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dionne3514

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    Amarillo, Texas
  1. If anyone has had their children take the National Latin Exam please tell me what Latin program you are using and to what level did you finish before attempting the Intro level exam. My daughter will be finishing up Second Form this May and we are considering taking the first intro level. She has taken the practice exams and done pretty well up to Level 1. We were missing a bit of geography and a few verbs, but that is easily fixed. I was just curious what level most students are in their studies when they start taking this exam. I have no idea how far behind we are . . . . Thanks! Krista
  2. My daughter just finished Traditional Logic 1 at Memoria Press and I was quite impressed with the course as with how much my daughter learned and worked through. It isn't the easiest course, but it is a worthwhile challenge.
  3. We go to the gym 4 of the weekday mornings, so our day "starts" at 5:50 as I categorize this as PE. (Wednesday is a sleep in until 8:30 day--whew!) But, we too have many challenging subjects, two of which are on line courses through Memoria Press (Latin and Logic) that require chats and tests outside the daily lessons on her own. I hate to say this for fear of those who may think I am too over the top, but many days we go until dinner around 5:30. I know, nearing 12 hours sounds insane! Here's the deal though, we work all day in a "broken continual" cycle--meaning things interfere, we sometime meander, and we are OK with that. But, we don't stop until the daily lesson plans are completed. Also, my husband took over math this year, so my daughter needs to be flexible around his schedule, which is weird since he works hospital shifts. I can't give you a real time value, but here is an example of why: Yesterday the weather was beautiful for mid-January, so we set up our lawn chairs in the backyard and completed a vocabulary review while playing with a bunny rabbit and intermittently stopping her from burrowing in the wood pile, then I had my daughter pick up dogie droppings as we orally invented copia for alternative line endings to a poem in Classical Writings, then she was swinging while I drilled her Latin words for the week. A snack was thrown in there too. So, at the desk--that should have been about 45 minutes worth, but in the backyard it stretched out to almost 2 hours. We pretty much do what we want when we want and for how long we want, but, trust me, it gets done . . . and well! They are long days, but w actually enjoy them. And, if we need to do something outside the house, we reign it in at the desk and get it finished in half the time.
  4. Yes, I am quite the adherent of the Oxford comma AKA Harvard comma, or the serial comma. Without it how would my husband know what my grocery list means: I need some green beans, peas, and carrots. If I wasn't so faithful to the Oxford comma he could easily being home only 2 cans of food--one of green beans and another of mixed peas and carrots :) Krista
  5. We went all the way through Singapore's Elementary series and then in 6B, I realized that my daughter was still needing quite a bit of input from me to complete the tests/reviews, albeit with solid scores, but I worried that she wasn't doing enough on her own and switched mid-year to Saxon, as everyone said Saxon produces confidence in math. She tested 8/7 in Saxon and we began with great dedication. About a week or two into Saxon, my daughter would almost cry--she was much more accustomed to Singapore's teaching method and their exercises and Saxon was just too much review and odd, thrown together repetition. We just did not like the way Saxon spiraled in each lesson, throwing together many topics in one exercise. Singapore would intro a topic and the stick with it through the unit, increasing in difficultly and comprehension as the lesson progressed. We knew what to expect with Singapore. Saxon was simply hairpullingly frustrating and doggedly didactic for us but we pushed on for the rest of 6th grade. Needless to say, for 7th grade we went back to Singapore and choose Discovering Mathematics. It is hard work, and we spend at least an hour and a half everyday in math, but Singapore simply fits my daughter better and I have discovered that she only needed to work a tad bit harder on her own to master Singapore. Saxon was the kicker for causing her to choose to work harder in Singapore! i guess sometimes you have to jump the fence to realize the grass isn't always greener . . . :)
  6. While we have enjoyed many things from the company, this series wasn't our fav. We tried Editor in Chief last year (6th grade) for my daughter and at first it was fun as she "graded" the examples, but pretty soon it became too random--to the point of frustration. Some of the errors had little to do with the obvious, basic grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization rules, or even the logic of the paragraph. I had a hard time finding all the errors they wanted on several examples and have taught college English for 10 years, so I have had my fair share of paper editing! We quickly became cranky looking up the last couple errors we couldn't find by turning to the back of the book. When we looked them up--they were often forehead slapping realizations, but they never really got us on fire to look more in depth in the next example and they certainly didn't set any patterns of editing (global, paragraph, sentence, etc). It simply didn't seem like a good way to teach much about writing, or even self editing since no firm principles were ever "taught" in the text. There were no introductions for the subsequent levels of editing, so my daughter was constantly asking me what she should be looking for beyond the first 5 or so obvious errors and all I could say was "just look for more mistakes in the text". We soon gave up and moved on--it was a good thing it was only for fun anyway.
  7. Hi there, My daughter is in 7th grade and we are currently using: History--History Odyssey Early Modern level 2 Math--Discovering Mathematics Singapore Science--Apologia Physical Science Latin--Second Form Latin Memoria Press w/online class Logic--Traditional Logic Memoria Press w/online class Grammar--Harvey's Elementary Grammar Vocabulary--Vocabulary form Classical Roots A and B Poetry--Classical Writing Poetry fro Beginners Writing--Classical Writing Homer Art--Annotated Mona Lisa Bible--Kay Arthur's inductive Bible Series Literature--I have combined the reading list from History Odyssey with the 7th lists from well Trained Mind section in literature and History (I would be happy to send a copy of my Home School Tracker lesson plans for these!) Music--Piano lesson Sports--Fencing team and local gym for daily exercise It's a full day's worth :) Krista
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