Suzannah
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Posts posted by Suzannah
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We have used Botany, Astronomy and Swimming Creatures. In the case of the first two, we only did them for a semester, doing the WTM recommendations for the other part of the year as it applied. We've thoroughly enjoyed all three. Not boring at all, but I'm not sure how you can make them last a full year unless you only read a very short section at a time & have lots and lots of supplemental reading. We did science once or twice a week, watched Blue Planet at the relevant sections, did some narrations and experiments.
This year we did Swimming Creatures as a year-long course for DD. I've generally tried to keep on the same science and history rotation for both of my school-age kids, despite the age difference, but this year DS was taking a General Science class with some friends. So this was DD's science (although DS ALWAYS listened-in.) We actually finished the book a couple of weeks ago and I've been trying to decide whether to do gardening and nature walks for the rest of the year for science or just skip science (but do the gardening and nature walks anyway.)
We used the free notebook pages from Jeanne Fullbright's site for Astronomy and Swimming Creatures (didn't know they had them when we were doing Botany.) I don't know that I would have paid for one, but it was nice. I think it provided more inspiration for drawing pictures or jotting down notes than a blank piece of lined paper does.
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If your 6th is comfortable with narrations, start both kids in Older Beginners. I followed the placement suggestions on the CW website for my DS when he was in 5th grade and really wish I had just started him in Older Beginners. We'd been doing WTM narrations and outlining but only did Writing Strands for a year. My fault. I just didn't like it. So I judged that it would be better to start with Aesop B. It was fine, but basically taught narration, which he already knew how to do. So then we moved on to Homer. It really didn't become challenging until the last half or so. I think it would have been better for us to have started with Older Beginners in 5th grade.
As an aside, I only looked at the newest edition of WTM last week and saw that they recommend beginning CW in 5th or 6th grade with Older Beginners.
Good luck!
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Always start at the beginning. The appeal of SOTW is its narrative style. I've tried to use programs that incorporate SOTW by having you read Chapter 4, then Chapter 2, then the second half of Chapter 7. It irks me. But even if that doesn't bother you, there's no harm in a quick review to figure out where you are again. Start at the beginning of the book and go right along until you come to the end. There's no harm in reading something you've already covered, or in previewing something you haven't gotten to yet. This will help you put world and US history into context.
Audio books are great. We often listen in the car or during lunchtime.
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We began using Omnibus in 6th grade (Volume 2) when I noticed that it contained many of the same recommendations as The Well-Trained Mind had for 6th grade. Now, I was very careful to remember that Vol. 2 is an 8th grade book and I was using it with a 6th grader. We have followed WTM all the way through, so he was well-prepared to receive history and literature favorably. But where WTM recommended a retelling or a particular edition of a book for 6th grade, we used that instead of the recommendation from Omnibus. Occasionally chapter selections didn't match up, but it worked-out fine.
So, here's how we did it. DS would read the introduction in Omnibus and do the assigned reading on his own, then come to me to orally discuss the reading. I generally try to read what he's reading before he does. Relying on my memory from college and high school isn't as effective as I had hoped. Sometimes I read through the discussion questions ahead of time, sometimes he read them aloud as I was making dinner and we talked through it. Sometimes we just talked about the reading in the car without the benefit of the questions. We did a handful of the extra activities, but DS was doing separate writing so it seemed like overkill to do it in Omnibus too. And he was a bit young to do Omnibus writing instead of our separate writing. I added all scripture references to his assignment sheet throughout the week so that as they came up in discussions he would already be familiar with them. Some items from the secondary reading list I allowed him to listen to in audio format (we happen to have The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings on iPod) but he read all primary reading by sight. The introductions have been the best part of Omnibus, followed closely by discussion questions and the way the different readings (both primary and secondary) relate to each other. We didn't do every book...maybe 75%-85%? But it was such a great experience that we continued with Volume 3 this year (7th grade) and will complete Volume 3 next year (although there is not as much cross-over with WTM-recommended readings as previous years.)
I have looked at Tapestry of Grace several times in the last couple of years but have decided (for now) that it isn't quite what I want. It looks great and best wishes to all who use it, but somehow it makes everything so complicated to me. We enjoy learning the way we are doing it and I don't feel a real need to switch.
The best way to prepare your young children for upper level work is to teach them to read and read aloud (or listen to good quality audio books) and talk about what they are reading.
Blessings!
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According to the website/blog, there is no definite timeline for the next writing books in the series. I think they're giving the History of the World series greater priority since SWB says she thinks there are plenty of good options out there for middle and high school writing. It was mainly the area of beginning writing that seemed to be lacking.
