Foundations Press has samples on their website www.foundationspress.com. There is a list of book choices for jr. high and high school ages.

My dd is in 3rd grade. Until this point, she has only been doing written narrations once a week along with daily oral narrations. Here is her first re-write in Fable. We discussed using describing words, and I helped her with punctuation and some sentence structure. The Mouse and the Cricket One day a mouse was sleeping in a grassy meadow. A joyful cricket, bounding and singing, came across the mouse's tail. Awoken from his nap, the mouse grabbed the cricket with his claws. As the mouse brought the cricket near his mouth, the cricket cried, "Stop! Let me Down and some day I will save you." The mouse laughed so hard that the frogs hopped away. But in his kindness, he let the cricket go. A couple days later, while the mouse was hunting for cheese, he got caught by a hungry cat. The mouse squeaked his loudest squeak. The cricket heard his squeak and came to help him. The cricket sang so loudly in the cat's ear that the cat ran away. "You laughed when I said I will save you. Even a cricket can help a mouse."

my dd (3rd) is in HOD Preparing, and we use FLL, Intro to Composition from Memoria Press and Rod and Staff Spelling. We also use the dictation with HOD. It is working quite well for us. Use whatever you feel comfortable with.

It has been a few years since I've read it and loved it. However, Heart of Dakota has it scheduled in the extension package of CTC for more mature 6th and 7th graders. I agree with a pp, definitely worth reading.

The guy on the DVD's talks way too fast. It is hard to follow him most of the time.

There are also workbooks that work with Ray's through the fourth grade level. They are called classic curriculum by Mott Media. You can see samples on CBD.

Have you ever taken a look at Rod and Staff math? It's a mastery based program.

I was going to tell you almost the exact same thing. 9, 8, 7, 6 all want to become 10 so badly. Example: 8+7 8 is sad, he wants to become a 10. 7 runs up to 8 and asks why are you sad. 8 tells 7 he wants to become a 10. 7 asks how many do you need to become a 10? 8 replies, 2. 7 says I have 7, I can give you 2 of mine. So 7 gives 8 "2" and becomes 5 while 8 becomes 10. 10+5=15, Therefore. 8+7=15 I would show this story on a whiteboard while telling it.

Are you talking about differnt ways of making 10? Have you tried using two different colors of linking cubes to come up with different ways of making 10? Are you talking about making a ten to come up with the solution? for example 9 + 7 = 10 + 6 = 16? It might help if you give an example of what he is struggling with.

Not to put a wrench in you plans :-) but LOE is Beta testing the K program this fall.

Apologia sells Around the World in 180 Days which looks in-depth and good

I have the set and have never used the chart. The phonogram cards are similar to WRTR except that their are more phonograms. The cards are also keyed to The ABC's and All Their Tricks.

Since it was through amazon, submit for a return.

Words like comic and finish are most likely of Latin origin. Otherwise, the first vowel would say its long sound like titan or final.

:iagree: In succeeding lessons you also learn the "oe" spells the long O sound at the end of 7 words. You learn all 18 words that use "igh" to spell the long I sound either at the end of the word or directly before T. I have found LOE to be everything I was looking for.

Well, we just started today. My four-year old dd already knows how to read some, so a lot is review so far. But, she LOVES it. She's been singing a song about when the C says "s" all afternoon.

I think it does teach at least 3's now. It got my dd past that memorization hurdle. It took one afternoon, and she remembered her facts from that point on. You do still need to keep drilling them for awhile until they are over learned.

I want to turn everyone on to a FREE Orton/Gillingham type reading program. It's called ABC The Key www.abcthekey.com. If anyone is interested in Phonics Road, SWR, WRTR, LOE, AAS etc. but would like to teach your child to read first with the same/similar methodology, this program might be a good fit. I haven't used it, so I don't know how effective it is, but it's FREE! So, I'm going to give it a shot.

