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warneral

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Posts posted by warneral

    Scheduling question

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    I am looking forward to Winning With Writing but wasn't too thrilled that it is 5days/week. It looks like we should be able to double up a day or two per week without it being too daunting. I really want to start homeschooling with the flexibility of a 4 day per week schedule so I plan on doing what I can to get it all done in 4 days :)

     

    For WW (do you mean wordly wise?) - there are only 15 lessons per book so I plan to do about 3 days per week and take 2 weeks per lesson. Handwriting I am only going to do 3 days a week with my kiddos (that should be plenty). The only thing I plan to cram is the WWW and I also think that if we had a 20min writing excercise to do on Friday, that wouldn't be too bad.

    New homeschoolers need advice

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    For History - Story of The World or Mystery of History look good. I am using Sonlight which is also a nice program.

     

    For Geography, Evan Moore have some neat "Daily Geography" http://www.currclick.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=geography&x=0&y=0&search_here=1&quicksearch=1&search_filter=0_0_0_0_0&filters=0_0_0_0_0&search_free=&search_manufacturer=127&search_in_description=1&search_in_author=1&search_in_artist=1 - you could meet them in the middle with a 3rd grade Geography program. The downloads are nice b/c you can make multiple copies. I got the workbook from Amazon and made copies. My kids will be in 2nd & 3rd next year and I went with the 2nd grade version.

     

    Language arts is a big area. Well Trained Mind would have you do First Language Lessons and Writing With Ease plus spelling. I personally am doing growing with grammar, winning with writing (both the same publisher), all about spelling and Wordly Wise for our Language Arts program. We are new to HS'ing and hope it will be a good fit for my kids.

    SOTW or CHOW? Differences?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    So, let me tempt you into buying more curriculum.

     

    Sorry, it's just that I was reading an ancient WTM forum thread on Sonlight today, and I discovered that Handle on the Arts has made activities e-books specifically intended to work with Sonlight (Cores A-C, it looks like). Here's the one for Core 1 (now known as B), for instance, which, according to its table of contents, has 66 projects. (That second link is a .pdf file, by the way.) It tells you which week (and even which day, although how that works with the five-day and four-day schedule options, who knows?) to do each project, and gives you the shopping list for the items required. (These range from "toilet paper tube" at the one extreme to "four yards white fabric" at the other, although the vast majority look extremely reasonable.) (I got all of this from the free sample.) And it's only twenty dollars!

     

    Wow, now I feel like a curriculum pusher. It's only twenty dollars, and it'll make you feel reeeeeeeeal good, man! I will say that I'm not buying this, because my son is just not that into arts and crafts, and I hate trying to figure out what to do with the detritus.

     

    sold! This is exactly what I'm looking for! Thank you :)

    SOTW or CHOW? Differences?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    I loved A Child's History of the World. It was extremely readable and interesting. I think it's a little lighter in content than Story of the World, but since you're supplementing with USBORNE and other resources, you still get plenty covered. (Plus, some of the stuff included in Story of the World seems a little random, if you ask me.)

     

    Sonlight does implement SOTW for their second run through world history.

     

    Let me give you a warning--Sonlight Core B (1) starts off very slow, with Usborne's People and Places of the World, which was my son's absolute least favorite resource. Feel free to actually do some of the activities it includes in order to spice it up, and don't even try to do any narrative activities with it--it's just too chaotic, in my opinion. (I wish I'd been confident enough to just read the introductory paragraph and have my son pick out the pictures he was actually interested in. It may have gone over a lot better that way.)

     

    We are doing Core B right now. I wholeheartedly agree that Peoples of the World was unpleasant. In the future I'd probably just drop it or let the kids peruse it and ask questions from the pictures. I think the whole goal at this age is to find ways to spark interest in how people live and lived in our world.

     

    I wish we had more hands-on activities like some of the other programs offer. Sonlight has great literature, but I feel that the activities are what help cement what they learning into memory. Sonlight does provide a CD for extra activities but I don't have that. SOTW also has a activity guides which I *almost* purchased last night but changed my mind since I need to cut back on spending and buying more curriculum!!!

    AudioMemory Geography - how important is the book/map?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    The songs seem to do the groupings for memory so I would think you could use your own map. I got it yesterday (with cassette which is useless at the moment) for 2.00 at a used curriculum swap. I think I might do the download audio from Amazon.

