an excellent teacher, and he enjoyed it very much. He thrived on the discussion of all of the different philosophies and schools of thought. His teacher did add in a number of novels - Scarlet Letter, a Shakespeare play, Fahrenheit 451, Night, and a couple of others. But this year I am actually teaching this exact course in a small Christian school (not his), and I really dislike it. My students are not advanced students, and the philosophical discussion is simply way over their heads. I find the book itself to be for the most part dry, and the teacher's materials are singularly unhelpful. There are no worksheets included, no CD for printouts, and the notes in the teacher's edition are not even on the same page as the story. I also am not crazy about anthologies, I guess - so many snippets, and no complete books. Plus, it is in chronological order, which makes sense, but the Puritans are not the most fun to read for such a long time. They didn't write fiction, after all, and their writing does not make for easy reading. Not that that is my goal, but they have too long a stretch in which what they are reading just is not enjoyable. There are some good things in the book, but I have just found it difficult to teach from. So I would say that you need to evaluate your student(s); if you have a lot of time and energy to add to the curriculum and you have advanced and fairly intellectually inclined students, then it may work for you. I wish I could have used that DVD; my class might have enjoyed that more.
  17. I forgot to say that she's in the 7th grade this year, if that helps.
  18. I am wondering if someone out there could give me some advice. My dd is in a small school and they use TT for their math. She is doing the TT pre-algebra, but I have always used Saxon at the pre-algebra/algebra level. (I also used Lial one year for my ds, and liked it). I am concerned that she is getting behind, especially since I would have used Saxon algebra 1/2 with her this year. I used the 1/2 with all my children rather than 87. I am planning to homeschool her again next year - this is the only year she has been in school - and I am wondering what she will be ready to do after TT pre-algebra. Should she then do Saxon 1/2, or could she do Saxon Algebra 1? I have even thought of doing Lial's Introductory Algebra next year and then doing Saxon Algebra 1 after that, but the problem is that she may in the future go to a school which uses Saxon Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Advanced Math, and it is difficult to do Saxon Algebra 2 if you haven't done their Algebra 1. I am in a quandary. Maybe I will know what to use next year once I test her and see where she fits. But if anyone has any thoughts, I would appreciate hearing them.
  19. Brenda said: I think its pretty easy to adjust. if the child can't handle subordinate clauses yet - just don't teach them until they are ready. I agree. I think IEW probably has a lot of good components and can be very helpful for teaching writing, but it needs to be adjusted for each child. That may be harder to do with a class than with an individual child. One of the reasons that I think that foreign language learning is related to good writing is that I think that the main components of good writing are organization, clarity, and beauty; and I think that all three of those things tend to be developed with foreign language study. It would be fun to do a study based on that theory.
  20. I wonder if writing programs like IEW and Write Shop are an attempt to make it possible for anyone to teach writing. It seems to me that a more natural way would be to have students write, maybe through imitation (which IEW uses), and then to critique their writing, showing them how they could improve, but many people are unable to do that. Some people don't know that sentences shouldn't all begin the same way, that tenses shouldn't change, that certain words are overused, etc. I don't mean that in a critical way; I am really talking about advanced editing skills. I also think that some of these techniques students are supposed to use make for stilted writing when the students aren't ready to use them, and they will naturally use them when they are ready. However, a couple of my children had some classes in IEW, and probably benefited somewhat. It probably depends on how it's used, and I might think differently about it if I had attended a workshop. I personally think that the secret to good writing is reading a lot, and I also have a theory that foreign language instruction (particularly Latin) might be more beneficial than lots of writing instruction.
  21. I taught this book in an Omnibus class, and had the students read either the first 9 chapters or the first 10 - I can't remember now. But we left off the chapter/s at the end which are more philosophical and less autobiographical. They wouldn't have gotten those anyway.
  22. I was looking at my dd's Saxon Algebra 1/2, and as I was studying it, I was wondering what the point is of doing EVERYTHING so incrementally, because in algebra, review is built in. Once you learn negative numbers, or exponents, etc., not to mention algebra itself, you are going to review in ad infinitum, so why be so incremental about it? When you are just beginning a new algebra concept, you need to do more than 2 problems to get the initial hang of it. When you are beginning negative numbers also, you need to do quite a few of those things to really get it. My other dd was well into Saxon algebra 1, after doing the 1/2, and still didn't really understand the negative numbers, I think because she hadn't really mastered the concepts when they were initially introduced, because the introduction was just that - an introduction to negative numbers. Very brief, and she needed some practice to cement it. I am saying this as a parent who has used Saxon with all my kids, but I am wondering if algebra needs to be taught incrementally, because, as I said, the review is built in. I did use Lial's algebra with my ds, and felt that the algebra taught in that was excellent; however, he could not go into Saxon algebra 2 after the Lial's because the books were just too different. I think that with the lower levels, as in Saxon 54 and 65, that they are fine, because so much review is provided for arithmetic concepts, but A Beka is very similar with lots of constant review, and A Beka gives more problems whenever a new concept is encountered. Just some thoughts which are probably not helpful for anybody.
  23. Whether you could put him in public school in 10th grade without going to 9th would depend on whether your school district would accept your 9th grade transcript. Some states/districts/schools do; others don't. So I would probably call the public school guidance counselor first, since it seems that you are leaning towards public, and see if there is a helpful counselor there who could help you figure out what you should do. I have put 2 kids in public high school, and 2 kids in a private Christian high school, plus, I have put one child in a public junior high school; that is the one I would not repeat. I think it is probably better to avoid the junior high school if you can, just because life tends to be hard for that crowd. High school is usually a much better experience, and since your schools are divided at the 10th grade, I would wait until then, if it is possible. If you go the public school route, put your student, if at all possible, into honors classes; that way, he will be in class with the more serious students, and you and he will have a better experience. I have had a good experience putting two of mine into private Christian school, but you are right that it is very expensive, and Christian schools are not all the same. My ds has had a chance to shine in many ways at the Christian school, including in sports, plus, he has had a number of positive male role models from the teachers; I have been very pleased, so have continued to spend the money. But with our older girls, we didn't have the money or opportunity to send them to a Christian school, so they went to public high school, and things worked out well for them. There are many Christian kids in public schools, not to mention teachers. HTH
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