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kls126s

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Posts posted by kls126s

  1. I teach at a small classical Christian school. We use SWB's *History of the Ancient World* (and following) for our high school history courses for 9th and 10th grades, but are casting about trying to find a good spine for the rest of the timeline.  We teach by lecture and a lot of discussion, read the spine, and provide an extensive bibliography for students to choose a number of books per semester to read alongside their assigned material -- an interest-driven component to enrich their history studies.

     

    Any recommendations for a spine text? We need a book (books?) to cover Reformation/Elizabethan era to the present.

     

    Thanks -

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  2. I made a chart to check off as we work through FLL 1. I laminated it and was planning on having my son will cross each lesson off as we do it, but I did that before I saw someone else mentioned stickers. He might like that better.

     

    So in case anyone else can benefit, you can get it here.

     

    I want to do the same type of thing for AAS for him, but this is the first year we've used it and I'm not sure how to set up a sheet that would work. Any advice from someone who has already used AAS?

  3. I finished this weekend too. I had a bit of a head start bc I was already planning to do something like this so I had all my spines cut off and holes drilled already, plus all the copying done already - student pages in SOTW, etc. I use HST+ so breaking all the work into lesson plans was pretty easy too.

     

    I was thrilled to see the thread tho - helped me think through some things and make a system that I hope will work for us. I got two Yaffa blocks (remember those?!) from the dollar store for $5 each and just used hanging folders and files I had already. I put 20 weeks in each crate and they are pretty full. I'm working on setting up weekly binders for each of my kids - still trying to decide whether to do that by subject or by day.

     

    Eager to get started on our year and hoping this works well for us...

  4. The Mercy Watson books are good, and the Poppleton series are like that too - chapters, but big print, great illustrations, etc. I probably enjoyed them more than my daughter - I laughed until I was crying at a couple of them. We like all of Cynthia Rylant. Once she gets just a bit stronger at reading, look into the Lighthouse series by Rylant too.

  5. I started picking them up at goodwill and yard sales when I saw them. My daughter has really enjoyed them - she reads them over and over, and since they are light reads, she buzzes through them. I do have her read other things, but she picks these up for free reading.

     

    One comment on them - she was telling me all about the Ann of Green Gables book and I made a comment about the full version, which stopped her in her tracks. I explained that they were abridged versions for kids to read and she was just a bit insulted! :D A couple of days later I found her on the couch reading the full version - she'd gone through my shelves and found it. She didn't stick with it long enough to read the whole thing - it's a bit beyond her right now - but she's already found the full versions of Little Women, Tom Sawyer, and Heidi and is determined to read those as soon as she can.

     

    SO - I think it's been a good thing. She enjoys the stories now, and is looking forward to reading the full versions later.

  6. I put something in my cart just to check shipping so I could compare with another purchasing option. I left the cart and the site and bought it elsewhere, but got a call from them a week later asking if I needed any help completing the transaction or had any questions. I was pretty surprised too.

     

    The thing is, literally any company with a website can see where everyone has been and what they looked at. It's what they do with that information that has the potential to be a problem- and calling me unsolicited bothers me.

  7. I know I've seen this here, but can't find it...

     

    For those of you using OPGTR with AAS, how far into OPGTR were you before you began AAS?

     

    My son is going to do a K/1st year next year. We did lesson 83 in OPGTR this morning and he's doing really well. I'd like to use AAS and FLL this fall. I know FLL fits well when started around OPGTR lesson 140.

     

    And while I'm on the subject, is it overkill to use ETC with both of these? I think it would be more of a busywork project for him, but he likes workbooks and it would give him something to do and allow me time with his sister. Thoughts?

  8. Pongo and others, thanks for posting about HST. Like you, I've been looking at the website for quite some time. I'm a bit gun-shy to try it out because of my negative experience with EduTrack. I tried to use that program for a year. It took h-o-u-r-s for me to input everything. I thought it would help me with our unit studies, but it was very tedious. So, I just gave up. I just keep wondering if HST would really be easier for me or would I wind up feeling the same way as I did with EduTrack.

     

    Any comments or comparisons of the two programs?