     

    The booklet does show the various region for each song with a list of the countries in each grouping, it has a little bit of information listed as well as some fill-in-the-blanks. I don't think it is necessary, but it is a nice resource.

    IEW - Student Workshop & Tips & Tricks

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    I was at a used curriculum swap today and got IEW TWSS in unused condition. It is on DVD's but isn't the newest version with the tips & tricks DVD.

     

    I have two questions

     

     

     

    1. Is the tips and tricks DVD useful? It's only 10.00 but am not sure if it is necessary.
    2. Is the student workshop a writing curriculum on its own? I've heard so much about SWI but am wondering if the student workshop is a good place to start and then follow up with SWI in future years?

     

    I bought Winning with Writing for this year thinking we would save up for IEW to try next year. Especially since my dd will be in 2nd grade and the SWI is recommended for 3rd and up. Now that I have TWSS, I'm wondering if it would be beneficial to use the student workshop this year and do SWI next year? All I really know about this program is that it works well :p

    What makes AAS unique?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    When I started my kids in AAS, they were 9 & 11. I looked at HTTS, but I ended up choosing AAS because it was clearly laid out for me, very incremental, each step showed me exactly what to do, it has built in review that is easy to customize for my kids' needs, and it's open & go. I wasn't sure how much "multi-sensory" appealed to me, but that aspect has turned out to be great for my kids as well. The words do start out simple, but that's because the program is designed to give confidence to new spellers, or to older spellers who have struggled. We breezed through the first level, focusing only on the concepts, but hit quite a few words in level 2 that needed work. It all depends on the needs of the student. I also like that AAS builds in many techniques for helping kids to analyze words. Rules can help lay a great foundation, but good spellers need to develop several other skills as well, and AAS is explicit in teaching kids how to analyze words and learn which strategies to choose. This link explains the main strategies. I had tried several programs previously, but this is the only one we really made progress with. HTH as you decide what will work best in your situation! Merry :-)

     

    I do think that while HTTS teaches the rules, it might not teach how to reinforce them so that they are learned.

    What makes AAS unique?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    I've been reading a lot about spelling instruction as I try to determine the best choice to start homeschool spelling with my two. My dd7 is a natural speller. I think she would be fine with just copying and doing a workbook-type instruction. I actually think that rule-teaching might even be counter-productive for her! She is a natural reader and seems to learn to spell from reading. My ds9 does not seem to be as natural at spelling. He is doing well, but he tends to do more phoenetic spelling (or spell the way it sounds that day - maybe doing it differently the next). He also has a personality that want's to understand "how and why". I'm thinking that teaching the rules might work best for him.

     

    On the negative side, I feel like the rules are drudgery!!!

     

    We are starting with Sequential Spelling to see if following patterns and seeing the relationship with words will work. I'm quite sure it will work well for my dd who really just needs to see correctly spelled words. It might possibly also work for my ds :) If not I might move her to something like Soaring with Spelling or Spelling Workout and then work individually with him on HTTS.

     

    ETA that I don't think HTTS is very "workbook" like. The teacher really needs to instruct a lot to help teach the rules and help them stick! The workbook isn't super "open and go" IMO.

    Is anyone using Telling God's Story yet? Thoughts thus far?

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    my kids will be in 2nd/3rd and this will be our first year HS'ing. I bought it and have it but am first going through our book we have with Sonlight at a faster-than-suggested pace of one lesson per day (leading little ones to God). Then by mid-year we will start this curriculum. I had already seen examples of the curriculum and liked what I saw despite what I had read about the author's views. I really think the kids will enjoy the curriculum. The activities are engaging and the curriculum does seem to encourage getting to the heart of the parables :)

     

    I have seen on their facebook page that they are working on next year's curriculum and I believe they showed samples to a convention (or something like that).

    Math Mammoth 1/2 Question

    in K-8 Curriculum Board

    Posted

    VERY little experience here with MM (and none with Saxon). My kids are coming from Public School (Everyday math). Because some of the reasoning and explanations are different, I'm reviewing from 1A & B for my rising 2nd grader this summer. I am finding that the difference in style of teaching is enough to frustrate her so we're slowly plugging through bits and pieces of 1A/1B. Even then she is a bit frustrated so I'm glad we're going slowly.

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