Another vote for Apples and Pears. We are now on the last book and my son is spelling all of those hard words-just finishing up 6th grade. All about Spelling worked until the middle of the 2nd book he hit a wall. About the time they have words spelled with ee and ea mixed up. He never could remember which was which and we stayed with it for too long. Sequential Spelling was a complete waste of time. Apples and Pears has been the easiest to teach, least time consuming, and least boring of all of them and it works! Don't know how it works but it does.

I'm using MCT with my youngest who has some learning disabilities. I wish so much that this had been available with my oldest ADHD son. It would have been perfect for him. He would have loved all of the humor. He did turn out to be an excellent writer, but I wish there would have been more joy in the early years.

11 yrs at the end of 5th grade. Just after Finishing up Singapore 5B. Great review and we both loved it.

I always feel like my life is falling apart every fall when school starts. It is just an adjustment period that I go through. After about a month of school I am back into a flow and everything's getting done again. My advise is to give it a few more weeks before giving up and see if things improve.

This year we used a great history curriculum that I think is particularly appealing to boys. It is Winter Promise's American Culture. It has a heavy emphasis on Invention and Technology through the later half of American History. Next year we plan on using Winter Promise's Adventures in the Sea and Sky which promises to be a scientific journey through History. We’ve also enjoyed their Energy Curriculum for Science Jiggle, Jostle, & Jolt . It comes with a cool Physics Solar Workshop kit that has kept my son busy for many happy hours. My ds will be a rising 6th grader soon. His favorites this year besides the History and Science above have been: MCT -both Island and Town levels Life of Fred -I’m looking forward to LOF Pre-Algebra with Biology for next year. All books on tape -even girly ones like the Little House Series Any Strategy board game,Legos, Models, and Science kits Favorite Books he’s read this year: The Overland Chronicles Percy Jackson Series- which has started a fascination with Greek Mythology so I’m trying to capitalize on that right now My Side of the Mountain Series He loved watching the Owl Cam of Molly/babies and doing owl studies. http://www.sportsmansparadiseonline.com/Live_Owl_Nest_Box_Cam.html Outside Learning- Boy Scouts, Spanish, Art, and PE classes where he’s formed some great friendships and given me a little break. Field Trips- We try to do field trips every couple of weeks even when I feel that I am getting behind in our studies. I never regret getting out and doing this kind of hands on learning. My preference is to do outside classes not just walking tours. Some of our favorites this year have been: Canoe trip Classes at the National Building Museum Energy Class at a Nuclear Power Plant Terra Cotta Warriors Exhibit Holocaust Museum-Children’s exhibit only Civil War Class and tour of the White House of the Confederacy and the Confederate Museum Real Pirates exhibit and classes at Nauticus Museum Virginia Aviation Museum classes Follow interests: A friend offered to give us a plot on his property to plant a garden this year(Our yard is too shady). I was going to decline but my ds got so excited and spent several hours on the computer researching gardens and drawing up a plan. We've learned a lot of science through this experience. I am lucky this year that I only have one ds left to homeschool and so I can really focus on what he is interested in.

Hi, MCT users. I'd appreciate your feedback on this post in the General Forums: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169711

I've been toying around with the idea of starting a MCT blog. Do I need permission from the company especially if I use the name Michael Clay Thompson? I have lots of ideas that I'd like to share and I'd like a central place where others can share ideas as well. I haven't found anything like this out there. I've never done a blog before so I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks

We've used WP American Cultures this year with my 5th grade ds. We've loved it-not choppy at all. Here's a link where I've posted twice about it: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=161618

We love it. Here are some more comments that were posted yesterday on this thread: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=164695

View demos here: http://www.thelosttoolsofwriting.com/demo.htm See frequently asked questions her: http://www.thelosttoolsofwriting.com/faq.htm Quote from frequently asked questions about grade level:

