Hmmm... so, this product might be something you would recommend to a parent who is pulling their child out of school in 3rd grade, or who used the better-late-than-early approach and now has a mostly self-taught child who needs some guidance in formal language use. Would you say that would be the target audience for this book?

For some reason I thought the Spalding method required extensive training to be able to teach it. Can you clarify for me what the Spalding method is?

Nancy Larson science kits are expensive, but they are designed for homeschool use and provide alot of neat visuals and items for observation. Larson, who wrote the Saxon Math program for grades 1-3, provide 80 completely scripted and teacher-directed lessons per year with vocabulary practice and literacy skills emphasized, almost a language study within a science program. added a link: http://www.nancylarsonstore.com/Science-1-Complete-Program_p_10.html

http://www.singaporemath.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/sp_mphsitg1b_1.pdf Here is a sample lesson of the logical discussion to take place in the MPH lesson. (This is grade 1 so it is very basic, discussing with students how light helps us see).

Look at My Pals Are Here sold by Singapore Math. They seem to be almost self-teaching, like the kind of illustrated science magazines kids love to read only simpler, with teacher manuals that show you more than one way to introduce a concept. The student has his own text and workbook per semester. The total cost with teacher's manuals is higher compared to other programs, though. http://www.singaporemath.com/MPH_Science_s/66.htm

The path I am on could wind up with me teaching with Saxon and supplementing with RightStart's original program (card games and abacus activities). I cannot recommend the approach because I have not put it to use yet. RS's supplemental tutoring materials are a resource you could look into yourself.

That's good to know Jackie, and thanks for correcting my understanding of the intent of the re-write. It is very frustrating to have CC become a factor when comparing different editions by different companies. SPM has three editions, and RS has two. It's kind of hard to know if I am comparing apples to apples between programs and publishers. *sigh*

The Montessori method is ideal for the pre-K-K age range. The RS lessons are very hands on and require diligence, and preschoolers can actually begin this habit right from the start. It is easier begun than learned later. RS lessons are a good way to cultivate "the habit of attentiveness" if you are at all fluent with Charlotte Mason's philosophy on raising children, and it is never too early to begin good habits of learning. Montessori and CM ideals seem to work best in practice with the younger set. Preschoolers love the attention they are getting from their instructor, they love the materials and the whole experience of the process. After a certain age, children are less patient with the process when they sit down to something new, and feel convinced it is hard. So I surmise that people who began RS in preschool would have a child that was accustomed to its pace and ready to meet its challenges as the levels progress. I was told not to bother with RS unless I had a math-gifted child, but I would think that all preschoolers are more right-brained and hence more potentially math-gifted. I did end up trying RS on my first-grader, who is average in math and a very literal thinker at his age, who yet strives to understand math as presented any way to him. RS is not a great fit for us, and I am considering using RS to supplement something more direct, like Saxon, going forward. The Math Card Games and the Activities for the AL Abacus can be used with any math curricula to address weak areas and provide relief from the tedium of worksheets. My philosophy is that the older child has a sequential memory and more experiences from which to draw their conceptual understanding of math facts. So RS may fill in some conceptual gaps for the older learner. For the preschooler it would be much more potent for building up a sensory memory of objects in number form. I didn't really see this until I tried it out. But too late! I already own the whole kit-and-caboodle!

What do you use for math and science, and would you consider it a "perfect pairing"? Why?

The first edition is more budget-friendly. I wish I had entered RS through the Level B, first edition starter kit instead of having to buy ALL the manipulatives in one bundle for the Second Edition. With the RS2 manipulatives kit costing $180 and the book bundles $89 per level, it is very expensive to enter the Second Edition of RS compared to the older RS. There will be no starter kits for RS2 because every revamped level requires all the RS manipulatives from the very beginning. So, in some ways I think RS2 is just a more expensive version that is driven by the market created by Common Core, just like SPM's Common Core edition is more expensive than the older versions. I resent Common Core for making it twice as complicated for me to choose a math program. :willy_nilly:

I had a conversation via e-mail with a RS representative. This was her explanation of why my son did not place comfortably in RS2 Level B: We did recently change our placement quiz questions to make it a little more 'exact'. Since we now have two versions of RightStart Math (Edition 1 and Edition 2), some tweaking to the questions was needed. The questions that you initially answered could easily have placed your son in Level B First Edition. However, there is so much more that is being taught in the Second Edition Level A, that your son will benefit from working through Level A Second Edition. In Level A, your son will learn place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication, fractions, measurement, geometry, time, money and even being division. The beginning of Level A might be a little basic for him, but you can quickly move through those lessons so as not to bore him. You definitely want to keep him challenged. So the 2nd Edition was made to be more challenging from the beginning, with some differences in scope and sequence that matter for early placement. Most of the reviews I had read before purchasing it, said Level B could be started in most cases by any first grader, but that was in reference to the older edition (RS1). This is important information in case you are wondering what level or edition to purchase for early learners.

Thank you all so much because it never would have clicked that we were in the wrong level if you all had not chimed in.

Calendar hacks I thought of: Read Chicken Soup With Rice and make game cards of the months, for sequencing activities. Do the same for the days of the week and read nursery rhymes or poems instead of the chants in RS. But this won't be as important as I am going to level A and back to edition 1, which doesn't have all this yet. I can actually print the first ten lessons of edition 1 from the samples page; not so for edition 2, which skips around the entire manual in its sample selection. The scripting of ed. 1 looks alot more intuitive to me, so here goes an honest shot at using RS better than I have been.

