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kandty

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Posts posted by kandty

  1. I agree. I was actually browsing their stuff and realized that what I could do is to order all 4 (I think it's 4) years of science curriculum, which all touch a bit on every subject. Then go through and say for 1st grade Biology I'd go through each textbook and mark which chapters dealt with Biology subjects and we'd do all of those in 1st grade. Then I'd go through and do the same each year so by the end of 4 years we've used up all their materials but did it in the WTM order which follows along with our history cycle. Probably more complicated than it needs to be but whatever :)

     

     

     

    CHC use to have this in an ebook!! They had all the science grouped together by topic. I bought it for under $5 a couple of years ago and it was for teaching science to multiple children. But, I didn't use it at the time. I looked and they no longer have it. I guess since they have the new programs they haven't updated this book yet. I wish they would update and sale it again!!

  2. No. Wasn't complaining about the lack of Catholic homeschooling materials. I'm sure in due time more and more will eventually be available. But what I was talking about was the style of curriculum. Having a curriculum like this with Catholic content instead of having to weed through books to make sure it lines up with our beliefs. I don't mind coming to something that isn't always in line and having that " Ahha , teachable moment." But I don't want a curriculum that teaches about the Reformation through the Protestant view. We're newly Catholic ( 1 yr this Easter) so I want my daughters to learn from a Catholic point of view when it comes to History.

     

    I don't have a problem with CLE's math , or LA , or even their reading. But History and Science are two tough ones to line up from a Catholic point of view.

     

    I just hope some day that something like this will be made. This style of curriculum really makes life so much smoother. Especially when I deal with having health issues right now. I just don't have the energy or feel well enough most days to do so much hand holding.

     

    Catholic History http://www.rchistory.com/ and http://www.catholictextbookproject.com/project/project-volumes.html

     

    CHC has descent science program. I like it, but I prefer more of the WTM way of science and CHC is not. I use it some years, but not always.

  3. I will admit that we don't use those pages. I just ask for a oral narration of what we read and I don't write it down. My 5th grader doesn't like to write, so I don't torture him by making him write it down. We do the pages of review questions, and I write down his answers so he can read them for review at the end of the lesson. (We save writing for other subjects.)

  4. I do see the jump from Preparing to CTC mainly b/c I had heard this too and purchased Preparing for my dd10 at the beginning of this year. It was not enough for her as a 5th grader. We went through a week that was really fun but really that was it. She wasn't gaining any new skills. She could do the whole Preparing guide without me and do it well. So I boxed it up, sent it back, and exchanged it for CTC. We also do not use the recommended language arts.

    If I would not have already had CTC (and been short on funds) when we stopped Calvert 6 with my dd11, then I would have purchased Rev to Rev for her. I will probably jump her after this year up a few guides b/c CTC is really super easy for her to finish without any real skill growth.

    So while I do agree that it is skill based...I also think if you have an on grade level 6th grade 11 year old that they should be able to jump into the higher guides fairly easy.

    I do think the main thing is your child being ready for independent work and able to read their own instructions and follow them carefully. If you have already done ancients and your child has worked independently, then I think RTR sounds fine. There is a learning curve if your child has never done notebooking or narration.

    In CTC, there is guided written narration. There is a prompt sentence for them to copy to jump start their written narration. I think in RTR they aren't given that prompt sentence.

    Overall though, I can not imagine putting my 6th grade 11 year old in Preparing. I would suggest downloading the sample week of RTR and reading through it carefully. Imagine your 11 yr old doing the work. Ask yourself, does this seem too easy, too hard, or about right...really think about whether the independent boxes would truly be independent with your child.

     

    Thank you! This was very helpful. Right now my Ds can do a written narration with help. My writing goal this year is to get him to RtR writing placement. I am not sure if we will get there are not, but should be very close. We are not big on notebooking and this has been a concern for me with using HOD. I would love to do notebooking, but I have reluctent writers. We are working on this and making progress! :tongue_smilie: I really need to print out the sample week and study it hard. Thanks again!