HTH
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We got it on CD when older DS was in 2nd grade and he said it was hard to follow. In 6th grade he read it on his own and it was a breeze. I suspect it depends some on the child. If he is familiar with the story (my DS wasn't really...shame on me) &/or is used to hearing an older style of speaking it'll probably be fine. As a result of our experience with Robin Hood, I started alternating our Bible reading from all NIV to some King James version to accustom his ears to the older style of speech. Shakespeare that year and then later in 6th grade Canterbury Tales, Song of Roland, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight were all a piece of cake from that point on.
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This is a timely topic for us as well. DS has just told me that he'd like to begin Greek next year and save a modern language for high school (we do some conversational French but haven't studied it academically.) His primary goal (and my main interest for learning it myself) would be to read the New Testament in the original language so we've decided to learn Koine. He's had five years of Latin and will continue it for a minimum of three more years to get a couple years of high school credit. I'm thinking of Greek as more of an elective for personal edification than a foreign language credit for the high school transcript. All my life I've heard preachers and Bible class teachers refer back to the original Greek and I would like to be able to read it for myself.
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I would say you need the teacher's manual, although we often go several lessons at a time without opening it. After the first few lessons, you know that they like for you to review skip-counting, telling time...whatever else is in there. Basically I do some of these kinds of exercises a few times a week since they aren't reviewed within the lessons or worksheets. Mainly I determine whether or not we need to go by the lesson based on the difficulty of the concept and whether there are any extra sheets in the workbook. But understand that this applies mostly to Saxon 1-3. Once you get into the middle levels it's more complicated stuff. If you don't read the lesson to them, make sure they read the whole lesson.
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For Kindergarten I always use Five in a Row and do a little phonics, "something with numbers" and "something with letters" each day. "Something with..." means counting, saying the alphabet, identifying numbers or letters, skip-counting, etc.
It happened that when DD was three and four she wanted her own schoolwork to do so I printed out TONS of free worksheets from LearningPage.com (membership is free--we liked the themed "funsheets"). At some point I decided to look at the Saxon math placement test to figure out where she should be and decided to start her in Saxon 1 in Kindergarten. It was mainly to feed her desire to do schoolwork. If she didn't feel like doing anything, fine. If she wanted to do three lessons, fine. Math as a subject didn't become a requirement until first grade, but we always did "something with numbers."
I am a planner. I like to lay it all out so I know what to expect. So I would use the FIAR lesson plan chart in the back of the book to create a plan for each week. For each book/week we chose a couple of activities for each day, trying to do something from every subject (art, science, language, etc.)
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I haven't done that, but I have used both Botany and Astronomy and for each of them we did them in a semester. For those two years we did something else in the other semester. So instead of switching back and forth you could just do one and then the other.
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We've used Botany, Astronomy and Swimming Creatures. It is written in an engaging narrative style. There is at least one experiment or science activity in each chapter, thought there are sometimes more. You can get free notebooking pages from Jeannie Fullbright's website.
We used Botany when DS was in 5th grade and DD listened-in while coloring. She always wanted to be where we were. We did Astronomy for 6th/1st and both kids really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. This year DS has an outside class for Apologia General Science but he enjoyed listening in when we did DD's Swimming Creatures.
Until this year I had only used the books for a semester. This year I thought of it as a whole year course but we finished the book a couple of weeks ago. We definitely could have stretched it out with additional reading, more narrations, more experiments, etc if I'd wanted to.
HTH Good luck!
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Thanks for the info!
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We've been using Julie Shields' copywork for a couple of years. I've considered Queen's but didn't like the typed model. I preferred an actual handwriting sample to copy, since I wanted to use copywork for handwriting practice as well. Julie's copywork is available in Zaner-Bloser print and cursive as well as Italic cursive. If, perchance, you happen to use Italics, there are more options at http://www.italicbuilders.com but their site seems to be down at the moment. They have character building and science copybooks.
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I've never used a test for any of the SOTW volumes. Are there tests? I have first editions so maybe they're new. We do the mapwork and review questions and try to do narrations too (sometimes we skip it though if time is an issue.) If the kids were paying attention during the reading, but struggle with the review questions, we just discuss it a bit and I lead them along to the answer. If they weren't paying attention, we re-read it.
Some chapters are more memorable than others. Supplementary reading can help solidify things they didn't quite get from the initial reading.
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At least I'm not the only one who's thought it. WTM (2nd ed., p. 338) says "Spelling Workout H adds Greek roots and origins. Then further down the page it says Spelling Workout H is more of a vocabulary workbook than spelling manual, covering word roots, prefixes and suffixes from Latin, Greek, and French."
