Jump to content

Menu

smgwynn

Members
  • Posts

    69
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by smgwynn

  1. Hi! My 7th grade daughter has taken online writing classes through IEW for the past couple years. Unfortunately, the classes booked up this year before I reserved her spot. So, we're going to give WTM Academy a try this year. I signed her up for expository writing 1 but I'm wondering if I should've signed her up for 2. Would an experienced IEW student have any trouble jumping into WWS 2? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!
  2. Hello! My 7th grade daughter took an online class through IEW last year. It was swi-b. She did very well and we were planning on moving to the next level but their classes filled up before we registered. I thought we'd give WTMA a try this year. I'm having a had time deciding between expository writing 1 and 2. The subject matter is different than IEW and I don't want to overwhelm her but I also don't want her to be unchallenged. Would love some advice from those experienced with WWS. Thanks!
  3. My daughter has been through the history cycle using Tog twice. I'm looking to simplify the number of books and amount of reading required by Tapestry and focus more on comprehension and thinking skills. My rising 9th will be using HOTAW and I'm considering using it with my rising 7th as well. She's a strong reader for her age but I'm wondering if the content will be too much for her. Has anyone else used it with their J.H. Kiddos?
  4. Hi! I'm researching pre-algebra curriculum and keep running across kinetic books. I see a few posts stating that it's out there but not anyone's experience with it. So? Anyone? My daughter is just finishing mm6, is doing well with it but doesn't particularly enjoy math. I thought about Aops but don't want to push her to the point of hating math. I'm looking for challenging, but not torturous. Need some kind of video teaching since I have four other kiddos and can't spend a lot of time teaching her myself. Any advice would be welcome!
  5. I'm talking about the pre-algebra book. I haven't actually gotten my hands on the book yet, I just keep hearing about these challenge problems. I assume they're the challenge section at the end. I have played around on alcamus a bit. Would you say those problems are comparable to the lesson problems? I would have him do the alcamus problems as well for additional practice.
  6. Has anyone used AoPS for the discovery method approach but skipped the more challenging of the challenge problems? I am convinced that my ds would thrive with the method, however, I can't see taking hours out of a day to try solving one difficult problem. My thought was to present them, give him a chance to solve for a certain period of time and then helping him through it using the solutions manual. Either that or just skipping some of them altogether. Anyone else doing this? Will it ruin the whole approach if i spare him the most difficult problems?
  7. I think it depends on the story and the child. We use TOG, which incorporates many retellings. My children have loved most of the selections offered. What little boy wouldn't love the Homer stories, beowulf, gilgamesh, etc..? He has read them at the grammar, and dialectic levels and looks forward to the real thing. Retellings of the dickens novels, les miserable, Robert Louis stevenson have all been big hits. These retellings have helped to get my children looking forward to reading the real things when they're older. I wouldn't feel pressured to make sure your children read them all, but why not offer them as options?
  8. We are using copy work for multiple functions this year. I copy a dictation/copy work based spelling program into the Getty dubay cursive font. I use that for spelling, handwriting, and we also use it for capitalization/punctuation instruction since Mct doesn't cover that very well. Kills three birds with one stone...I'm trying to simplify this year, going back to the old school way of doing some things. Oh, I'm doing that with my ds12, dd9, and in the print font with my ds6.
  9. I guess I never really considered it outsourcing since it's through a co-op, but I suppose that's what it is since I don't have to teach :001_smile:. IEW and apologia science labs are taught through the co-op, as well as art and violin lessons.
  10. We're kitchen, sunroom, toy room, tv room ....whatever works kinda people. We do go into the toy room when I'm trying to work one on one with an older child and one of the littles needs to be playing with toys, puzzles, etc... I have found that for the 4-6 year old set, they are very distracted in there. We go to the living room where there's fewer distractions to do work with them. You'll find out pretty quickly if it'll work for you.
  11. Thanks for the suggestions! I had never heard of the clearly or heller books. They look fun and my library has them!
  12. Is grammarland good for the 6-8 year old bunch?
