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maryanne

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Everything posted by maryanne

  1. I think the best way to sample Classical Conversations is to visit a group and see for yourself whether it's something that would work for you. For us the benefits include memory work made fun, oral presentations/show & tell, great friends, exposure to art & music, and fun science experiments.
  2. Yes, that's their website. There have been several thread on here about it if you search.
  3. I feel your pain, too. Finally now in the 5th grade ds is really building fluency and legibility, but we resorted to copy work from a Sponge Bob joke book to minimize the whining. I'll duck now, since I know good classical educators would never resort to Sponge Bob to accomplish their goals.;)
  4. ... and I like WTM better. Although we participate in Classical Conversations and my children love and thrive in the Foundations program, the methodology that better fits our work at home during the rest of the week is WTM. SWB seems to understand and accommodate slower development of fine motor skills while allowing other learning and thinking skills to continue moving forward. Whereas in the Core it seemed like Leigh put a lot of emphasis on learning to sit still and copy accurately before moving on. My overall impression was that other learning was held hostage somewhat by fine motor skills. My ds who has 3 Memory Masters to his credit has been somewhat slower developing fine motor skills. Rather than emphasize the copying which would have killed him in the early years we did a lot of reading, oral work, and memorizing. Now, in the 5th grade his fine motor skills are on grade level, he even sometimes get compliments on his handwriting (when he tries), and he still enjoys most aspects of school. I think if I had used the methods in the Core, I would have destroyed the love of learning in this kid. I'm all for practicing skills until mastery and even until they're second nature, but in our house new information is the oil that keeps the machinery of education moving forward rather than grinding to a halt in tears and frustration. Having said all that I don't necessarily follow all the curriculum recommendations in the WTM just because they are recommended there. I apply her ideas and methods to whatever curriculum works best for us--some WTM recs. and some not.
  5. Yes, my children were also taught at our local science museum that this was a myth. The expert at the museum said that birds have no sense of smell and that the best thing to do is carefully put the birds back in the nest and then leave the area because your presence will scare away the mother. Hoping your birds survive.
  6. Perhaps someone else already suggested this as I didn't have time to read through everyone's responses, but if I were I would wait before making a permanent decisions about this. If I were you, I would take the appropriate steps to avoid any permanent changes either having more children (they're permanent, you know) or avoiding more children. Then, do what you need to do to get yourself healthy-physically, emotionally, whatever... while you pray over the situation. After you have regained your health to whatever extent is possible, you, God, and dh make the right decision for you. I wouldn't make a permanent decision not to have more children while you are feeling like you do unless that was the only way to improve your health and state of mind. I hope this post isn't perceived as a back door attempt to get you to have more children, because I'm definitely not in the "have as many children as you can" camp. I just hate to see you make a decision now in the face of these difficulties that you might regret later when things have improved.
  7. :iagree: It is highly probable that despite the recent kerfluffle we will use SotW and AiG:God's Design for Science next year. We used both quite happily this year will very likely continue on next year regardless of this mess. If I hunted for curriculum until I found one where I agreed 100% with the author/publisher we'd never get any actual school work done. ;)
  8. The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History is just over 400 pages beginning with the Prehistoric World and ending with the end of the 20th century. The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of the Ancient World is nearly 400 pages beginning with early civilizations and ending with the fall of Rome. I'm sure there is some duplication, but the Ancient History one contains a lot more info on the ancients. At least some of the individual sections (Prehistoric World, Ancient World, Medieval World, and The Last 500 Years) of the world history one are also available as a separate books of about 100 pages each.
  9. I'm in the greater Raleigh area and that Spiceline poster does not speak for me. I would welcome an opportunity to hear SWB speak. I've no idea who Doug Philips is though. I very rarely post to Spiceline though.
  10. I'm also one of the ones that thinks that the Essentials program isn't sufficient or complete. It's missing the elements listed above, and it lacks practice in using correctly or avoiding mistakes in: irregular verbs passive voice subjunctive verbals Actually it lacks practice in just about everything except diagramming and editing. There just aren't exercises for using the things taught. There are just sentences to diagram and parse, and sentences to edit that I found very awkward to correct. Also as implemented at our site the classes mostly taught the simplest examples leaving my ds bored out of his mind after having already completed R&S 4 before starting Essentials.
