Tumbleweed. :D This looks complete to me. There may be some overlap in some of the resources, but the resources you chose seem to lend well to each other.

I am sighing with you! I've used 3 of WPs themes, and I thought I was done, but now I keep coming back to the horse theme. Thanks for the details on errors. I bet there are more in the last 3/4. :001_huh:

I'm interested in this theme too. I was hoping to do it in about two years. What do you think of the age level? The books looked rather dry for an 8yo third grader, that's why I've been waiting.:lurk5:

I was thinking of using Rod and Staff or . . . oh, what is it called? The Saxon grammar, but not called Saxon? Rats. :glare: I have also thought of moving into MCT. Definitely a different way to look at grammar/writing to shake things up a bit. ETA: Hake!

You should do well switching over. One thing I did this year was to use the heaviest paper I could find at the paper ream section at Wal-Mart, printed front and back of 3A. I put cardstock on the front and back. Then I took it to the office store to spiral bound with those plastic front and back plastic pieces. It looks like I purchased it! For the cumulative review and tests, I printed the whole year's worth with cardstock on front and back and a piece of cardstock between the reviews and tests and spiral bound that too. :001_smile:

I still appreciate your response! I am considering IEW and EIW. I agree with you on dictation. This is the reason why I was considering skipping WWE4 while still doing narration and dictation from history or science and doing another program for a year or two before diving into WWS. Anyone else?

Bumping! I'd actually like info on Essentials in Writing. :001_smile: I should have written it out. :tongue_smilie:

I am considering using EIW, and I was wondering how to place students. I will have a 3rd grader and 4th grader who have completed WWE2. I would like to keep them together if possible. Is that possible with EIW? How long do lessons generally take? Is it totally overload if I do it this year along with WWE3? Any other details and your experiences are appreciated. :001_smile:

Thank you! I'm thinking of doing WWE3 this year (maybe with SWI A??) or SWI A next year and then moving into WWS after that. I'm not sure if I want to do the extremely long dictations of WWE4. The girls narrate and summarize beautifully after WWE2 and do dictation beautifully for their own narrations, and while they do well with the dictations in WWE2, I feel that dictation from their own narrations is more important than memorizing pieces from the passages. :001_huh: I just might not see the total picture with dictation of the extremely long sentences, though.

I use CLE and Math Mammoth. MM is definitely more conceptual, but one of my DDs just doesn't think that way, so we do the CLE. CLE does have some mental math exercises, but it is no where as deep as MM. I think you could use CLE as a base and use some of the MM blue series PDFs. Addition or subtraction or place value worksheets on the side of CLE could really round things out. I already find myself explaining things to my DD using CLE the way MM teaches, but it isn't overwhelming her as much. I hope that helps and giving you a bump.

I add activities to SL Cores. This last year we did Core B with SOTW and SOTW AG activities. It was wonderful! I added in picture books from SOTW AG and did a few activities here and there when we wanted to. I replaced some of the CHOW readings with SOTW too, as we liked SOTW better. If the CHOW readings were something we already covered in SOTW, we would skip it. We had a wonderful year. The base of books in SL fits us, and its easier for me to add in activities we like instead of possibly something we don't like being scheduled in something else and then me feeling bad for not doing it as scheduled.

I see this is written by IEW. Is it a complete book or does it last only a few weeks? Is it step by step, easy to implement and complete? How is it different than, say, level A of IEW?

I second the Gilgamesh trilogy! They are wonderful. We also loved Roman Diary by Platt.

About 3/4 of the way through this past year, I just stopped correcting them. It meant the same thing, and we were so frustrated. I'm glad I'm not messing up something by doing this. Now, about dictating one sentence at a time instead of all of them? Both of our DDs can dictate a whole sentence, and once in a while can do all 2 or 3 sentences at once, but that is a struggle. I do it sentence by sentence. Am I horrible? :001_huh: :001_smile:

FLL3 assumes no prior knowledge of grammar, so you could pick up there with him. For WWE, level 1 works on listening skills, narration of one thing he remembers from a passage in complete sentences, and copywork of his narration and other sentences from the passage. Each week will lightly focus on different parts of grammar and writing. Level 2 begins with listening to a passage, narrating a summary of the passage with leading questions, copywork and dictation right away. It weans them off of leading questions for summaries and weans from copywork to straight dictation.

How are you doing the HSITW TT with E? I am planning on doing them with D and E too. I haven't extensively looked into it, as we're just starting Core C. Is it easy to integrate the TT with SL? The HSITW TT is exactly the types of things I already add to the SL cores (well I also add web sites). :001_smile:

I am nervous about officially adding in our K'er this year. I'll have 3 to school, and I know we'll get in a groove, but finding it irritates me. I'm such a schedule person, and adding in a new student and just a new set of books for everyone always gets to me a little. It takes me about a month to find a groove usually. Her things will probably take about an hour, and I plan to get her math and LA done early and all the gravy stuff later whenever there is a gap. I don't know where the gap is now, though. :glare: Her schedule is pretty laid out. We'll do Abeka Math K, SL LA K with the sound portion of AAR pre-1, SL P4/5, and she'll tag along for art with her older sisters. I'm happy with the line-up, as most of it is laid out for me so I'll get it done. For her PK year, we did a "if you want to" type schooling, but we did accomplish a lot. It just wasn't regular, and since she never knew when we were going to do her things, she asked and asked and asked :001_huh:. Now she'll know what's coming and find a niche for herself too. I always felt she was just wandering around, not integrated as much as I wanted her to be. Hopefully the schedule will help.

