Don't know. :tongue_smilie: The art is visually nice, but I don't really notice it unless I stare at it a bit. The reason I chose MCT LA was because it was mentioned a while back and I love looking at new curriculum. When the samples were put up, they looked sorta 'out there', but the Secondary series really caught my eye as being very rigorous. I wondered if I should do a little elementary for an introduction. When I joined the yahoo group, the thing that really sold me was the way MCT spoke about language and how he's so passionate about what he feels is an intuative way for children to learn. Now that we've gone through Grammar Town, it really wasn't as 'out there' as I'd thought. The story was a little dorky for dd at first because she already knew the parts of speech. The analysis is very straightforward. The vocab is very different than say, Vocabulary from Classical Roots, but I remember when Classical Writing came out before the guides and I guess it's sort of like that.

No, grammar are not necessary. :D Seriously though, if he's reading high quality stuff, and he speaks it well, then probably not so much. I think a good overview would be good to give a name to things. Karen Elizabeth Gordon has some funny books and I know there are quite a few favorites of those types of books around that's not strictly a curriculum. I'm not as familiar with AG, but from what I've read about it on these boards, it sounds good. Also you could look at some of the stuff on the KISS grammar website and see if that looks good; it's free, so you could see if he has trouble with anything in particular. Does he have any foreign language experience at all? We do fairly intensive grammar here because we like it and my dd writes an enormous amount for fun and for school. Oh and the pen issue. My dd (11) is a typer. She wants to type everything: math, rough drafts, everything. On things that I'd rather her write, I let her pick out some cool pens and pencils. We like jetpens and she picked out some cool mechanicals, some with violet leads and she loves to use them. She still prefers to type, but her notebooks are colorful. :) As to the necessity. I think it really depends. I also think the answers differ from person to person. DH will grunt and groan about the grammar in applications he looks over. He'll hire someone with no experience if they can fill out an application decently. I also think that it comes naturally to some and not to others. To tell the truth though, I'm not sure if it's all that important to know that a gerund can be the subject of a sentence, but I find it terribly interesting. I also didn't learn it until I was in my thirties. In school, I don't remember grammar at all, but I read quite a bit.

I actually started using Visual Bookshelf per your post the night I joined the LOF group. I need to explore Living Social a bit. I also need to stalk some homeschoolers as I'm finding that my usual group of friends could care less that I'm reading Sophie's World. :tongue_smilie:

Over the past month I've been on Facebook and I think I'm finally understanding how it works. What are some favorite apps that you all use?

You have seen the HS packages, right? They have two. The one with all the TM's and the practice book is the one you'd want. The price savings is equal to the practice book I believe,

I always feel a compulsion to use my fingers. I know that 8+5=13, but will use my fingers everytime. Only on addition, though. Subtracting gives me no problems. My DD (11) can't memorize facts for anything, but she can draw a bar diagram better than me, so I call it a wash.

On the Town level, Part 1 introduces you to the eight parts of speech. That's the first level of analysis. That takes up about half of the TM. All of the student pages are included and identical to the student books. There's just other helpful things added throughout as far as I can tell. We haven't needed to print anything so far. We sit next to each other and I put a paper underneath the sentence to cover the answers. It's a sentence with the parts of speech underneath that she has to identify. She did this orally until we got to the practice book. These little exercises are throughout the entire book and a pre and post text are included in the back. Part 2 introduces the 2nd level of analysis with the parts of a sentence: subject, predicate, DO, IO, and SC. Part 3 introduces the 3rd level of analysis with phrases: prepositional, appositive, and verbals. This is where we had to slow down. Part 4 is clauses. This part covers independent and dependent clauses, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, simple, compound, and complex sentences. It also talks about comma and semicolon use. It explains these things thoroughly and clearly. So at this point you have sentences with 4 lines underneath that are filled in with the analysis, and you can copy the sentences down to be filled out, or in our case we did it orally. I believe the grammar book is only supposed to take a few months and it would be hard to determine how to schedule it until you really started it. Some of it is harder to grasp than others. We did the first two parts within a week, but then spent two weeks on part 3. Part 4 took about a week for us. I don't know how Voyage is, but after the samples of Magic Lens, I'm sure we'll fill up those months easily and then some.