  11. We are currently using MFW and doing CC. This is our first year of MFW (and 5th year of CC). I have over the years tried to loosely correlate our history program with the CC Cycles; nothing matches up perfectly unless you use CC as your spine and write your own thing to go with it. This year we have used MFW R2R (beginning at the fall of Rome--week 12 or 13) and Exp to 1850. We will continue using Exp to 1850 next year and move into 1850-Present when we finish. In order to finish 1850-Present by the end of next year (Cycle 3) we will skip the state study and the weeks that focus on learning the state capitals (done in CC Cycle 3). We will also combine some weeks. I haven't decided yet whether we will use MFW C2G when Cycle 1 rolls around again. I don't expect to ever do ECC, not because it is not a great program, but because it is simply too redundant for us. We get great geography at CC and our church has very strong missions emphasis with missionaries regularly speaking in "big" church and kids church, families preparing for and leaving for the foreign missions field, missions related geography in Sunday School, etc. ECC would just repeat too much for us. We only use MFW for history; we choose other curriculum for other subjects.
  12. Thanks for taking the time to pull all of this out of the other thread. I will definitely save this info for future reference.
  13. I hate to even jump into this thread, but I have another idea for the OP to try. I think I recall a MFW representative at a conference workshop saying that they had made some special arrangements with some publishers to have the evolutionary content taken out of some of the books they use. What I remember about this was that when some publishers were going to take their books out of print MFW negotiated with them to buy a certain number of their books if they would make some changes regarding evolutionary content. I don't know that you would be able to tell from the catalog which books are a MFW-version and which are original. You would probably have to call them or view their books for yourself at a conference. Good luck with finding something that will work for you.
  14. We're are about 3/4s of the way through our 6th year of homeschooling. When we first started homeschooling I was blessed to be able to get advice from: a graduated homeschool mom (long term perspective) a mom with children 3-5 years older than mine (short term perspective) a mom with a highschooler and 2 children nearly the same age and same gender as my oldest (in same trenches with me, but more experienced) All these perspectives are very helpful.
  15. I would just like to second the recommendation for Living Learning Books Life Science. I thought their book lists alone were worth the price for the curriculum, especially for "snuggle on the couch" science. I think the spine may have been an Usbourne book, although we substituted a DK book. The book lists, however, include some really great nonfiction, non-Usbourne books as well as fun fiction to go along with the topic. They also have coloring sheets and activities/experiments to chose from for each unit (similar to the activity guide for SotW). Some of them are "sciency", while others are more "crafty", so you can choose what suits you best (or skip them all together when life gets crazy).
  16. I don't have a student in the Challenge program yet, but I have lots of friends that do. So, take this with a grain of salt. What I hear is that for many students Challenge A is the hardest they have ever had to work before, and that it takes more time than Challenge B. Having said that I agree with the previous poster that it probably depends a lot on the tutor and which site you are at. From what I hear there is a lot of variation across sites. I also know some Challenge students that have added assignments at home, that is, additional history or science or electives in addition to all the Challenge assignments. It really depends on the student.
  17. We are currently in our 5th year of CC. Ds is in 5th grade and dd is in 2nd. I have never tried to use CC as the spine and just supplement with books from the library etc. I know many families successfully do this, but in our house 1 of 2 possibilities would happen if we did this: Either, it not be sufficiently rigorous for us as we struggled to keep up with the pace of CC and to keep up with getting library books on topic. Or, I would end up spending a lot of time (time I don't have) pulling together the necessary resources and planning it all out to get the rich, meaty curriculum comparable to the purchased curriculum choices we've made. Instead I have tried to purchase curriculum that loosely correlates with the broad topics of the year: Cycle 1 (ds in 1st): Ancient History (Sonlight Core 1), Life Science (from Living Learning Books-LLB) Cycle 2 (2nd): Medieval History (Story of the World Book 2), Earth & Space (from LLB and Apologia) Cycle 3 (3rd & K): American History (Sonlight Core 3 and part of Core 4), Physical Science (parts of books from God's Design for Chemistry & Physics), Library books for Ker Cycle 1 (4th, 1st): Ancient History (Tapestry of Grace Year 1), Life Science (Easy Classical) Cycle 2 (5th, 2nd): Medieval and Early Modern History (parts of My Father's World Rome to Reformation & Exploration To 1850), Earth & Space (God's Design) Cycle 3 (next year: 6th & 3rd): US History (My Father's World Exploration to 1850 finish and 1850 to Present, Physical Science TBD Hope this helps you figure out what's best for your family.
