BJU Math 2 Phonics Road 2 MFW Adventures

I'll be using the JR K program with a 3 year old and my soon to be 6 year old in the fall. We will be subbing out the MP Alphabet and Number book for the Rod and Staff ABC series preschool books, since I already had those here. My soon to be 6 year old is also using MUS, and I plan to put the 3 year old in the MUS Primer book soon. So we'll be adding some and exchanging some of the JR K program but I think it's going to be a good year. I bought all the Supplemental Read Alouds and they are fabulous. :)

Perhaps these history portfolios could work?

Thank you for the video link Beth. We will definitely watch it together later today. :)

OhElizabeth, well it's not that she hates TT. She just really likes MUS. We had it narrowed down to TT or MUS when we switched and my dd liked both options. I couldn't make up my mind, because there were sooooo many negatives about both programs on these forums. So I brought in the sensible one (my dh) and he chose MUS. Well now my dd loves MUS she wouldn't let me change if I wanted to, but I have thought of TT (just because I wonder if MUS is going to be enough, it's hard to ignore all those negative reviews). Would she be willing to do them both... probably not. LOL... but a girl can dream, right?:lol: But MUS has her tolerating math, most days she finds it enjoyable---well at least she does it without complaint. Before that Math had her in tears, gave her a low self-esteem, etc. MUS has really brought about a very positive change.

:lol::lol: Well I've been enabled quite a bit from this forum so just passing it on. ;) I don't know if it'd be redundant with the MFW k stuff, but you can always look at the Preschool stuff as a fun supplement, just fun learning games to play anytime. But I'm like you.. way to much stuff I like and all these ideas that never become fulfilled. I think you'll have fun with AAR, you'll have to give us an update when you get going with it. And get that little guy a little Learning Resources cash register to play store with. My girls got one for Christmas from my SIL. :)

LOL, well I have no idea about boys. :) That Ipad plan of yours sure sounds nifty!! Technology is so cool. :D Swellmomma is right, the coloring pages have some of the cutest ideas-not just coloring. I remember on the letter N (for nanny goat) we glued little pieces of foil paper on the stack of cans, and they have you making little peanuts with your thumb prints for the letter E with the elephant. We glued spaghetti noodles on the P for porcupines, added cinnamon to the pie on the R page where the Rascally Racoon runs off with the pie. So yes, it's lots of really fun, cute ideas. Now have you looked at the MFW preschool activity cards for your wiggily boy? I just received them recently and they use the Lauri toys sold in the MFW preschool package. There are lots of varying activities included, fine motor and large motor activities, math skills, patterning, etc.. An example using the Lauri lowercase letter linking set is that they will have you lay them all out of the floor and have your child jump to the letter you call out, same with the number set. They have the lacing and linking shapes... games where you put the shapes into a bag and have your child feel for a shape with eyes closed and name it. They have the pegs and pegboard where you build towers, make patterns, etc. There are quite a few activity cards for each Lauri toy. We tried out a few already and my girls loved it.

Thank you for that info.

Well I'm still confused even though I re-read it a few times. But I can answer your question I think... when we used AAR we did a lesson a day. And 1 lesson covers a worksheet page, the letter activities (reading, etc), and the ziggy page. It's all in one lesson so we did do all that in one day and I didn't find that it took too long. We usually did all the activities and reading first, then I would let them color the worksheet page. Sorry if I wasn't understanding correctly. I still can't figure out what that poster was trying to say.

Ok Beth, I'm curious too. :) Last fall we switched to MUS. My dd tested into TT Pre-algebra at the time, but we ended up choosing MUS. However, we decided to back up in MUS. I don't think she was really solid on some of the concepts, and I wanted to make sure she was really understanding. So we've covered MUS Epsilon in a few months and are up to Week 23 in Zeta so far. We plan to move on to MUS Pre-algebra when we finish. I really liked the samples of TT, but my dd loves MUS. She wouldn't let me switch even if I wanted to....but to add TT to MUS...now that's intriguing. :) Although, my dd might rebel...lol.