This was us exactly. I settled for the Town level because of Caesar's English. I wasn't as concerned with missing the first level poetry because we've gone through a couple of Kenneth Koch (?) books. It ended up being a pretty good fit. We finished the grammar earlier than I'd wanted, but it was mostly review. It was still the level, because of the verbals, that we needed to start on. As for writing, we also do CW. I'm finding the anaysis of Paragraph Town fits right in with the analysis of Homer for now, so I'll incorporate it into that as much as I can. We don't really practice the diagramming of it, but we do look at it and I have DD do a 4 level analysis in its place. I've not looked at Essay, so this might just be easy for now.

Have you seen the Elementary and Secondary Curriculum Guide PDF's on his page at RFWP? They were helpful. We are on the Town series. I wanted to start this level because of the vocab and poetry. The main part of the grammar book is a story, but I found plenty of application for our needs with the 4 point analysis. In the TM, there is a pre and post test. DD thought the story approach was dorky until we hit the verbals and at this point she's enjoying the story in Paragraph Town. The way I've scheduled it: It took a month to do Grammar Town, but that was because most of it was review. Once we completed the 8 parts of speech portion, we began the vocab book. I actually want to finish before I review this as we are on chapter 5, but so far I don't see how anything could compare with how brilliant this is. I don't know if Building Language is set up like Caesar's English, though. Once we finished GT, we began Practice Town, Paragraph Town, and the poetry. We're only two week into each of these. Paragraph Town from what I can tell, is rehashing GT, but introducing paragraphs by their very definition. The story is delightful. It's an off shoot of Moby Dick (which I disliked in school, but plan to reread). I think the poetry may be harder to apply unless you're ambitious, but I read through it when I first got it and wondered what the heck I was going to do with it. But, after I started it with DD and began reading it aloud, I realized I had missed the point. It describes letter sounds in ways I hadn't thought of before. When I finish it, I'll review more. Paragraph Town in just 100 sentences that you apply the 4 level analysis. We do one a day. The books all work fluidly together, reinforcing grammar and vocabulary. At the elementary level you only need the TM's. I think once you hit the secondary, you need both student books and the TM's. For Practice Books, I think you need both Student and TM. Hope this is coherent, the benadryl is kicking in.:tongue_smilie:

I shall take your word for it. :001_smile:

Got it. Thanks so much. If you have time for another question, I've got one. Why is there a le in front of the mien and not the cul?

This is the first I've heard of 'ton'. So, The ton has to agree with cul? And it has to be le mien and not la mienne because of the cul masculinity? âne is prettier than cul. :tongue_smilie: And I totally mean the words themselves. The Russian is impressive. It looks like a secret code. It will take him a few days to use google to figure out the French. He'd never figure out the Russian. Thanks everyone for your help.

Sooo, I'm giving my husband an engraved ring for our anniversary this year. I want translated: Your @$$ is mine I think he will get a kick out of it. I have no idea how slang body parts works in French, but I want as close to that as possible. :o Thanks in advance.

It covers a teeny bit of astronomy. Doing an Earth Science unit before is a good idea, especially with that book. Book 2 is nearly double the size of Book 1, and from what I understand a bit meatier. I'll PM you when I find the tests. :001_smile:

Although I mostly lurk, I can answer this question. We finished Book 1 in November and my dd(10) loved it. We started it when she was 9. She had a little bit of a hard time on the life section, but I think it wasn't because of content, it was more forming her answers in a science notebook (if that makes sense). We took December (07) off and finished the last two sections by the end of November. It took us about a year and two months to do the first book, but we were learning to be more efficient at schooling with a baby. We are doing Great Source Earth Science right now, but when we finish this, we will begin Book 2. I would like the CD, but without a really good deal, it's not happening. I also have tests typed up that I gave dd at the end of each section. She has them in her intricate web of folders on her mac, but I can have her hunt them down if you would like.