    Thanks,

    Jennifer

     

    I haven't read to the end of this thread, so maybe I'm repeating what someone else said, but I like HST much better. I originally bought EduTrack because they were at a convention and they are the first option I ran into. I used it for a while and was continually frustrated. I finally bought HST and, imo, it's far and away better. I think it's easier to use, it's got great support, upgrades are free, and I think it's just an all around better program. Play with the free option first to get an idea, and I don't think you'll regret going to HST+.

     

    My two cents...

  9. Grammar

     

     

    • R&S Grammar 3
    • Daily Grams 3

     

    Writing

     

     

    • Writing Tales 1
    • GD Italics book - working on cursive

     

    History

     

     

    • SOTW 3 w/AG (plus notebooking and lots of history reading)

     

    Science

     

     

    • My Pals are Here 3/4 (plus science reading list)

     

    Math

     

     

    • Horizons Math 3
    • RS math games

     

    Latin

     

     

    • Finish Prima Latina
    • Start LC I

     

    Bible

     

     

    • Explorer's Bible Study II (NT survey)

     

    Other

     

     

    • fiction reading list
    • piano lessons
    • Classical Conversations
    • swimming/gymnastics

     

  10. This is our first year in CC. We've loved it and plan to do it all the way through Foundations. I do not plan to do Essentials (I am going to use a progym approach rather than IEW) and I'm probably not going to enroll our children in Challenge once they get there either.

     

    We do, however, love Foundations. I am amazed at what my kids have learned and love the framework of knowledge they are building. I love that this information will be at their fingertips when they get to later years of study and are ready to integrate/anyalyze, etc. I love that they do art projects and science experiments and presentations. I love that both of my kids already know more about geography than I did by much older. I love that it's given all of us some friendships among like-minded families - something we needed. For us, CC has been a wonderful discovery.

     

    I'm the Foundations director of our community and tutor an Apprentices class. CC is pretty new to Missouri (only the second year) and I pretty much had to direct in order to have a community close enough to use to make it worth it. I've enjoyed it though.

  11. Have you ever said a word in your head one way, because you've only read the word, not heard it said, and then when you finally DO hear it said, it's not what you thought?

     

    Or worse, you said it wrong and someone else corrected you?

     

    So how, exactly, do you pronounce progymnasmata? :001_smile:

  12. We are working on Horizons 4. I have recently had a change of thought about how we are approaching the program though. I used to give ds just some of the problems if it was an older skill. For us though I have decided that if I am choosing this program b/c I like the spiral approach then I am losing some of the benefit by cutting out that repetition. I want ds to do it so many times he can do it in his sleep. :D Plus if it's that easy then it shouldn't be a big deal for him to do all the problems anyway. ;) Automaticity is a new word in my educational repertoire and something I am aiming for in many content areas, not just math.

     

    That being said, it takes us about an hour an day to do math. Longer if I don't stay next to ds b/c he gets distracted very easily. The hour counts the time it takes me to explain any new concepts and check for understanding. We will spend the summer going through all the review sheets before starting Horizons 5.

     

    ETA: In the past one of the things that slowed us down was the fact that he did not have those basic addition and subtraction facts down pat and simple computation was dramatically increasing the time spent on lessons. Now that we have spent the past several month drilling and drilling those facts our time on math has decreased. We were spending closer to an hour and a half on math most days.

     

    She stole my answer! :) We are using Horizons 2 and plan to continue. I don't skip problems for the exact same reason Jennefer mentioned - drill until you can do it in your sleep. Math usually takes us about 45 minutes, more if she dawdles too much. And drilling on math facts and skip counting has made a difference for us too.

  13. For those of you who continue with math during the summer--do you just move into the next year's book, or do you use an entirely different program during summer? We will be finished with our 1st grade Horizons math, but I want to continue math, phonics/reading and writing through summer. I don't know whether to just begin Horizons 2 or if I should change things up a bit and buy something new. What do you do?

     

    Personally, I don't move on to the next level. Part of my reasoning for that is that math is a weaker subject for my daughter, so I want to take the time to make sure she really knows it, and not just move on because she's done with a book. We use Horizons too, and so this summer when she's done with Horizons 2, we'll do some Math Mammoth work on addition and subtraction and play a bunch of RS math games. It's covering the same material she did in her math book this year, but in a different way with the goal of reviewing and reinforcing.

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