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mom&nana

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Everything posted by mom&nana

  1. Mr. Printables has some and a lot of other great printables. I'm not sure if they have a black and white option though. Also watch for Scholastic Dollar Deals sales as they frequently have file folder games and books for $1.00 only.
  2. That is very sad news. :( Prayers are being sent up for her family.
  3. I hope it goes well for you. We are doing Core H this year. We are in our 5th week since we started on July 23. My dd is most likely dyslexic (though never formally diagnosed) and has always disliked reading. We actually switched the reader and read aloud in SL. There are some readers that I will have her read, but I read aloud The King's Fifth and The Iron Peacock. She's been reading the read alouds alone...A Murder for Her Majesty and Out of Many Waters. The read aloud schedule is less reading and I also find the read aloud books a tad easier....the readers seem to have advanced vocabulary, quotes from people in different dialects, unfamiliar place names, etc. My dd reads on grade level or slightly above but was having trouble with The King's Fifth. SL IS a lot of reading. But we are really enjoying Core H so far with these minor adjustments. :) We are not doing the writing though, we use IEW for that. We also don't use their Bible, except for the actual Bible reading schedule. I hope you end up enjoying it as much as we are and that you have a great year.
  4. It's strange because at first I thought that PR wasn't so great for teaching reading when I was in the thick of it with my now 7 year old. However, after going through PR 1, and seeing how much my dd has progressed in her reading without using any other "reading" program, I see now how PR served us well in that regard. In fact, I recently bought AAR 1 (we used the Pre-level which is just learning the letters, and some phonemic awareness) for my 6 year old. I thought I needed a real "learning to read" program instead of using PR for her. It turns out that I really dislike the way AAR teaches reading and much prefer how it is all presented in PR. So we have dropped AAR and gone straight into PR 1. We will use the AAR games as a fun supplement and for review. I love the way that PR teaches spelling to learn to read. I have seen how it reinforces those phonograms over and over again and passes on over into their reading.
  5. I currently have 2 children in MUS. One in Primer and one finishing the last few lessons of Zeta and then moving on to Pre-Algebra. The older child always watches the dvd and I watch them with her. The younger one does much better if I watch the video alone and then teach her. So we do it differently depending on the child.
  6. In the past we used SL Science B and C, then like you, I heard that it was not a good science program. I went looking around for other things. I am not a science person, which basically meant we floundered on science for a couple of years. Then I went back to SL Science F this year and we really like it. I was just telling a good friend the other day that I wish I would have just stuck with SL and quit worrying about what other people said. It gets done, we enjoy the topics, the books, and the Dvd with the experiments. As long as it's working, don't change it. :)
  7. Thank you Ellie, I'm glad to know that. :) Thank you for clarifying. I only have AAS 1 and 2 and I admit I haven't looked closely at any other AAS levels. Yes, the Teacher's Manual has the instructions for the games. Since I'll have several children using the AAR games and a large portion of the workbook is non-consumable fluency pages, I decided to take the whole workbook, color things in and laminate everything so that I could re-use it all. I even laminated those word flippers, and spiral-bound them with my proclick. Then I made another booklet of all the Fluency pages. So nothing will be consumable. I won't need to buy extra workbooks for each student. I'm eager to see AAR 2. If the workbook has a lot of fun type games like AAR 1, I'll most likely purchase it as a supplement too.
  8. Oh and another thing, AAR is supposed to be 8 levels. Some of those levels might not be ready when you need them. So I believe Spalding is probably more complete, it's finished right now. Also doesn't Spalding include grammar, handwriting, and latin roots? PR does, I don't know enough about Spalding to know. AAR/AAS doesn't include those things.