The tunic (or dress) is not beautiful. The food will be very good. Minimus will be fat. Most of the time you can kinda figure it out, such as obesus, but erit can throw you off. hth

I'm a fan of shields. Baby is 9 months and we still use one, but not all the time. Most daily feedings are normal and for the long feedings (at this point I can predict pretty well), we use the shield. I even have a back up for the diaper bag. Mine was a chest size issue. I'm large-chested :blush: and needed it for latch. She could latch, but not for very long. I stressed early on about the shield and my many attempts at weaning from it the first month. I was scared for my supply and extensively googled, kelly'smom, mothering.com (which was most helpful), and after a while I realized that she was getting enough. She's about 20 lbs. right now. My understanding is that it can lesson your supply a bit, but in my case it didn't matter. Once I stopped being so stressed about weaning from it, I felt tons better. I would occasionally let her try to nurse without, but she didn't seem much interested until about 3 mos. That's when I started doing both and we're still going strong with no end in sight. I would use the pump and some fenugreek or mother's milk tea, and use the pump to help with supply. And really don't be afraid to use the shield longer than you really wanted to. Good luck.

I was given my engagement ring when I was 19 years old. It was a diamond solitaire and we bought matching simple gold rings to exchange at our wedding. I stopped wearing it when I got pregnant and it didn't fit anymore. I only put the gold band on after I gave birth because I nearly took the baby's eye out when I nursed her. After all that I started wearing it again. As I got older, I realized how impractical it was to wear it. So, I just wore the band. Hubby was fine with it. I think I nicked him a few times. Last year, for our 10th ann., I was 7 mos. pregnant and he gives me a gorgeous morganite. It was to replace my band. With our short memories we'd forgotten that I'd have to take it off to nurse, so I have to do that, but it's fine. Some days I forget to wear it, but it doesn't hurt his feelings. When baby is weaned, I'll wear it full time. DH outgrew his wedding band, and we've not replaced it. He finds he gets hit on less without it. :rolleyes: He wants to get something in silver. Or a tattoo. I don't think it's unreasonable to get it reset. It absolutely doesn't take away from the symbolism. Many couples do get new rings (my grandparents get them every decade; they're going on 60 years), and you could get matching eternity bands, or poesy rings.

We had a sample of Dreft before baby and I washed all her clothes/blankets in it. Also had a $2 coupon, so went ahead and got a box because of skin issues with previous child. I washed our sheets in it. DH loves the smell so much that he does the laundry. He doesn't trust that I won't use Gain on his work clothes because I accidently did it after he fell in love with the Dreft. So, Dreft=DH doing the laundry. A heads up for those who also love the smell--there is now a fabric refresher. DH is now trying to find ways to use up our Febreze.

3-ring binder. I was going to use a spiral, but then I noticed the graphing assignments and diagrams. She uses printing paper that we hole-punch for diagrams.

Forgot to answer that in the other post. So far not teacher intensive. I hear the second book might be, though. The only thing I've had to do is show dd how to use graph paper. We've had a few discussions when I've felt answers were less complete than the answer book, just to see how well she was retaining things. When we get to chemistry and physics, we plan on a few experiment-type kits.

Since I've seen so many questions about GP Science lately, I thought I'd give my opinion. I adore it. I'm doing it with my almost 10yo dd, and we are 3/4 done with the biology portion. At first, I thought it was a wee bit hard, but I think that was just adjusting to working in a notebook, rather than the Singapore workbook. We had done Singapore since about 1st grade and we were just tired of it. With GP, it's not just answering questions. DD has done quite a few graphs and a few diagrams. When you look in her science notebook, it looks like she's put a good amount of work into it. We usually do about a chapter a week, depending on the chapter size. That's just the biology part, though. I'll review more when we get to chemistry and physics. I've thumbed through those sections and they look a little harder, but dd loves science. So far so good.