I read through the Town level, it's not in there. Maybe it's in the Voyage level??

Check this out, it's from the Pioneer Woman website: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/04/macaroni-cheese/ I love her recipes, but I find her using LOTS of butter in her cooking. I always cut the amount of butter in half, but they always came out fine to me.

Thank you very much for starting this thread. We are going to do ancient next year for 6th grade, and I am enjoying reading all the replies.

No, I don't think it will be too light for middle schoolers. The beauty of her books is that you can just use them as a read-aloud for younger kids, or use them as a springboard for older kids. I am using The World of William Penn and George Washington's World this year with my 5th grader. Because we are also using A History of US for our spine, those books mentioned above were used as "icing on the cake". It's a delight to be able to enjoy these books with ds. But I would imagine a 6-8th grader could read those books, find something mentioned in books that interests him, and do more research on it. Or, he can see if there are anyone in history in that time period that's not mentioned in the books and write something about it. I think what you plan to do is enough for middle schoolers.

Both ds and I have systematic and logical mind, and MCT material just makes so much more sense to us than any other grammar programs we've seen and tried. Mr. Thompson's enthusiam is contagious and hard to miss. He has a way with words and language that even my then 8-year-old ds recognized that "he is very clever with words and these books are very unique." I am very happy that I've found a LA program that I can stick with for long term much like how we used Singpore Math in the past!

We are watching The Revolution by History Channel. It's very well made with enactments and perspectives from historians throughout. We've watched The Founding Fathers by History Channel in the past as well and liked it too. We got these through either our library or Netflex.

Ds is currently taking Grammar Town/Caesar's English I class. Here is my take on it: 1. The teacher did a great job choosing assignments, cooridnating students' online input, providing interesting games for practicing concept, giving feedback, and conducting the class. 2. Brainpop membership and tech courses come with the registration of any class which adds value to the class itself. 3. I really like the teacher and she conducts her class. At the beginning of this semester, some kids were having a hard time settling down during classes, she was very kind but very firm with them. She corrects misbehavor immediately. Now the class goes much smoother. 4. I wish she would not double the load by finishing one year's worth of material in one semester. Even though ds hasn't complained about the load, I think it'll be more enjoyable to do Caesar's English at normal pace. 5. We will not continue with them. I think it is more efficient to teach the material myself at this level and pick and choose what assignment I give. I will consider joining them again though when we hit WWW/Magic Lens level.

It's true that if you compare MCT's grammar program with FLL, FLL covers A LOT more grammar than MCT's elementary series. We gave FLL a try for a year, but it just wasn't a good fit. I chose MCT because of how logical it is written and how easy it is to learn grammar with it. All I can say is, Grammar Island and now Grammar Town have made learning grammar so enjoyable and effortless that we are going to continue with it. Grammar Island introduces basic grammar like parts of speech and part of sentence. It is a gentle introduction and thus the book looks very simple. It will be great for 3-4th graders who have NO prior grammar exposure. If you've done other grammar program, this level will probably be too easy. As with everything else, there is not a grammar program that will fit everyone. You probably won't know for sure before you try.

Even though we use IEW as our main writing program, I really think MCT's writing component is great. The reason I chose to use IEW more now is becuase ds is not a natural writer. He needs the structure and the incremental learning IEW provides. I do plan on using MCT's writing program as our main one starting from 7th grade (assuming ds will have IEW's stylistic skills down pat by then.)

I second The Master Puppeteer for a reader or read-aloud. I also second the idea of origami and sushi. You can make your own sushi, or if you have a Costco or Trader Joe's near you, you might be able to find some there. If you live near a Japanese Town or a Japanese supermarket, it's a treat to just go and browse around.

If you are starting at Island level, you don't need to know anything. I have not heard of their return policy, but I have not the need to return anything so far:) Here is the thread I dug up for you. Melissa B and matroyshka did a great job describing MCT's writing program: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130654&highlight=MCT+writing We use IEW as our main writing program though. Currently, we are not using their poetry component because I don't feel confident teaching it. But we use the rest and are very happy with the program.

That is awesome!! I work really hard to get my son to run 1/4 mile twice a week:glare:

We have a Sansa Clip 2GB, ds uses it mainly for listening to e-audiobooks. We are very happy with our Sansa Clip.