I know you asked for those who have used it and don't like it. Hunter hasn't used it or held it in her hands. I completely disagree with the above comment. The LOE Essentials is meant for remedial purposes and is very thorough and complete. The author is in the process of producing material for k-6, that may be why she said it's incomplete. For your purposes LOE would be very complete. It is not necessarily incompatible with Spalding or SWR. If you were to move on to either of those afterwards for the word lists, you just analyze how you learned in LOE and all will be well. LOE is open and go and very easy to use. You would learn a ton.

I would say LOE has some similarities to Spalding in that it teaches dc to analyze words by marking them and by applying spelling rules. Otherwise, I believe it's more aligned to Orton/Gillingham. It's very systematic in its presentation. You learn a spelling rule and how to apply it. However, you also learn many things based on the phonograms that have been introduced in that particular lesson. For example, we learned the ai, ay phonograms one week, then learned some information about common "long a spellings" that "a" is most common at the end of a syllable, "ai" is most common in the middle of a word, "ay" is most common at the end of a word. "a" at the end of a word says "ah" and "ea" says the long a (it's third sound) in only 9 english words. The next day you introduce the spelling list. There are many activities to reinforce what has been learned. There is phonemic awareness training, syllibication instruction and many other things that aren't directly taught with Spalding. I hope this rambling makes sense :)

It's really not that big of a difference. We came from PR, and my dd hasn't had any confusion at all. Denise adds an extra sound to i like onion. She added an extra sound to u "oo" like tube. There are 9 reasons for silent final e instead of 5. And there are, I think two extra basic phonograms taught, cei, bu, gu. I don't have my manual right here with me, so this is off the top of my head.

LOE is exactly what I was longing for ;) You don't need Uncovering the Logic of English. I did buy the book before I bought the curriculum, but I haven't needed it at all to implement the essentials program. It does have really good information in it, but it's not an essential component for success. LOE has really helped me see the big picture that neither SWR nor PR gave me. Depending if your dd is reading and writing fairly well by the time you begin, you have two choices. You slow the pace to 1 lesson every two weeks and finish in 80 weeks. You would only need 1 workbook. Or you could do one lesson per week and finish in 40 weeks. If you felt like your dd needed to go through it again, then yes, you would need another workbook. I'll have to think this through with my up-coming Ker. She'll be a young 5, June b-day. It may be a good idea to go through twice instead of slowing the pace.

No, I do the grammar on day 3 along with some of the extras. I do dictation on day 4 with a couple more extras and I do composition, vocabulary development, spelling test and phonogram quiz on day 5. Grammar days alone take the longest, sometimes close to 45 min. But, as I said, I'm doing extras. I make sure I use every worksheet each week which include the extras. I really think for young motor skills doing dictation and composition with vocab. development would be a lot of writing in one day. I think it would be a wonderful idea if CC would promote this. It's the best I've seen!!!

I think you'll find everything you wanted PR to be in LOE. I know that's what I've discovered. My dd is learning so much, and retaining it. Did you know there are only 7 words in the English language that end in "oe" for the long O sound? Did you know only 9 words spell the long a sound with "ea"? This knowledge has helped my dd retain these words although they are not included on the spelling list. It's so logical in its presentation. You learn about a certain spelling rule and work with it on the first day. Then the second day you dictate the spelling list with some words based on that rule plus others based on previously learned rules. The third day you do grammar with phrases and sentences based on all spelling lists learned. Dictation includes all spelling and grammar rules learned, and composition helps dc learn to apply what's learned in a different way. Oh, there is a lot of vocabulary development, as well. I've found that the presentation of material has really helped my dd retain the information so much more than with PR. Also, you will still be able to choose your own literature. Hope this helps sway you, Katrina. :lol:

I just want to make you aware that if you do grammar, dictation, composition and vocab. development on the same day, it will be a long session. There is so much meat to the program, that squeezing all that into 1 day for those young ones might be too much. Now, by the time they/he/she is/are in 3rd it, will be easy to do a full lesson in 1-2 days. I'm using LOE with my 1st grader, and the pace of 1 lesson/week (5 days) is working well and the workload seems just right. BTW, I've never loved a program, and I LOVE this one.