  9. I think you should stick with Spalding. I used Phonics Road with my older dd (accelerated through some of the levels) and also use PR with my 7 year old. I believe that PR is similar to Spalding. With my 6 year old, who really struggled learning letter names and such, I decided to give AAR a try. I also own levels 1 and 2 of AAS. To me, PR is so much easier to get done. AAS/AAR is so scripted that the Teacher's manual is cumbersome to me. We covered the pre-level in AAR and started AAR level 1. But I do not really like the way that AAR has the child reading words right off the bat when they have taught them only a couple of phonograms. They have the child practice reading the word cards over and over, and I'm sorry but that seems like having them memorize words to me instead of actually having to think. Yes they show you how to read the word by segmenting, but I found my dd doing a lot of guessing, adding letters that were not there, etc. I know some of that is completely normal with a beginning reader. I know that reading is eventually memorizing words, but I just like the PR method so much better of learning ALL the phonograms first then start SPELLING to learn to read and write. Spelling really makes them think hard about what letter is making that sound. In my opinion that is much better than memorizing a word. But that is just my opinion and I'm sure people feel differently. AAR also teaches some sight words, and I don't really care for that either. Maybe I'm just used to PR, since I have more experience with it. But I really feel that it is a much better fit for us over AAR/AAS and it moves at a much faster pace. I felt like my dd needed more reading practice than PR provided, but truly I think I just got impatient and jumped the gun. I now see the fruits of the labor so to speak and I see that PR will get them exactly where they need to be. I've decided to drop AAR for my 6 year old and put her straight in PR. I love the games and readers in AAR, but I think that they will serve us so much better once we have mastered all the phonograms. We will use them as fun review and to help build fluency.
  10. That is adorable, yay for box day. What fun!! :)
  11. I can sympathize with you on the high shipping costs!! I need to purchase a Primer student book, but I have been holding off because right now I only need the workbook and don't want to pay such high shipping for one book. I wish other places like Rainbow Resource would carry MUS then I could get free shipping along with the rest of my homeschool order. MUS sells the Student Workbook and Test booklet together. I don't think you can order the workbook alone, but maybe if you call them they will let you do that. I like having the tests, but I suppose you could get by without them and just use a workbook if you can find one used (but not written in). Hope that helps.
  12. Well there's a few here at Mr. Printables. Also check Scholastic and watch for the dollar deals they do. Often when they have the Dollar sales they have file folder games, even whole ebooks of file folder games, so you can get some super cheap that way.
  13. I have considered buying the Montessori House albums for a while now, but haven't taken the plunge. I love the idea of Montessori, I have some of the Montessori Materials and try to incorporate some into our school. I do find it difficult to do true Montessori at home though. The problem for me has been storage of everything and I don't have enough space to set out a prepared environment with shelves and trays. I do have the Montessori at Home ebook and I think it's great. It's very practical for those trying to do Montessori at home.
  14. I also wanted to add that I'm actually looking forward to trying this program again next year with my dd (currently in 2nd grade). After looking over it again, I think it will be a good fit for her. From reading my responses above it may seem that I have a negative opinion about this program. I did find things that I thought were weak- Science and Language Arts. However, there is still very much to like about TGTL. It is very comprehensive in the history department. I love how they have you reading a book about the topic and also your child reading a different book about the topic. Reading two different books on the same topic like that gives ample opportunity for discussion, comparing and contrasting, etc. For example, when we were reading the Columbus books, one would have more information than the other on a certain event, or one would be a slightly different account of the same event. That gave us plenty to talk about, pointing out that history can be biased depending on who's telling the story, and showing that sometimes we may never really have the full picture of what happened in the past, etc. I loved the Geography portion of this program. A lot of literature based history programs have geography tied in, but with the ones I tried, I always felt like it was tacked on. This one has a much different feel. I've used/tried many different programs in the past--- SL, WP, VP, MFW, and Bob Jones history. I found this program to have the best retention out of all of those we tried in the past. I had to really think what set this one apart and I came to the conclusion that it was the pace of the program. At first, I really disliked the pace of spending 6 weeks on one topic. I was frequently frustrated by the slow reading schedule, and I tried to speed this up quite a few times. I suppose it was because I was used to a much faster pace with programs like SL and WP. However, I really feel that the slower reading pace gives time for the information to simmer and sink in. There are many activities in that guide that tie all this information together and you can tell it is a well thought out and planned curriculum. When I tried to speed it up, I always found that the retention wasn't nearly as high as when we just worked through the program as is. I already have a Language arts program I really like, so I will be using that. We might also do some of the LA activities in TGTL too. I really like what they do with the vocabulary words in POS, for example. I just do not like the Science. It feels much too disjointed and all over the place. I want a more natural progression of Science topics instead it being so heavily tied in with the history. So it's very likely, that I will skip the science in TGTL altogether. I think the majority of my issues with the program was the fact that I was trying to do this with an older child. I feel like the recommended age ranges are best, with the mid to lower level being the preferred age range. We even tried adding in the Middle School Supplement. While I felt like that added in terms of quantity of work, I didn't feel like it was adding to the quality of work. Anyway, I just didn't want you to think that I hated this program. I have often said that I have a love/hate relationship with TGTL and I think that's pretty much how I feel. I think it's a great program, but I feel it needs supplementation in a few areas. I'm a tweaker, I don't think I could ever do a program completely as is anyway.