  13. I'll be teaching an every other week LA class at my co-op. it's for the 1 st-2nd grade group. The goal is to prepare the kids for the beginning IEW class they go into in the 3rd grade. I'm thinking to work on parts of speech, narration exercises, and maybe throw in a bit of poetry, just for fun. Parents should be doing their own la programs at home, so this should really be a fun supplemental class. I was thinking of pulling a bit from the additional exercises from fll1/2 and from mct's building poems. Anyone have suggestions on some fun grammar games/exercises?
  14. Thanks! Between this and the video it looks like I'll be up late again tonite .:tongue_smilie:
  15. It's not the computation or the rules that wigs him out so much as lack of understanding the why behind the rules. He just can't seem to keep all those rules straightened out when he doesn't get why he's doing it. He has no problem with computations, so much. Do you have any suggestions of other programs or supplements that might help with mathematical reasoning?
  16. reasoning skills. First off I'll tell you that my son hates math and struggles with frustration over it. I think his hatred over it stems from being so frustrated all the time, if you know what I mean. However, he has excellent reasoning skills and tends to want to look at things from a big picture perspective. I've avoided even looking at AOPS until I saw someone say that it's great for kids who will look at a problem and try to figure it out themselves before actually being taught. His struggles with math don't come from computation skills so much as frustration at not understand why something has to be done a certain way. He wants to just look at the problem and figure it out (and tends to be very successful with that). When I insist that he learn the methodology, or when he's forgotten how to do everything he learned that hasn't been reviewed is where the frustration comes in. He actually scored 3 grade levels above where he's suppose to be at on his standarized test. The tester, who was a former math club teacher, told me he would put him in advanced mathematics based on his mathematical reasoning skills alone. So...all that being said, could someone who's familiar with aops chime in. I certainly don't want to further exasperate him, but I'm wondering if looking at math from a totally different perspective might help, even if it's a more challenging curriculum. BTW, we just finished MUS epsilon, have dabbled in MM (which he hated), are supplementing with LOF (which he tolerates), and have used ALEKS a bit.
  17. We used it last year. My ds11 hated it. It really made him slow down and think. For that reason, I really found it valuable. It did make him more aware of his own grammatical errors. Iew also has an editing book, I believe it's called fix-it. Oh, we used the book, not the software. I like to be able to check their answers.
  18. Can you tell me how you scheduled it and how it went for you. Did th tt end up feeling like busywork? We've used mus from the beginning, but I feel my ds12 needs more review of past topics taught. We'll be doing mus zeta and I'm thinking tt7 would be right.
  19. Tog has more than a book list. If you look through the weekly schedule under the student activities section, you'll find discussion questions to talk over with your ug/lg students. You'll also find worksheets for the lit component, some of which have sparked great discussions in our home. I use tog for lg, ug, and d levels and it is all of their favorite subjects. My 3 y.o. Even sits in to listen to the lg reading. As a side note, there are quite a few tog co-ops out there. You can try to locate one on the tog find-a-friend site if that's something you're interested in. I have found that to be the best way for my kids to interact with all the wonderful materials tog offers.
  20. My kids really enjoy these books. Mathematical reasoning is a fun supplement that my k'er loved. We also do the mind benders, we do one a week with. Y older kids. Think a minutes is another great option that we use. All that being said, they are expensive. I found mine at half.com and amazon's used listings. Good luck and have fun with first grade!
  21. Have you thought about switching to tog? Your kids would still be studying the same subject matter but at their ages would be at different levels and some work of their own.
  22. Tog can be a bit intimidating at first glance. The beautiful thing about it is that there is a smorgasbord of resources that you can pick from, but you can make it whatever you want. I have kids at three levels and I spend about 15 minutes planning their weekly reading, printing maps and lit worksheets, and picking through the accountability questions that look interesting. I spend some time over the summer figuring out which lit and history books area available at our library, then ordering what is necessary. It's really not time consuming to plan once you have routine down. We also co-op with a tog group, which keeps me from having to worry about crafts, lit discussions, writing assignments, etc....we do all that with co-op. My family loves it. It's great that the littles are learning the same era of history as the big kids. We all get to do the read aloud together and it helps draw the whole family together.
×
×
  • Create New...