  5. My children do seem to enjoy (or at least tolerate ;) ) the History portion of HOD. It is the ONLY History program that consistently has gotten done in our house. I was going to add that you might want to check out and reconsider starting with Preparing. The skills in HOD really do build on one another and the skill set in CtC is a HUGE jump from Preparing. Preparing sort of "sets the stage" if you will for the higher level skills used in CtC as well as for the greater level of independence expected of the student. My older boys started with Preparing (they were 9, 11 and 12 or 4th, 5th and 7th gr) when they used Preparing and I found that the material was plenty for my 7th grader and a bit much for my 4th grader...even though they were all w/in the age range. Does that make sense? Even if your ds places squarely in CtC I would consider starting in Preparing for those reasons. AND, Preparing is such a fabulous year...I just adore the read-alouds and other books used. :) I think you would both have such a wonderful year with Preparing and the skills your son learns would set him up for a very successful year with CtC. Good luck! We are sold on HOD here.

     

    I have heard the bolded part before and I need some clarifying on this. We will be using HOD for the first time starting in August. My youngest Ds will be using Bigger. My oldest Ds will (I think) be using RtR. What are these "skills"? Is it just being able to work independent? My Ds already has this skill and therefore would be ready to step in at this point in HOD. His writing is not up to what is on the placement chart, but I will be using a different LA with him, so I don't think that is a concern. I based his placement on age (will be 11 and 6th grade in August) and the fact that we are doing Ancients in history this year and it is not his favorite and I wouldn't make him do it again next year by using CtC.

  6. My visual learner has enjoyed Sentence Family. Stories with pictures and descriptions that he can "see" work well. We are going to use MCT next school year.

     

    Scholastics makes a Comic Strip Grammar (got it at one of the $1 sales) which was somewhat helpful. I wish the comic strips had described what they were learning about, but it had a story and you had to pick out the nouns or whatever part of speech the worksheet was about.

     

    My ds loves the Brian P Clearly books too. The pages are very colorful and it graps his attention and he listens great while viewing the pages. Our library carries all of them!

  7. I didn't have time to read the responses, but I wanted to add my two cents. :D My oldest struggled with word problems. Even at the beginning of this school year he told me that he doesn't understand what he is suppose to do to solve them. I have just been doing them with him. Walking him through the problems. Now, after 5 months of doing all word problems together, he has greatly improved! He just took a little longer and lots of one-on-one practice. Just give it time.

  8. We are getting ready to begin the Apologia Botany book with dd9 & ds11 and I'm wondering if I should buy the notebooking journals for them, or put together our own journal using free printable pages. We used the Zoology journals last year and enjoyed them, but did not use all the pages. So, part of me is wondering if it would be better to just put our own together. I don't have a lot of extra time to spend on searching the web for pages, but at the same time if I bought the journals it would use the last few $$ in our school budget. Help me decide what to do. Share with me your thoughts, ideas, links to botany related printable pages etc. Thanks so much...:001_smile:

     

    We don't use all the pages either, but the pages are really nice and if you get it on sale it is worth it. I also just bought one for my boys to share. We are not big in notebooking, so sharing isn't a problem.

  9. But, those nanoseconds add up, eventually, you've saved seconds and then minutes!

     

    I don't use zeros because I value my nanoseconds, I'm into efficiency! (OK, I'm lazy.)

     

     

     

    :lol: Too bad all of you nanosecond savers just used all of them up posting on this thread. Years of non-zero writting all gone. :D

  10. I actually had to just go and buy a clock to hang in the living room. I had one but it was roman numerals which isn't so great for a kid trying to learn to tell time. Everything else was digital in our house. I replaced it and then I ask "What time is it?" random through out the day. I also had to break them of the habit of running to the kitchen to check the digital clock on the stove. :lol:

  11. Town level is about writing paragraphs and Voyage level is about writing essays. I found that Voyage was more about making essays better than going from paragraphs to essays, so I wouldn't start Voyage until my dc are comfortable with writing a simple essay.

     

    The grammar will probably be easy if you have done FLL3.