This recently happened twice to me also. I was sent a different version of the book on a "fulfilled by Amazon" order. It peeved me because I did want the specific book advertised but I just kept them anyway. I don't really understand those "fulfilled by Amazon" things anyway. So I don't know if the blame should be put on Amazon or the seller when I was sent a different version than advertised.

Sorry about that. I didn't buy those yet, but I plan to soon. I think OhElizabeth is right, it makes sense to get them. It will be a fun supplemental add on that includes Ziggy. I don't think there are any Ziggy activities in the regular TM for AAR 1. However, I haven't looked at the TM that closely yet, so maybe I missed something.

You're welcome. I'm glad you found it helpful. I think you can do just what you explained with MFW/AAR. It sounds like most of the above posters agree that the Ziggy Activities need to be done in order. But I do like the idea of doing the worksheets together all one letter at a time. I've been using PR to teach my 7 year old to read. I like it, but I wouldn't really call it fun...lol. I like that AAR is a lot of fun games and activities that make it much more interesting for the child. And I did use the Pre-level with her last year, even though she was past it. It was a fun review. I will also play the games from AAR 1 with her, again as a fun review. She enjoys it and I think PR lacks a little in the learning to read department. My younger children will most likely do a few levels of AAR and then move over to PR. I think a few of the Ziggy activities might be letter specific, like the letter F Riddle one I mentioned above. I think they could easily be used at any time though.

Hmmm.. in theory it seems like it should work. I do think the Ziggy activities build upon each other. I think it's possible that you could just do the Ziggy activities in order but it wouldn't necessarily match up if you do all the other worksheets for one letter at a time. In looking through the TM, I didn't see why it wouldn't work to do all the letter A stuff at one time, and so on. But I tried it out on my 3 year old doing everything but the worksheets. She already knows most of her letters and some of their sounds. I chose the Letter F just randomly. The F activity in part one is singing the Alphabet song, pointing out the letter F on the chart, reading the Zigzag Zebra F story, having your child color the Uppercase F sheet, and then the "Get out of the Wagon" game. That is a rhyming game with 2 cards that rhyme and one that does not. My 3 year old did this fine, no problem. So I went on to part 2 lowercase f activities. The lowercase activities include, the alphabet song and finding the lowercase letter f on the chart, reading Lizard Lou f poem and pointing out things that start with the letter f on that page, then the lowercase f worksheet, and the game "I spy" with Ziggy. The "I Spy" game uses cards and ziggy segments the sounds in one of the words... ex. C..r...a...b. The child then has to tell what Ziggy is spying. It took several tries, my dd struggled with this a bit. She could get some of them, but most of this was just going over her head. I went on to Part 3 "the sound of F". She did fine telling me what started with f out of the 4 pictures on the worksheet page. But then they have a riddle game. You read the riddle and the child guesses the answer. The answers start with F. She bombed on that one, it was just too difficult. So with that in mind, I'm thinking it's probably best to do the program in the order it's in. I'm thinking the lessons build upon themselves. But I have used parts of MFW K in the past. I think it is such a sweet program. I'd like to use it again in the way you describe adding more of an OG phonics program to it. AAR doesn't have much in the way of review. It just goes through the letters one at a time. If you child doesn't get it, (like my 5 year old didn't at the time), it's just too bad, keep moving on to the next letter, or either keep repeating activities, or make up some of your own to help cement it. So I wonder if you could do something like you described with MFW using AAR more as a supplement, pulling activities and such as you see fit. It might not make it worth it, or be very sane ;)...I don't know. I think MFW has more of those fun activities to help cement the letter names, sounds, etc. ETA: I had forgotten about it, but AAR does have a page of additional activities in the appendix that you could do with the letters. EX... use a handwriting program, form letter of the day with toothpicks, pipe cleaners, etc... trace letter of day in pudding, sand, salt, etc.... They also suggest reading books after all the activities each day. I just think MFW is probably more intentional with their activities, if that makes sense.