  15. I answered above in Green. I hope you find it helpful. :)
  16. Well website says that Level 2 is due to be released September 2012. I have heard that there will be 8 levels. I think they plan to release 1 or 2 a year, but again, that is just what I have read before at the forum over there.
  17. I agree with Merry about the topics being somewhat mature. For the record, my kids loved the story where the bird's tail was cut off. We aren't formally doing Core P 4/5. I have all the books and the guide but we read them at our own pace, out of order or whatever we feel like. I read them to a 7 (6 when we started), 6 (5 when we started), and 3 year old. They all enjoy the stories, and they have lead to some wonderfully awesome conversations in our home. New Toes for Tia was a big hit here as well, and oh the topics we were able to discuss with that one. Some of those things I would have never considered talking about with my young children, but I'm so glad that SL introduced us to those things in a gentle way, and also leaves it completely up to the parent on what you want to discuss, skim over, etc. It's always a good idea to pre-read if you'd like to shy away from certain topics or have a sensitive child.
  18. I use Bob Jones Math for one of my children. My other two are using Math U See. I like them both. I'm currently debating about which program to put my youngest child into. They are different approaches. BJU is considered a mastery program as is MUS. However, MUS will cover mostly one topic in a book...it covers more than one topic, but what I mean is that one book with MUS will be mostly fractions, or mostly decimals and percents, etc. BJU has a lot of topics going on at once. BJU might line up more closely with the public school's scope and sequence. MUS is not time consuming, I feel like BJU takes a lot more time. I don't use the distance learning though. I use the regular TM and go over the lesson with my dd and then she works on the workbooks. BJU uses manipulatives, and has a ton of practice before the workbook pages each day. With MUS you watch the dvd at the beginning of the lesson. It is short, 5-10 minutes usually. Then for the rest of the week (or however long it takes your student to do the work) you work through the worksheets. There are 6 worksheets plus a test for each lesson. The first 3 worksheets A, B, and C cover the new material taught in the lesson. The last 3..D, E, and F have new material plus past lessons for review. My dds usually take 2 to 3 days to do those worksheets and the test. If they are understanding and doing well we skip worksheets C and F. So our typical schedule is : Mon- Watch DVD lesson, do Worksheet A and D Tues- Do worksheet B and E Wed- Take the Test Thurday- Watch next lesson on Dvd and do A and D Friday- Do B and E. Mon- Take test and so on. If they need more time, because they are not understanding, we might take 5 or 6 days to do them all. Mon- Watch Dvd lesson, do worksheet A and D Tues- Worksheets B and E Wed- Worksheets C and F Thursday- Test or more worksheets you can print online at MUS (if they still need practice) Friday- begin new lesson, etc. We have even gone more slowly just doing one worksheet a day, and working more problems together for understanding, etc. MUS works very easily to move at your child's pace. Whereas, it's a little harder to do that with BJU. For example, with my dd who uses BJU we just started the 2nd grade book (she has used BJU math since K). Many, many pages in the beginning of the workbook are very easy review... (Remember it's like the public school where kids have a long summer break, so they start all over when school starts back, going over stuff they covered the previous year...tons and tons of review.) My dd is very bored right now, even though we took a summer break. She hasn't forgotten any of this stuff and it's just too easy. I'm seriously thinking of switching her over to MUS at the end of this year. She just doesn't seem to need as much review as BJU contains. MUS uses the blocks for manipulatives, and also uses fraction overlays in the Fractions book. That is pretty much the only manipulatives MUS uses. I'm not sure that I'd say that MUS is more hands on than BJU. Maybe, but if you are doing all the things in the BJU TM, there are opportunities for hands on use with manipulatives. I guess the blocks are more tactile, most of BJU manipulatives are cardstock pieces. But they also use Unifix cubes. You could always add more tactile manipulatives to BJU though. Well I hope that helps.
