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Flaura

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Everything posted by Flaura

  1. :iagree: We just finished a concept in MBTP and I was pleasantly surprised by the hands on aspect and how much the dc enjoyed it and were able to direct it themselves.
  2. IEW was recommended to me for use by my dyslexic ds. It has made a tangible difference in his writing and how he feels about writing. When using a SWI it takes about an hour to view and discuss the DVD lesson and then 30-45 minutes each day of the week after to complete the assignments. These numbers are probably on the long side since we are dealing with language issues but I don't mind the time. Ds loves Mr. Pudewa and I have found the customer support to be excellent. I feel it is worth it. I am interested in the Elegant Essay program for 8th grade and I am currently viewing Teaching the Classics. From the standpoint of teacher development the IEW materials are extremely helpful for me. HTH
  3. :eek: I sympathize. I tried school with my oldest. When they started teaching the kids to hide under their desks with their hands over their heads when one of the students went into a rage I was done!
  4. :iagree: My oldest ds is loving it and the maps he made are beautiful.
  5. The teacher's guide has you read the students a summary of Greek myth of Persephone. It includes the summary in the guide. You could get by without the teacher's guide but it does include some nice ideas for extending the chapters with research and writing. Much of it is geared to a classroom setting, though. HTH
  6. Exercises in English by Loyola press. It goes along with Voyages in English but can be used as a stand alone workbook if you are comfortable explaining grammar concepts.
  7. :iagree: If they are a complete non-writer don't start with WWE Level 4. For fifth grade you might want the overview book - The Complete Writer. Take them through the evaluations and go from there. IEW works great if they can write well but need direction on the structure of the writing. The SWI get mom out of the picture with DVD instruction which can help some at this age as well. We did a theme book - All Things Fun and Fascinating - last year and had a blast with it. Take Care,
  8. We are using K12 Lit. for 5th grade and I really like it. It covers short stories in the readers and also excerpts from larger works. We have done poetry as well which my ds loves. We had a great unit covering Shakespeare where we read The Bard of Avon and then two of the Lamb adaptations of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The questions in the teacher manual have been interesting and we mostly just talk about them orally. After we finished Shakespeare we moved on to reading the James Baldwin adaptation of Don Quixote. When I was reading the intro to DS and he heard about the year Don Quixote was published he remarked that he must have know Shakespeare (who was a contemporary of Cervantes). This prompted a great discussion. We are going to do some Sherlock Holmes in a little bit. It also covers some nonfiction articles (taken from Spider and Cricket Magazines) and the kids practice finding the main idea of the article and supporting details. Nonfiction is a favorite of my DS and I am happy with the instruction in how to delve deeper into these articles and how to help him get more out of reading them. Ds is a reluctant reader so this has gotten his interest peaked in other types of literature so I enjoy going through it with him. The materials can often be found on amazon and you don't need the online school to do 90% of the LA. Hth,
  9. Filing has worked great for us. We are even a wrk ahead! The only thing I would do differently is not cut up the math workbooks. The pacing of math is so uneven that it works best to keep it out of our file folders and just make sure to spend time on it everyday.
  10. We try to finish a Review like this in one day. If it is longer than 4 pages we can finish it the next day but that would be on top of the next section assignment. HTH, We had a difficult time coming back after break as well.:grouphug:
  11. For ds next year we are planning on: OPGTR MEP Maths FIAR And I think we are going to try Elemental science Intro to Science. I have the mudpies to magnets book and this looks like an easy way to implement it.
  12. I have MIF first grade and Singapore standard edition. In my opinion sing. is a little more difficult and it does make conceptual leaps later in the series that are hard for non-intuitive kids to follow. I have gone up through 5a with my eldest son. MIF is nicely layed out and very thorough and methodical in its' approach. It is somewhat easier and I think the challenge problems in MIF are at the same level as some of the difficult regular problems of sing. The teachers manual is excellent and I like the approach of reviewing what you need at the beginning of the chapter. This way you can spot any conceptual holes before going forward with a new concept. I don't like the fact that MIF spends time teaching calculator use. You can skip the sections but in fifth grade there is a whole chapter devoted to it. Do you really need to practice punching numbers in a calculator? Pedagogically, I like MIF for its' clarity and presentation. I think you can achieve the same thing by mixing MM and Sing. The teachers manual is top notch and well worth the money in MIF especially in terms of guiding a parent new to the Asian style Math method. I think the games included in the textbook and the concrete pictorial abstract presentation make it a strong math program especially helpful for novice teachers and kids who aren't math intuitive. Hth,
  13. Haven't used the DVD for LC but I have heard they can be difficult to watch. My kids really liked LC. They loved the prayers and the slow pace. I liked how reliable it was since I had no Latin background.
  14. Here is a comparison I posted a while back... http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207572
  15. SRA puts out a program for 4th grade and up called Spelling through Morphographs. It is expensive unless you can find it used and, from the samples at Apples and Pears, doesn't cover anything different than what you would get with A&P. Couldn't you take your older one through the earlier levels of A&P at an accelerated rate? I have and use Spelling Through Morphographs with my oldest and I like it very much. It can be completed in one year and then I was planning on moving over to Megawords. HTH,
  16. MEP Reception/year 1 is fun. Rightstart A is nice but teacher intensive.My oldest ds still remembersm Saxon 1 fondly. He really liked playing store!
  17. I started out with Saxon years ago and moved to Singapore for ds and that worked really well. DD is getting started and Singapore just didn't work as well for her. I am trying Math Mammoth out now and since I bought it through the homeschool co-op in the spring I got the whole light blue series. I started my son in it as well this year. We have been doing it for about 4 weeks now and I think the program is strong but the format is really off-putting for my kids. My son dreads it. The problem might be that it is so easy to have them do it independently that I am not interacting or teaching the lesson as much as I did with Singapore. MEP was added to get me back into the equation with teaching the kids in a low cost way. I think MM is a strong program conceptually and ideal for an independent worker. I am looking to light the fire under my dd with math so that is why I took at look at MIF. I want her to fall in love with problem solving like I did back in my school days. I really like MIF and am excited to think it might get implemented in public schools. It is thorough, explicit, and the TG is top notch. I think it would be an improvement to what I saw when ds was in public school. It is really expensive for home use, however, and I am not sure MIF would take off enough with a low cost Singapore alternative already out there.
  18. I like the puzzle type problems in MEP and since it is free online we can search around and do problems that interest us. I also like the lesson plans since they offer, in the younger years, many suggestions for activities/interactions. It seems to develop a different way of thinking about math. The kids don't think of it as work like they do MM.
  19. I Posted a comparison recently if you search my username you could find it. I would link it but I am on my phone right now and it is difficult to mange that on the phone.
  20. He might enjoy Russian Math 6 to get him ready for Algebra and the AoPS for Algebra and above.
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