     

    He doesn't remember a thing about FLL 3. :glare:

  12. i personally think it is your PARENTING and not the fact they are homeschooled -- homeschooling is a GREAT thing, of course, but it is an extention of PARENTING and not a cause by itself --

     

    IMO

     

    :iagree: We have ps friends that are well behaved, but their parents work hard at that! I know homeschool kids that are horrible! Over all homeschool kids are usually more well behaved since we spend so much time with our kids and we work very hard on building their character.

  13. We had started using Writing Tales 1 this year (3rd grade), but have stopped for now...

    I am puzzled about those of you who say you could complete it in a few months. How do you do this? We really got bogged down with the final drafts every other week of original stories that were supposed to have no mistakes in them, especially typing them up to save them as a portfolio. I know this was only recommended, not required, but if she was doing this in ps they would be putting the stories together in a nice book so I wanted to do the same. She LOVES looking over portfolios from her work in preschool thru 1st grade before we started hsing. It just got to be too much pressure to keep up with writing a new story each week...and my dd8 loves to write. Probably too much. She adds so many details it turns into a big ordeal.

     

    We were/are also doing WWE, AAS, OPGTR, and the MCT Grammar Island series, so we have a lot of Language Arts on our plate. We loved the stories and games in Writing Tales, and how creative it allowed you to be, but we reached a point where we felt like we were slaves to it instead of letting it work for us. I think I may hold on to it and do it for fun in the Summer when we aren't hsing every subject. Or not follow the proposed schedule and just wait until we finish one story before moving on.

     

    We skip some of the grammar stuff since we are using a seperate grammar program. We also skip some of the creative writing in the second week of the story since my ds is not a big writer and this is "painful" for him. I also don't make my Ds rewrite his stories. We edit it together and then I type it on the computer. My Ds is also 5th grade and he has no program sitting down and spending an hour on this subject. And some days we can get a whole week done in an hour. If I was doing this with my younger Ds I would use the 30 weeks as suggested, but I really am just trying to catch up my older one since we hadn't used a writing program till this year.

  14. I don't think it is too important for a dc to write in cursive. But, they need to be able to read cursive! We do just 5 minutes 4x a week of cursive copywork. My goal is to have my kids writing to be understood by those reading it! They can choose manuscript or cursive when they write whatever it is they are writing.

  15. Not a HOD user, but plan to next year. My boys are 2nd and 5th grade. I have tried combining, but it just doesn't work for my boys. We do read alouds, art, music, and PE (and sometimes bible) together and those work out fine. This year we combined for science for the first time. It is just ok. The program we are using should cover both their ages, but in reality it is sometimes over the younger one's head. The bad thing is once we get to that point, I lose him for the lesson. I don't think we will combine for science again. I don't plan to combine on history, but doing the same time era would be helpful for my sanity.

     

    Combining sound wonderful, but I feel like someone is always missing out and not getting what they need. Either it is too hard or too easy and that causes them to lose interest in the lesson. I know other families who don't have this problem, so it may just be us. :lol: We have been doing Sentence Family together and that has gone well. Combining or not combining, both are great and just figured out what works for your family and go for it. It may work some years and not others too.

  16. :iagree: with the PP. I was feeling like we weren't getting things done and kept getting further behind. It didn't matter how much I changed our school around. Some changes I made to our school days included making sure we had less appointments during school time. I also made a list of chores for my kids and when they are suppose to do them. I also made myself not do a lot of the housework during school time. I saved it for breaks and after school and only did stuff when both my kids where working independent at the same time. I asked my Dh to do something that I hated to do and took me a lot of time and stress during the day . . . . . the meal planning (I hate to cook). He plans dinner about 4-5 nights a week and cooks it about 4 nights a week too. I use this extra time to do my chores that I put off during the day (or relax on a very busy day). To tell you the truth, that was the biggest life saver and pulled me out of our rut of not having enough time in the day! I also made sure I went through our lesson plans on Sunday night and had everything I needed and ready to go for the week. These activities cleared up some much time during our day! I would try these things first and see if that helps. Best of luck!

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