Has anyone used SWO H?
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Somehow we got a bit behind in the Spelling Workout sequence. When something has to be pushed back a day or two it's usually spelling since DS has been doing well with it. So now we're at the end of the year and he's just wrapped-up SWO G. TWTM says to go on to H, then begin Vocabulary from the Roots up. So, my question is, do I hafta? Would he miss anything significant if we skip SWO H and go straight to Vocab?
Thanks!
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As a matter of personal preference, it REALLY annoys me. But it is understandable and I don't think it bothered my kids that much the year we used Biblioplan or the 3 weeks we did a TOG free trial. I just think it takes away the narrative flow of SOTW. But like I said, it's a personal preference. Most of my friends who use TOG think I'm weird for letting it bug me.
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I agree, it's chock full of American History. I happen to have it here in front of my right now. There's plenty non-American history included, but with the following:
Of Plymouth Plantation (1st hand account)
Foundational American Documents (Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation and Constitution)
Federalist and Anti-federalist papers (debate on the Constitution)
Lincoln's Speeches
Slave Narratives
Autobiography of Ben Franklin
not to mention literature such as Tom Sawyer, Little Women and Killer Angels, it's definitely acceptable to count it as American History.
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Yes...we've used How the Body Works and How the Earth Works as described in TWTM. We liked it.
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Kudos to all you who school year-round! I've always liked the idea of it, but with summer camp, out-of-town guests, neighbor kids playing outside, within view of my kids...we just take the summer off.
However, I school as late as I can manage into June. The PS here gets out around the 3rd week so that works pretty well. Then in early August we will start doing something "schooly" (remedial work or just something extra like art that we don't always get to during the regular year). We always begin for real by the last week in August. This allows us to take a week or so off after Labor Day for our family vacation or a couple of long weekends here and there for camping or whatever. I like to allow for a month off at Christmas but this year we had to plan for a week off in mid-January for my brother's graduation so Christmas break was shorter.
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Oh I certainly think so. In fact, since the recommended reading in WTM matched up so well, we began Omnibus II in 6th grade, did Omnibus 3 this year in 7th. Next year we'll do the rest of Omnibus 3 plus more of the WTM recommended books. Then for 9th we're going back to Omnibus 1. I will evaluate the remaining books at some point, but frankly, most of the readings in Omnibus 4 don't really appeal to me so we'll probably be skipping it. The only ones we might consider doing on our own are the Iliad, Plato's Republic and maybe Lysistrata...but probably not.
Now just because we started in 6th grade doesn't mean it isn't suitable for high school. Many of the selections definitely require some developmental maturity. When I say we did it in 6th grade I mean we made use of what we needed and left the rest.
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Taking a suggestion from Kendra (preschoolersandpeace) I put together a memory work folder over the summer for the upcoming year. This is our second year doing it that way and it is WONDERFULL! I go through the WTM suggestions for the student's grade level, add a dozen or so scriptures (some short, some quite long), math formulae, poems, whatever I want them to know. These are all put in each child's "Memory Work Folder" and they spend 5 minutes or so on it every day. At the beginning of the year they work on just a few things at a time, but by mid-year or so, everything is memorized and they are just reviewing it.
Songs and mnemonic devices are a plus, of course, but you really don't have to get fancy. Just pick something you want them to know (the continents, the kings of England from Egbert to William the Conquerer, the first 13 colonies) and work on it a little every day. We are learning the song "The 50 States that Rhyme" just because I thought it would be fun. We sing the Greek alphabet to the tune of "Itsy-Bitsy Spider". And from William the Conquerer to Queen Elizabeth II there's a rhyme that begins "Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee" that we use.
SOTW vol 2?
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted · Edited by Suzannah
We've been using SOTW for seven years now (second time through) and we very rarely do the extra activities in the AG. My extra activities I mean coloring pages, games, crafts, costumes, etc. DS despises coloring and I just don't usually want to spend the time pulling things together for a craft or whatever. There have been a few gems, like travelling the Silk Route and making a Greek dinner. But for the most part we do the reading, discuss the reading, do the mapwork and do narrations for DD, outlines for DS. Then, depending on the topic we might have some extra books to read throughout the week (some chapters lend themselves to it better than others.) DD, on the other hand, LOVES to color. So I let her color while I'm reading the chapter.
If your kids truly detest extra activities, don't do them
Oh, forgot to add...
We use timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods. One year I planned to make my own and found after two months that we hadn't done anything. When I finally sat down to look for images online I couldn't find any for free that would work. If I have the pre-printed figures ready to go, we can just cut them out when we need them.