  18. I used parts of the the two Chemistry books (Ecology hadn't been written yet) and parts of 2 of the 3 Physics books for my ds when he was in 3rd grade. I also supplemented with appropriate pages from the Usborne IL Encyclopedia of Science to provide better visuals. (The new full color editions weren't out then). I read the lesson to my ds and then we did most of the experiments/activities. Honestly, a lot of it went over ds's head despite the fact that he likes science and is advanced in most subjects. He also keeps periodic chart place mat at his place at the table. I definitely think the Chemistry and Physics books are meaty enough for him to do again. In fact they are one of my top choices for ds to do for science next year (6th grade). At the same time I was doing the Chemistry and Physics with ds, my dd was in K. I did not read any of the God's Design Science to her that year. I read from library books on related topics as I had time and could find good stuff in the library. Some of the books I read included Let's Read and Find Out books, Rookie Read About Science books, and the Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science and Nature pages on Chemistry and Physics. She also enjoyed watching/doing the experiments and activities. I don't know that she learned all that much from them though. Although the Chemistry and Physics books are one of the top choices for ds for next year (6th) I'm pretty sure that most of the material will be over dd's head next year (3rd) and I don't know what to do about that. I would like to cover Physical Science I(Physics and/or Chemistry) with both next year, but I have yet to find anything that is meaty enough for ds, but simple enough for dd. The God's Design for Earth and Space has worked really well for us this year with dd using the Beginner section supplemented with picture books, but alas, the Chemistry and Physics books do not have the beginner section. If anyone knows of a science curriculum that covers Chemistry and/or Physics that is good for both an advanced 6th grader and an average 3rd grader I would love to know about it.
  19. I'm with you on this. I just did this review with my daughter this week. I thought the oral questions were less straight forward then usual and struggled to come up with the right answers and this is my second time through R & S English 3. Let me encourage you to hang in there. Most of it is more straight forward I think than this particular review. My son is now doing level 6 and really knows grammar compared with most of his peers.
  20. We really like the God's Design Science: 1. Biblical Worldview 2. Doable-the reading is fairly short, maybe 5-10 minutes, shorter in the beginner's section 3. activity/experiment for every lesson- most of them are very do able without being overly crafty or lame. IME all science curriculums have some activities that are over simplified, of questionable relevance, or too crafty, some activities that are just right, and some that are too complicated or too time consuming. God's Design seems to do a better job than many of getting most of the activities in that sweet spot that is just right. Also, since there is an activity/experiment with every lesson I didn't feel bad about skipping some that were too simple, too complicated, or just occurred on a crazy week. Having said all that, it wouldn't be my ideal curriculum for K - 2nd without substantial supplementing or substituting of great, on topic, age appropriate picture books.
  21. We are currently using MFW and doing CC, but this is our first year of MFW, so I don't know if what we're doing will be that helpful. Last year we did TOG year 1 concurrently with Cycle 1. TOG year 1 goes all the way up through the fall of Rome, so this year we started MFW RTR on about week 13 (skipped weeks 1-12 on Rome). My current plan is to combine a few weeks here and there in order to get through the rest of RTR and Exp-1850 week 22 by the end of this school year. Then next year during Cycle 3 finish Exp-1850 and 1850-Mod. So how are we squeezing 2 2/3 years of history into 2? We will skip the 6 weeks of State Report in Exp-1850 and study state history separately during the weeks that CC doesn't meet. We will also move quickly through Colonial and Revolutionary US History because we delved deeply into those topics the last time we did Cycle 3. This time around (Cycle 3 next year) we will focus more on modern US history because we skipped that last time. We also will not do ECC because of the amount of geography covered in CC and also our church has a strong missions focus. Trying to keep history loosely correlated with the CC Cycles is one of my big challenges in choosing curriculum every year; this is how I'm attempting to resolve it this go around. So far the plan is going well for this year. HTH,
  22. My $0.02 We participate in CC and my children adore it. I have not read The Core, but I am familiar with other books/lectures Ms. Bortins has done. My ds has also used Saxon from 1 to 87 (current book). For my ds there is no such thing as too much math, but there is definitely such a thing as too much Saxon. I just simply don't agree with Ms. Bortins or Mr. Reed that every single child benefits from doing every single Saxon problem. My ds makes up math problems to go with real life situations frequently, but when I asked him to do every single problem of every single lesson it was painful for both of us. Now he tests out of the first part of each book and works only half the review set for the remaining lessons. We are both much happier, and he is still making mostly 90% and above on tests. Some children just do not need the amount of repetition Saxon offers. Some do, some don't. Parents should use good judgement for their children and make sure they master the concepts and build sufficient fluency, but don't make them do drudge work just because someone else said so. If you want that you can put them back in public school. :)
  23. So if I'm understanding correctly there is no new version of Saxon Physics with modules etc. But, there are 25 tests to be given after every fourth lesson and a new version of the tests that includes quarterly tests in addition to the 25 tests given every fourth lesson. Thanks for helping me figure this out. I hope I find my stuff soon.
  24. Oh, dear! I didn't even realize that there was a second edition. I have the text and solutions guide for what must be the first edition, then, as there is no mention of modules anywhere in the text. It just has 100 lessons with no other divisions. Does anyone know the test schedule for the first edition? Can anyone summarize the differences between the first and second editions. Thanks,
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