I think ideally, as SWB mentioned, you would be doing WWS in your DC's history, science, and literature. It helps to cement what they are learning and is relevant. We watched a documentary on the Ardipithicus skeleton. I outlined it while we watched. A few days later, I showed DS how I could re-write a paragraph from the show based on my outline. I then had him do it. Would I be consistent in doing this every week in history and science and literature? Ah nope. That's where WWS comes in. Plus it gives me the step-by-step explicit guidelines to get DS where I want him to be in writing. So we'll do WWS and start incorporating our own history, science content as well. I'll never forget when I asked DS8 to give me a narration on a book he had read. He was rambling and stopping and starting etc. I finally told him, "Give me a narration like in WWE." "OH!!!!!!" then he gave me a beautiful narration. He hadn't made that connection of what we did in WWE to extending it to his content areas. DOH! Hitting head on forehead.

It depends on what you want out of it. I don't know that I would say WJ would teach creative writing in a systematic, age-appropriate way. PeaceHill Press will be coming out w/ a Creative Writing curriculum. You might post over in the Logic forum under the ALL or WWS thread and ask SWB when it might be ready. SWB isn't the author. I read through it at the conference and recall liking what I read but it's all a fog now. Now if you're looking for something that gives writing goals for each stage of writing, will help you develop a plan (ie copywork, dictation, narration) and give you lots of ideas for how to accomplish that in many different, creative ways, then WJ might be what you're looking for. I find it inspirational to read so if you can get it used, I say go for it. I had intended on re-reading it this summer but haven't had a chance. we've taken 3-4 Bravewriter classes and enjoyed them all but especially Just So Stories. My son LOVED that class.

There is an assessment rubric in WWS for each writing portion.

If you have youngers who you think will use FLL4, then you could always buy it, knowing you'll use it w/ your other kids and see how well it fits your older. I just think it would go too slowly for your DC.

You don't need all four levels of WWE. You can buy just the Writing Fundamentals text. You get a weeks worth material and then guidance on passages to look for, for the next 9 weeks. Then you get another week, then you find passages for the next 9 weeks. You can move your oldest through this very quickly using the text rather than the workbooks. I don't think I"d go below FLL4 for your oldest. But you could use ALL but you'd be using PDFs every year. Personally, I'd start oldest in ALL and see what happens next year. If ALL6 is not ready, SWB said she'd be ready to go into R&S 7 or 8 (??? can't recall which, check the SWB ALL thread) and if you don't like R&S, there are plenty others out there.

WHen I print it out (Week 1 Day One: Original Narration Exercise), the base text is 4mm. Online, the calculator I used said that's equivalent to 11.3.pt Postscript.

Those aren't grammar programs but writing programs. SWB gave advice to someone above in the WWS thread. I would agree w/ her and say give your child the WWE assessments. they can be found here http://wtm-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/wwe/wweevaluations.pdf I would probably start w/ WWE2 and move forward. Then you can target whatever skill your child didn't successfully complete and then move into WWS. If the narration is fine but dictation needs work, you could move into WWS while stilling working on the dictation in WWE or using passages of your own choosing. I would find something to do grammar. You could start ALL since that assumes no former grammar. You could also look at GWG or Easy Grammar or any of those others.

I've just been looking through SOTW2 Activity guide and it has Fam Med of the Mid Ages listed. Do you have the Act guide? If not, I have a plan that someone kindly sent to me. I emailed her and she said I could share it. PM me your address.

We are about at the same place and I have a DS11 (minus the aspie part). We did do PWME and the outlining books but we did a lot of it orally (it went by really quickly...month or two). Those introduced him to what an outline is, structure of paragraphs, purpose of outlining, rewriting from an outline etc but I wouldn't take the time to write it all out especially if you have a boy who doesn't like to put pen to paper or type (like my son). What I found more useful was SWB's outlining guide in WTM2009. My son commented that the PWME and Outlining books were so easy but when it came to outlining real content, it was more challenging. We did it and will continue to do it together and discuss until it is fluid. If you're spending time doing WWE, I would consider WWS when it comes out. It will be a seamless transition from WWE and take writing to the next level. And it's done in the context of history, science and literature so there are no transition issues as we had w/ PWME and Remedia Outlining books. Now YMMV, but that was our experience and my friend's as well. Obviously, I"m at the same point you are so take what I say w/ a huge grain of salt, maybe even some Tequila and a bit of lime.....:lol:

:grouphug: I have a 6th grader, 3rd grader, and a 4.5yr old....I feel the same about my 4yr old. I need to schedule her more often into my day. At night she begs, BEGS me to sit and do her reading and math and sometimes I'm just too tired. We do "school" on weekends. Sometimes it's something planned, other times it's an opportune moment that presents itself. My kids don't have an issue w/ the weekends. It is harder w/ DH home and the TV on. Now that we have a larger house, we can go upstairs or downstairs so that will be nice. I think starting the school week on Sunday afternoon is a wonderful idea. I think I might schedule a read aloud time and any un-finished work for that time.