If he has ADHD then I wouldn't skip this. Dictation is a tool to help kids learn to keep what is said in their heads. It is a skill they struggle with and need to practice. Again I like Apples and Pears. Sentences start out slowly with few words and easy spellings. Work on the punctuation and handwriting right from the start while the sentences are easy. As you progress work on repeating each sentences a fewer number of times. I usually only have to repeat once now. I give the sentence and then a little over half way through I repeat it again. If my ds has gone off course a little he can correct it then. I agree with you that if a child has ADHD or any LD then dictation is hard. They have to keep the sentence in their head while focusing on spelling, handwriting, and punctuation. I too gave up dictation in the early years with my ds but now that we have been doing it every day of 5th grade it has helped his writing assignments so much. He can focus more on what to say and not so much on the mechanics, and writing is not so frustrating any more. Don't give up on dictation the rewards are worth it in the long run.

First of all I have only used the first two levels of MCT-Island and Town. I am basing my response that step-by-step writing is not taught in these two levels and from research I've done on the Voyage level. I'm not sure about the upper levels so please correct me if I am wrong. In the lower levels writing assignments are given but without step-by-step instructions. Second, I have not taught Lost Tools of Writing yet. I have read through it once and have a general idea of what it will cover. I will explain how I believe it works very simply. If anyone has anything to add or to correct me on please do. The 1st book covers the persuasive essay only and does so because it says that all writing can be helped from knowing this model. It covers how to come up with something to say, how to form a thesis from a question, how to prove the thesis with three proofs, how to use definitions and comparisons, how to outline, how to organize the outline, proper form and arrangement of the essay, adding your own voice within a structure, adding style-includes strong verbs, similes,metaphors, alliteration,etc., what not to do like avoiding to many prepositions. All of this is taught using didactic mode for those familiar with that. Again, I am only scratching the surface here. Karenciavo has written some great posts on this curriculum for anyone that wants to do more research including pros and cons. I will have a 6th grader next year and will only cover the first half of LToW along with MCT's Voyage Essay. In 7th I will cover the 2nd half of LToW along with MCT's Advanced Academic Writing. Anyway, that is the plan right now. I have to disagree with the above quote. Compared to grammar programs that go on endlessly with page after page of grammar lessons and practice I think that MCT's grammar lessons are much quicker. 5-10 weeks of short grammar lessons and then a 5-10 minute practice a few days a week after that. When you look at other Programs for writing, poetry, and vocabulary,my experience is that MCT's lessons are shorter in these areas as well.

We tried AAS for spelling too. My son memorized all of the rules but applying them was a different story. We now use Apples and Pears and I am amazed at how quickly his spelling has improved. It takes far less time and for an older child is much less babyish. In Apples and Pear my ds has to do at least 3 sentences a day. I taught him that before he even thinks of the spelling for the first word he has to think capital letter. Then before he picks up his pencil at the end of the sentence he has to think end mark and figure out which one. I would then watch and if he started his sentence without a capital I would stop him and say, "What is the first thing you are suppose to think about?" At the end if he started to pick up his pencil I would say, "What are you suppose to do before you pick up your pencil?" After many many reminders it has finally stuck. Some kids may know the rules but need a lot of practice before it because a habit that they don't have to think about. MCT teaches that Punctuation is like a traffic light. The Capital letters are like the green lights and tell the reader when to go. The end marks are like red lights and tell the readers when to stop. My son really liked this analogy. I remind him to check his traffic lights before turning in his papers.

There are different instructors on different tapes. My dd did not like listening to a couple of them. A few things to be aware of for younger children. I don't think their pre-algebra portion (first tape) is comparable to a pre-algebra course. It moves pretty fast and leaves out a lot that a pre-algebra course would cover. The course covers Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 concepts together. I thought that the first half would be Algebra 1 and the 2nd half would be Algebra 2. This is not the case. I also felt we needed more review. There were extra review problems on their website but I found out when I called that these are very challenging problems for kids who want a greater challenge. Not so much for review. My dd was 11 when we did VT. She had been through Lial's BCM. We ended up stopping halfway through and using only Algebra 1 materials. The Algebra 2 concepts where too frustrating for her.

