Thanks Mariann for responding!

I obtained a Phonetic Zoo cards and cds but I don't have the teacher notes. Anyone used this program think I need it? If I do I'm not sure how to get it.:glare: The IEW website allows a download of 12 pgs. only.

Elle, FLL is teacher directed and so is R&S. I tried FLL when my boys were younger but didn't finish. Now we use R&S English. The lessons are short for us. We like it very much. I purchased 2 student books so the boys can write in them. This way there isn't so much extra writing in their notebooks. Maybe your family could do much of it orally. We do some of that too. R & S English definitely needs to be modified just a little otherwise it's just TOO much some days.:lol: Could you put your girls in the same R & S English book? Meet somewhere in the middle? This could help your homeschool tremendously. It's a suggestion but may not be possible.

I'm jumping in on this discussion because I had the same question in the writing dept.:) I am probably using WWE next year as well with my kiddos. Mallory, thank you for the suggestion on ways to enhance WWE 2 with older children. I'm thinking I can combine Day 1 and Day 2, not sure yet. When using WWE with several children how would I go about getting answers to the narrations from each individual child? My 8 and 5 year old will gladly give descriptive narrations. On the other hand, I have a 10 year old with speech and language difficulties. I have to "pull" answers out of him! At times it's a challenge for him to tell me what was read aloud in a passage. This is why I am going with level 2 for all the children - plus I already own it. Once they master narration/dictation we can go from there. Thank you for suggestions as well.

I don't have a MP3 player. Can I still download the lecture? Will it just download to my computer?

Where can I access the link to download the lecture? Thank you!

We used it 3 years ago and going for another round next year. It was great! Very easy to teach and no stress prep. This time around my older boys will use CTG and my younger ones will only do the family portion. You can add in library books or readers that go with the science topic and branch off from there. For instance, we will read Owl Moon and Owls in the Family(as a read aloud) in the bird section and focus on owls for a couple of days. We've never made a solar system model so maybe we can add that in to the program. You get the idea. It's at a good price and doesn't require too many books. We couldn't get any of the Moody videos though. I might ILL one them to see what they are like. I priced them once but they were very expensive. Hope this helps!

Just wondering... We are presently using Rod and Staff English 2 and will begin Rod and Staff English 3 next fall. Do I need to add in a writing program? If you presently use R & S English or have in the past what did you do? Is Rod and Staff English 3 a full writing program? If I do add something in I think my choices would be Writing Strands or WWE. Thank you!

Yes, that's the title. You can also get an email sent every few days from them. It's biblicalparenting.com or .org maybe??

The reading workbooks start out really simple. The first lesson in the reader has a picture and the word God. That's it. So initially you might think it's too easy but it picks up shortly after that. The first 10 lessons are "pre-reading". After that the reading lessons begin. The days of creation and early old testament are covered. There are new sight words in every lesson until unit 3 I think. Every reading lesson has the sight words, review, lesson, reader, and workbook pgs. HTH

I have used R&S green 1st grade books practically all 4 years we have homeschooled. It can get repetitious BUT it works!! Children will learn to read and read well. It can take a long time to do phonics and reading on the same day. I am going to use it with my kindergarten age son next year only very slowly. Phonics workbook on M/W/F and Reading on Tu/Th. Reading may have to be done orally until he's ready for more writing. This year he worked on unit 1 workbooks. The phonics unit 1 book is very simple. I looked at Explode the Code at a local bookstore. The layout of ETC is strikingly similar to R & S Phonics 1st grade. I already own the R & S workbooks so that's what we will use.

When we do problem of day I write it on the board. The boys write the number sentence and answer on paper. We do 2-3 math meeting items a day until we have covered everything by Friday. If an assessment is coming up we go over similar problems on the test. It just takes too long to do the entire meeting everyday. I've used Saxon K - 3 but just tapered the MM about a year ago. It works well.

Julie, We will use PLL next year. I just bought the PLL Teacher Guide. I think that it is going to help me on those days the lesson refers to a different time period. You can look at a sample at lostclassics.com. I will sometimes use art books I own for picture narration. The pictures in PLL are black and white and on the small side. I like Donna's idea of alternating PLL and FLL. I would like my boys to know what a noun, verb, and pronoun are but I don't necessaryily want to drill it everyday. So I think I will add in a little of FLL in that regard. My mom-in-law gave me a very, very, old copy of BJU English! It was my brother-in-law's! Anyway, I can use that for an occasional workbook page for practice.

Saxon explains things in a way that at least I can understand. Sometimes I think if math would have been explained to me in that particular manner maybe I would have understood it better!

I wanted to add we use math computer games or the Math-U-See online drill. These benefit students with any math program!