Uh no, I do it b/c they are fast! :auto:

I signed up for a week free trial to give it a test drive with my 4yr old and 8 and 11 year old boys.

https://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/index.php?option=com_hsbc_epp_order&Itemid=1520&c=1 I haven't used this. I know nothing about it but I thought I'd post this in case someone wanted to look into it.

:iagree:

Yes you can start CE1 anytime. I like starting it in the beginning so that you have studied the words before you come to them in the practice books.

I met SWB, I've known AuntPol for YEARS, I met CleoQc, Luckymama, Yellowperch, and countless others at the RFWP Valley Forge Conference!

I have no idea.... I"m wondering if it's more a question of does AoPS suit her learning style more so than an aptitude?

I think it was all in MCT Town level except for absolutes. You don't need Image Grammar. It's a nice little book, a bit pricy, that's MCTish. It gives you the love, the why, uses real literature to give examples. There are even workbooks to go w/ it but you wouldn't use that and SC. It would be too much. I just enjoyed reading Image Grammar for my own knowledge.

The moderator posted in the WWS thread below that next week SWB will initiate thread to answer questions about WWS and ALL.

I will likely read more about it than talk about it but I do recall liking SWB's intro to lit analysis in WWS. I can't wait for WWS6 to come out. :lol:

:iagree:

No my boys had completed Grammar Town BEFORE moving into SC. Island would not be enough. We also did a bit in Image Grammar as well which helped w/ appositives, absolutes, and participles.

No we didn't use anything else for grammar after GT except Practice Town. We did diagram those sentences. Yes, we just filled in w/ SC. This year we'll be do ALL. I think there will be enough knew stuff in it to justify the purchase (verb conjugation, trouble words, dictionary skills, thesaurus skills, etc). I toyed w/ the idea of doing the next level up MCT grammar as DS11 is solid on it and there is only a page of new material at the Voyage level that I've seen but I decided to use ALL instead. My DS8 has done MCT Island, MCT TOwn level. He didn't do any of the writing in PT. He'll do that in a year. He is mostly solid on grammar but has a bit of trouble w/ participles and gerunds and diagramming those. He is doing Grammar Voyage with us but I will not have him do Practice Voyage. DS8 is a perfectionist. Towards the end of Practice Town when he would miss one thing (usually a verbal) he'd melt down. I'm going to write sentences on the level of Practice Town for him this year and save Practice Voyage for later. DS8 will also be doing FLL4. He won't need a year for it b/c he's solid on it until lesson 60s+ but due to his perfectionism, I think it's enough of a mix of some new things (verb conjugation, tenses) and review to build his confidence yet not feed his perfectionism.

We did WWE 4 days/ week. You start w/ MCT Grammar Town and complete it in the first 4-6 weeks. After that, you add in Practice Town, 1 sentence/dayx4days. I think we did it 4days/week. You can then add in the Poetry, vocabulary. Poetry we did 2x/week. MCT CE1 we did 3days/week. I think we still have a few lessons to finish up this year from MCT CE1. When you're finished MCT GT, you then can start Sentence COmposing. My son did that daily, about 4x/week. You'd also be doing MCT paragraph Town. We started PT after GT in October and didn't get to any writing for a month or more. If I recall, the writing kicks in once you're through reading the book. Then you start the teacher resource section. I think the writing started about lesson 10??? At that time, I felt like my son (or more so I) needed to learn more about good paragraphs and I needed to learn more about teaching writing....so we stopped PT and did Paragraph Writing Made Easy and we were also doing WWS beta test. I think if you're doing MCT PT to it's fullest, you'll have to juggle that w/ WWE unless you have an enthusiastic writer. We'll be finishing up PT this year and doing WWS. Bravewriter - it depends on what elements you're incorporating. We did Tuesday Tea Time. We would do MCT POetry and then each kid would pick a poem to read aloud while we had snacks. If you're doing Friday Freewrites, you can certainly keep up w/ that as you won't have MCT Practice TOwn or SC or WWE on Friday. When you pick a freewrite to polish, you'll have to adjust that day for WWE/MCT PT. If you're doing a Bravewriter Arrow, on the days you have dictation, you wouldn't do WWE dictation. I just realized that I modified WWE4. Instead of writing just his first one or two sentences, I had him write his entire narration b/c he was capable. He started doing that on his own and I just never stopped him. We weren't doing a lot of other writing in the content areas so I let him keep doing that. :tongue_smilie: SO if you're doing WWE4 as written, WWE would be less writing than we were doing.

No we were fine w/ just the teacher book for CE1.