Rod and Staff is a solid grammar program. I used it for a few years. I've also used First Language Lessons, Growing with Grammer, Hakes Grammar, Easy Grammer, Analitical Grammar, and Shurley Grammer. I've been homeschooling a long time and I have four children so I haven't really jumped around as much as it looks. Anyway, MCT is a solid grammar program too. The biggest difference is that MCT is the only one that teaches a love of grammar and language. I can't say that my kids loved any of the grammar programs above but this one they love. They want to do it every day. It's fun. I love to teach it. Who doesn't want their kids to grow up loving language and writing, to feel comfortable playing around with words and literary techniques. Besides all of this my ds is learning a ton and retaining it. I am adding a step-by-step writing program to MCT. It's the one thing I think that's missing. I've chosen to use Lost Tools of Writing.

I think you're looking at a big jump from AAS level 3 to megawords. If your child is not there yet I'd look at apples and pears. It progresses much faster than AAS and you would not need to start at the beginning. There are assessment words under each book on their website to place child in the right level. Then inside the book there are more assessments to figure out where to start in the book. I've used all three of these programs and out of the three I am most happy with apples and pears for remedial work with an older child.

We started this year at the beginning of book A and are almost done with book B. The Plan is to start C in a couple of weeks and to finish it over the summer. This is what it says in book A about level C: "The objective is to enable the pupil to feel confident writing academic compositions". So my question is for those who have finished level C do you feel like your child reached this objective? My goal is to get my ds to this point before starting 6th grade next year. My plan is to then spread out level D over the whole year and to focus more on writing. I think I will try to follow the authors instructions but if I feel that my ds needs a more formal approach to spelling after level D, I may have him work through Megawords. I've used it before and have been happy with it with my other children. Well I've used AAS and before that SWR so I have the rules down. They help me as a teacher to explain things and to give my son reminders but for this ds there are just to many rules for him to remember and apply when spelling. Apples and Pears gives far fewer rules and it's been a much more successful program with this ds. I think I'm a better teacher because I know the phonograms and the rules so the cards may not be a bad idea. One last thing, I just want to say that I love Apples and Pears and what it's done for the confidence and spelling of my ds. I'm amazed at the progress he's made this past year and if he never goes farther then level D I will be happy. I feel that with spell check he will be just fine.

I've spent this morning looking at CLE looks like its spiral based. Is that right? If so than it's not going to work either.

Can you tell me how you schedule the two together and how much time you spend on math a week. Thanks

I'm going to bump this up as I haven't been able to find a good match for LOF. This is what I've looked at so far that I don't want to use and why: Leil's BCM- I've used this before and would like something similar as far as content but would like something written for a middleschooler not a college student. The writing level would be unnecessarily frustrating for my ds. Chalkdust-This looks like it would leave us little time to fit in LOF. I don't want to do math more than 1 hour a day preferably only 4 days a week. TT- I'm not impressed with the reviews of it not being rigorous enough. CLE-I've just started to look at book 7. What is the Christian content like in this book? Thinkwell- not rigorous enough. Saxon-I’ve done this before and don’t want a spiral approach for this ds. What other options are there? We have done Singapore up to this point and want to start a more traditional approach to Prealgebra along with LOF.

Well, this probably doesn't fit your grade levels but I'm looking to do some combining next year with these for my 6 grade ds: Life of Fred Prealgebra with Biology-math and science Winter Promise Adventures in Sea and Sky-history,literature, science, geography and some writing

The practice books are similar to the parsing of sentences that you do with Shurley. Each day we do two sentences out of the Practice book. The first one I do with my ds using the question answer flow that I learned from using Shurley. The second sentence I have him do by himself. Some of the parts of speech are labeled differently than Shurley, for example articles and possessive pronoun adjectives are just labeled as adjectives. Your kids should have a solid understanding of grammar after doing that much of Shurley. I wouldn't recommend doing the Island or the Town level with your kids unless you want to read through them quickly for a quick review. Definitely skip the practice books. I'm not sure about the Voyage level as I haven't seen it. The poetry books would be worth getting from the beginning though.