  19. I agree with Abbeygurl4. They are very different. Downloading samples would be a good idea, so you can see just how different they are. TGTL will be a lot less reading than what is scheduled in TOG. I believe that TOG also has more ideas for hands activities than TGTL. TOG is definitely more chronological than TGTL. TGTL is based upon themes. So in Paths Of Exploration you study some early American up to moving west, the Oregon Trail, etc. However, not everything is covered during that time frame. So Paths Of Settlement will go back in time and study the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Gold Rush, etc. TGTL is supposed to be All in One except Math. If I end up using it again, I will supplement both the Language Arts and the Science. I didn't feel like it was enough in those areas for my goals. I used it with an older child (one year out of the age range), and I think possibly that's why I had as many issues as I did with it. If I use it again with my younger children, they will be on the bottom end of the age range. I think it will work much better that way. However, I still plan to supplement. I do like the history portion. We enjoyed some of the books and some were just ok. I loved having copywork and dictation all planned out for me. I like that you are reading a few books for history and then there is also scheduled free reading time. For the free reading time, you can add in some classics or just have your child read whatever they desire. The Geography was very good, it's a strong point of the curriculum. Having everything woven together is really nice, the pace is a little slow, but I saw the best retention with this program than any other we have tried. I have never actually used TOG, bought a unit and tried to make it work. I just couldn't get it off the ground, too much planning, too much decision making from me, and too much money for books. It was hard trying to reserve books from the library and then trying to plan without seeing the books was impossible for me. There is also a LOT of reading in TOG. I think my child would have struggled to do all that reading for history and still have time to do her core subjects.
  20. YAY! Box days are so much fun! I love the picture of your kitties. :)
  21. I cloth diapered 3 of my children and am pregnant with another due in Jan. We never used cloth diapers while we were out and about, which was only about once or twice a week for Church, etc. For us it was just easier to buy the disposables for that. I had numerous problems with detergents, because of our hard water here, we had lots of trouble with soap build-up, horribly stinky cloth diapers, etc. So we went off and on with cloth/disposable for a while too. I tried prefolds and snappis with prowraps but we got a lot of leakage with those. My favorite are AIO's and Fitted diapers with knitted soakers. I ended up making a lot of my own after trying a few different companies like Kissaluvs, Muttaqin Baby, and FuzzyBuns. I got a snap press for making my own with snaps. I even learned how to knit to make soakers. :) It was a bit of an investment but I'm glad we did it. I did get so frustrated with the build up and stench that I quit for quite a while. I hope I can find a new solution to that so I can cloth diaper this new baby full time.
  22. Sorry about that. :D I do sympathize with you though. I understand your rant... go ahead and complain all you want. :) I agree that those increases were huge, I was shocked at some of those price increases too. It looks like some might be due to the publisher increasing the prices and I guess that would be beyond RR's control but it certainly still stinks for us!
  23. Well you can see with the ages of my kids, that I've done this before. I've had lots of littles around when homeschooling. But I was only homeschooling one child. Now this will be the first time I'll have 3 in school and a newborn, so I suppose that's why I'm so nervous as to how it will work out. Happycc, there's been some good advice so far and I think I'll have pretty relaxed expectations once the baby arrives. I'm expecting the first month to be wild. Plus, I might have to have a c-section and recovery will be harder. I had all my babies natural except my last--too big had to be a c-section. So I don't know what this delivery will be like, but a c-section might be likely since my babies have been larger each time. My 8th grader will likely be able to continue on with school since she's going to be much more independent than my younger ones. School might stop completely for the young ones for a few weeks and I'm ok with that. We have to meet the state requirements of 180 days over here, so I'm sure we'll have to go through some of the summer to make that happen. I think the previous poster, duckens, had the right idea...expect to get behind and learn to be ok with that. I'm certainly going to take that advice. :)
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