The worksheets are repetitive. Part 1 is all Uppercase letters and the little crafts are really fun on those sheets, but it's mostly coloring. Part 2 is the same thing only it's lowercase letters. They have a few pages that are different like coloring all of one kind of letter to reveal a picture or finding the different ways "a" could be shown in print. Then part 3 is all the same cutting and pasting 3 pictures that have the sound of the letter shown on the page. There is just very little variety in there and I think that's why my kids got so bored with it. The TM has the fun activities with Ziggy and other games and such, like the wagon, memory match, etc. In hindsight, I wondered if it would have been better to use all the worksheets for one letter at a time instead of in 3 different parts. What I mean is...say we are on Letter A... Do the uppercase sheet one day, the lowercase page the next and then the sound page on another day... then move on to B. I wonder if that would have helped variety-wise without disrupting the flow of the program? I don't know, it was just a thought, but one I haven't put into practice.

My kids loved Ziggy when we did the Pre-1 level last year. One was really too old for it (6 yo at the time), she was way past it but she still wanted to do it. The other child (5 yo) enjoyed it too, but still has trouble learning the names of the letters. The reading books are tons of fun! The activity book did get old, it's a lot of coloring. My kids didn't mind that part, but when we got to Part 3 with all the cutting and pasting they rebelled against it. We did finish it, but it was because I was pushing to get it done. Now I have purchased Level 1 and it looks even better. I have actually turned the whole workbook into re-usable games by coloring and laminating everything. I even took the word flippers and used my proclick to bind them. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. That will also eliminate all the coloring, cutting, and pasting for the child. And it saves me money because I have 3 kids who would have wanted to participate and those workbooks add up fast!

Thank you. That is exactly what I was wondering. I appreciate you answering my question. :)

I was wondering the same thing.. but I think maybe it's Climbing to Good English?

Thank you Lori. I appreciate your input. I haven't looked at all the levels of PR closely. I do have levels 1-3 here. I know she teaches diagramming, but I've always wondered if I would need to add more grammar after we completed PR. Since LOE/SWR are similar to PR, I thought I'd ask what others' plans may be concerning grammar after completing a program like this. Thanks again. :)

Well I have no intention to switch to LOE and abandon PR. I just think in the long run PR is going to cover a lot more but it's not just spelling. I still will most likely buy LOE at some point in the future. I'd love to have it for a slightly different perspective. I have other children coming up, and I'm not sure that PR will work for one of them, she's very different. I also have AAS levels 1 and 2 and 2 levels of AAR. I like having a lot of OG type programs to draw ideas from. Lori- Is LOE mostly spelling then? What do you plan to use for grammar after LOE? Is the grammar in LOE basic? I guess what I'm asking is, will there be a need for additional grammar after LOE? I also wonder about grammar needed after PR? I'm not sure if more is needed or not, especially if one will be studying Latin.

I worried about that too, Hunter. LOE looks really good. I currently use The Phonics Road. I really like PR, but I dislike having to watch those DVDs. So I've looked into LOE. I watched the videos on the site and knew most of what she was teaching from PR, but I learned a couple things from Denise. I can't trade PR for LOE though, because I'm thinking PR Levels 1-4 will cover much more than LOE does. I could be wrong about that because I have not seen LOE in person. :confused:

Sorry I can't help with HOD, but I just thought you should know that SL G is going to cover parts that you have already covered in HOD CTC. SL Core G is Creation through the 1600's. SL Covers World history in 2 years instead of the normal 4 used in the 4 year history rotation. It will go at a much faster pace, so possibly you could just consider it review if you decide to use SL?

Your son's work looks great and I'm glad to hear the positive review as we will be using it in the fall with Sonlight Science F. :)

That's the same one I have too, but I found it at Office Depot for a little over $50. LOVE It. :)

Haha, yeah after I ordered I realized I'd have 300 spines...lol. I got a little excited and clicked buy pretty quickly. :)