I used WP RTL/JOI and then AW. I tweaked them a lot and was irritated by the incohesiveness. I had a SL Core K (now A) used, so I used that for a K'er and 1st grader. It was wonderful for the 1st grader, but just barely registering for the K'er. I thought I wanted more activities and web sites to look at, so I switched to WP again (AS1) but WP's activities were not my style, I skipped about 40% of the books, as many of them were dry and boring to us or the level way to high for our ages. Now I've switched back to SL and did core B (with a 2nd and 3rd grader). We're moving into core C now with a 3rd and 4th grader. I realized what I liked, a good base. With SL, I liked all the books and read them all, but I could add what I liked for activities (in our case SOTW AG, notebooking and some things I find here and there. If I didn't do activities in WP, I would feel bad since I paid so much for the IG, but I hated the activities and found them useless/busywork. Also, the notebooking pages were horrible in AS1. It had a half a page of text with 3 inches of white space for the child to draw something. Yuck. There was nothing for the child to DO on the notebooking pages. I make my own or purchase them from Notebooking Pages.com now. WP was so choppy for me. SL will have overlap of books, such as reading a book a week longer, but moving into a different subject with history. This doesn't bother me, though, as the flow remains. WP would schedule a notebooking page about George Washington and read about him 2 weeks later and things like that. The GW page could have easily been scheduled in the right week, and people would point this out, but nothing would ever be done, as people would complain the next year about the same things. That was our experience. :001_smile:

It definitely depends on how your child is writing. HWT was designed by an occupational therapist, stressing the fine motor movement development in children. She starts with writing the capital letters because it is more developmentally appropriate for most 5yo's.

:iagree: There are rules in levels 1 and 2 that most kids need covered, especially when to use c or k at beginnings of words, k or ck at end of words and a lot more. Level 2 goes over ou/ow, au/aw, and others like this.

Math: CLE Math 4 LA: FLL4, WWE3, WWW4, AAS3/4, HWOT 4, SL 4/5 readers History/Geo/Lit: SL Core C with SOTW 2, notebooking Science: SL Science D Art: Artistic Pursuits book 2 Extra Geography: We are working on countries this year with Knowledge Quest.

Do you mean the wooden letter pieces? They are about 8 inches long. You can make them out of craft foam from a model in the teacher's manual instead of buying the rather expensive wood pieces. big line, little line, big curve, little curve. In the early years, the teacher will definitely be spending more time, making sure the child is forming good habits right off the bat that you don't have to correct later. You will help them form letters too. In the later years (even 1st you don't need to spend a lot of time with the child), I don't have to do anything with them, but make sure everything is beautiful.

I could have written this post myself. These reasons are nearly exactly why I chose SL over MFW and HOD. I looked into all of them extensively (couldn't make up my mind!), but went with SL because it was a good base. I have figured out I will always want to tweak, and I just want a base to work off that. HOD seemed to boxed too me, leaving no room for the child's different ability levels. MFW looked good, but looked rather dry in the later years, and it seemed to me (I have NOT used it) that some of the books in the cycles were just over the heads of the youngers. I didn't want to do that much work to choose which books to use for the younger children in the cycle. I figured if I was going to have to read multiple levels of books, it was just as much work as doing 2 cores of SL. I like to add activities and web sites that I like and I know my children will like. For some reason, if a curriculum schedules these things for me and I don't like them (silly, too much work, etc.), I feel bad not doing them because I paid for the guide. That's why we like SL. B/C is a whirlwind and isn't a good indicator of the other cores in SL. It is so squished that some people can't take it. :tongue_smilie: I am loving the cores more as we are moving through them, and I can't wait until everything is integrated in D.

Hmmm, it has been ongoing for 2 or 3 years, but I am insistent with no exceptions on holding the work until its their turn. Let's say I'm doing FLL with one child and the other comes with a math question, I pause FLL and just tell them to circle (maybe a highlight would be good here so I can see if they missed some exercises) the ones they don't understand. We use a spiral math, so there are always some things they know how to complete. I have deliberately chosen some subjects that can be done independently for the most part. I think since it is a routine in our house for taking turns and keeping interruptions to a minimum, the girls are finally keeping to it. My 5yo does no such thing, though. :001_smile: Does that help at all? It has just been a continual reminding of holding the work, go back and finish what you can.

Hmmm, it has been ongoing for 2 or 3 years, but I am insistent with no exceptions on holding the work until its their turn. Let's say I'm doing FLL with one child and the other comes with a math question, I pause FLL and just tell them to circle (maybe a highlight would be good here so I can see if they missed some exercises) the ones they don't understand. We use a spiral math, so there are always some things they know how to complete. I have deliberately chosen some subjects that can be done independently for the most part. I think since it is a routine in our house for taking turns and keeping interruptions to a minimum, the girls are finally keeping to it. My 5yo does no such thing, though. :001_smile: Does that help at all? It has just been a continual reminding of holding the work, go back and finish what you can.