In American Cultures I didn't buy the state study materials so I’m not sure what they cover. In the lesson plans the state study is optional. Off the top of my head this is what's covered in the materials that we did buy as far as geography and politics is concerned: Civil War Making maps of the Civil War showing Union side, Confederate states, and neutral states, adding major battles to map. Looking at maps to show railroad lines for north and south and how they effected the war. Studying the topography of an area and how it effected major battles. Reconstruction Lots of Politics discussed in this section. Radical Republicans trying to get Civil rights for the Blacks. Very interesting. Western Expansion Maps of Cattle Trails, Railroads, Indian Wars,etc.. Prarries, Sloughs, other landforms and landmarks like Chimney Rock. Immigration and Industrialization Maps of the building of Chicago and New York City are covered from beginnings to the early 1900's. Major landmarks of these area are covered such as parks, subways, museums, hotels, department stores, etc.. Countries and their cultures of the people that immigrated to the United States are covered. Persecution of Immigrants is covered quite extensively as in Chinese in San Francisco, and the Irish in Chicago. Natural Disasters are covered as in the Great Fire in Chicago and the Great Earth Quake in San Francisco. Early 1900-WW1 Building of Panama Canal-covers the Geography and Politics of this. The making of National Parks. Progressive Moment is covered very well. Maps of the Western Front, Allied Nations, neutral nations. Political Causes of the War. Reasons the US joined the war. This is as far as we've gotten. I haven't gone back to look through things this is just from memory. I'm sure I'm leaving out stuff. All in all I feel like my son has a better understanding of the geography and Politics of the United States as well as Europe and South America from this Curriculum. If you have any specific questions I can check.

This is what helped my ds, a poor and reluctant reader back in the fourth grade. He listened to this audio book: Gregor The Overlander (Underland Chronicles, Book 1) He loved the story and after listening to it we got the book for him to read. It was way above his reading level but since he knew the story he could figure out many of the harder words. He proceeded to go through the whole series first listening to the books and then reading them. This helped increase his reading level more than all the other remedial stuff we tried. He loves to read now.

We've used Winter Promise American Culture this past year and it is fabulous. It is written for 5th-8th graders. We used it with our 5th grade ds. American Story is for 2nd-4th grades so that may help you decide which to use. I would go with the one that fits my oldest child and the younger ones will learn a ton. It's very adaptable. Most of the books have been found in my local library so I only had to order a few of them. The non- fiction books have all been excellent with a big emphasis on technology and inventions for each time period. We have loved all of the historical fiction books except for The Trouble Begins at 8. We substituted Caddie Woodlawn for it. I used WP book list from their LA 5 for Later American program for books for my son to read on his own. I did not use the art, geography. and values portion of the program so I did not order these resources: Later American Painters Picture Studies Christian Cultural Values for Kids Completer Set of State Study Worksheets I had my own time-line already that we added to so I did not use theirs. I wasn't sure if my son would like the two Little House on the Prairie Books but it turned out that he loved them. We got the books on tape and the reader on them is excellent. We ended up listening to the next one in the series as well, which I thought was even better then the other two. Anyway, don’t skip them. The winter of 1888 introduced in the Long Winter is discussed over and over again. It is discussed in the life of George Washington Carver, Theodore Roosevelt, the building of the New York Subway, and the cattle trade, etc. There are activities using the Census Records and Land Deeds for the Ingalls Family. This is a good example of how integrated the program is. Love it. Let me know if you have any more questions.