I am not a veteran MCT user either, we are at CE I lesson 9. If CE I and CE II are set up the same way, I'd say doing all the sentence rewrite and Wordly Story rewrite is enough practice. One thing I do that's not included in the book, is to have ds come up with 1-2 words for each stem and make up 1 sentence for every vocab word during our weekly review. I do plan to do cumulative review every 5 lessons in the similar way.

I feel your pain. Singapore Math lessons are short and sweet, once you get the concept down it's done. With CD prealgebra, the lessons are much longer and the calculations are much more involved. I've let ds watched the DVD from the beginning even though he complained about it being very boring from the start. Then around chapter two I realized a lot of the first 4 chapters are review for previous Singapore users so I stopped letting him watch the DVD. Now I only have him watch the material that is brand new to him. This has not only cut down our math time, but also decreased ds's resistance to doing math. I still check ds's problems and make sure I know why he makes a mistake. Do you still do that? I would not worry too much if your son makes some careless mistakes at this point. And I really doubt he has troubles with the material after finishing PM6. It is very possible that your son dislike Dana Mosely's teaching style. Personally I find his teaching very clear, but ds dislikes it and finds reading the textbook better than watching DVDs. You might want to have a good talk with him and see how he wants to proceed for his math education. If the problems come from the DVDs, then I would ditch them and teach the material myself. I don't see the need to change program though, the textbook is very well written imho.

Our library offers eAudiobooks on this series. I load them into our MP3 player and just ask ds to listen to them. Ds, who always enjoys audiobooks learns a lot from these. When I discuss the text with him using the teacher guide, I am very pleased with his understanding. He often takes out the books to read over the parts that interest him too. Just something to consider.:001_smile:

No, Sentence Island is not a prerequisite for using Paragraph Town. I'd say Paragraph Town is more like a manual than a writing curriculum, but the content is very rich. It uses narratives to talk about the concepts of clear paragraphs, different kinds of paragraphs, how to order paragraphs. In the teacher section, it has discussions that tie with what you learn from Grammar Town, and it does give you lots of assignment suggestions. For example, one of the assignments is: Write two paragraphs about a subject, with one paragraph being descriptive, and the second paragraph being expository. Some assignments ask you to rewrite, some ask you to compare two versions of paragraph. It's not your regular writing program, but it's fun.

I agree that hiring a native speaker is the way to go. But if that's not available, www.betterchinese.com has books, audio CDs, and online lessons to assist you. I've been very happy with their material.

If you do their history-based program, you won't need TWSS or SWI, and it will last for the whole year. We are doing US history-based program now, it has 30+ lessons and is designed for you to do one lesson a week. At the end of the year, your student's final draft from weekly assignments can be bound into a book. If you do choose to go with their history-based program, don't forget to download their complimentary student resource notebook ebook, it's been a valuable resource to ds.

Yes, I think it will work for you. But have you consider their history based writing program? We did SWI A for 3rd and 4th grade, and just started using their history based program for 5th this year. I really really like it. It is very easy to use, takes very little prep time, and goes through every unit SWI has. You don't need to have prior experience with IEW to use it. I think you will do well with either SWI B or history based program, but I think I prefer their history based program. Just something to think about.

Vitacost for us too.

You should start at Grammar Town. Island level will be all review at this point.

You can find the Perplexor books at Amazon, ChristianBook.com, and Rainbow Resources.

Building Thinking Skills is not a logic puzzle book, it covers a lot more thinking skills topics than Mindbender books which contain only logic puzzles. If you are looking for logic puzzles only, I suggest the Printable Puzzles website: www.printable-puzzles.com They have all kinds of puzzles for free and their logic puzzles are pretty challenging. They come with hint and solution too. New puzzles are put on there every week. If you want logic puzzles in book format, I'd suggest any of the Perplexer books. They are a bit more expensive than Mindbender books but they have a lot more puzzles per book to work on. Hope this is helpful.

My 5th grader is not a good speller. We've been using Spelling Power in the last two years. Although it's not the most interesting program, it gets the job done and we only spend less than 10 minutes a day doing it. I can see a slo but steady improvement in his spelling ability.