I ordered RS A edition 1. I definitely had my child in the wrong placement.

I am interested in learning about the Saxon family of products and what it means to use an "incremental development" approach. Does this mean every level gets deeper but reviews that same type of material? If you used Saxon Phonics, what is the benefit of doing all three levels, or would just one level suffice?

That is the case with so many curricula, I'm afraid.

My teaching style really depends on me being able to explain something in my own words and hint at the larger picture. I know that foundations must be lain at every stage of teaching before moving on to the next. I know that application leads to success at retaining and understanding the knowledge. I know that hands-on activities illustrate unseen principles and how they work in reality. And I know that turning reality into a workable, accurate imagination is how concepts are kept without rote memorization. Repeated application following a concrete demonstration is how I believe facts are retained as real knowledge. So... for me to teach any program effectively I have to be able to verbalize its rational and have my student verbalize it back to me, plus show me that he can use it in problems solving in similar, non-identical situations. And for some reason the program I find best suited for this is Ray's Arithmetic. The demonstrations are concrete, the drills are verbal, his motto to "teach one thing at a time, and teach it well," resonates with me. In regard to RS, I do believe that sensory knowledge creates an intuitive impression of a concept that lasts and lasts, but the risk is that these impressions have the ability to precede and mimic conceptual learning. My fear is that without understanding the RS pedagogy, I will be moving on to higher concepts when my child merely has a perceptual knowledge, and has not truly integrated the information in his mind in a way that makes it make sense and be ever-accessible to him. To get a child thinking abstractly requires more than just manipulative demonstration: the child has to have meaningful application for that knowledge, and prior experience seeing it work both in material form and in the imagination.

I was looking at the Essentials program. I am wondering how it rates for longevity of usefulness, adaptability to young emergent readers (who are not doing the Foundations levels of LoE), and sequential flow of content. Is it intuitive to teach from? Is the lesson itself meaty, or does it rely on the games for most of the teaching? Are the resources handy to have even after the program is completed?

Thank you for that information on RS2 having more word problems. I do plan to use living books, and I have no problem creating my own word problems. I like the word problems in Ray's Arithmetic. I would incorporate those, too. Will you share some of your favorite living math book titles?

I was looking at the Essentials program. I am wondering how it rates for longevity of usefulness, adaptability to young emergent readers (who are not doing the Foundations levels of LoE), and sequential flow of content. Is it intuitive to teach from? Is the lesson itself meaty, or does it rely on the games for most of the teaching? Are the resources handy to have even after the program is completed?

What if Julie simply meant that young writers should not have to censor their writing grammatically as it is coming out of the pen, or else they may never, ever even want to begin writing for fear of imperfection? I know that the Charlotte Mason-style narrations are open and flow style, the goal being to unlock the composition that may be wrapped up in many layers inside the child's mind. This imperfect process will yield certain errors in grammar in the young. Normally, the narration flows more or less grammatically, with innocent errors that actually reflect what the child wants to convey but did not know how to convey grammatically. These would be your opportunities to teach. I believe that children need to study grammar for many years, but they also need experience in writing to make their study of grammar meaningful. So, I think Julie's position is let's not put the cart ahead of the horse and enforce grammar rules on students who have not even practiced how to express a content-rich thought in their own language, let alone be technically accurate each time. Plus, I think that writing requires logical understanding of the theme first and foremost. Children may write grammatically correctly but completely lack attention to their theme and the order of topics, and that is not good. Using grammar in everyday conversation is different than using it to convey something one is just learning, and so to make grammatical expression natural one has to take steps in the writing process. Many writers use flowcharts and lists to get their thoughts down before they commit thought to words, sentences, and paragraphs. Some children think visually and "see" what they want to say, so they may begin with a sketch. Sometimes there is a cognitive gap between what one wants to say and how to say it, especially if the writing assignment is ambitious. Grammar is important in all expression, but I think the idea is that some writers may need to relax their grammar-censor and just flesh out their idea first, and then it is easier to analyze how the sentence structure can be made better.

I am wondering if Julie Bogart took her inspiration from Charlotte Mason? Her advocacy of a more naturalistic approach to writing and grammar, and learning through language immersion and play for the youngest set, strikes me as essentially CM.

And I am extremely sympathetic to your wanting to do everything you find awesome. I have been looking at every single phonics program out there just for the sake of seeing if I might possibly improve upon what we have done in the past and are doing in the present. It can be very time consuming and stressful to feel you are not doing enough, and then to look at your schedule and see that you might be doing too much of a pet project, and not enough of other things! Getting my priorities straight is an ongoing battle. One thing that I think matters is knowing where you want to end up. If you want to end up doing Hake Grammar to its completion level, that's a clue as to its value in your present program. If you are just trying it out, then maybe its not as important to where you are trying to go with your dc's studies. Give your dc room to take in the material, because there is such thing as too much of a good thing. I hope any of that may help.

JMO, but I think that grammar memory work is kind of unnecessary if you are using those other writing and grammar programs. I would drop CC if I were in your shoes, especially if you love BW and Hake. Keep your child on whatever is giving her the most writing experience and ability to self-check. I am not sure that memory work empowers a child so, but rather, practice makes perfect.

How do the Foundations level work with the Essentials level? Wouldn't the latter be adaptable for the younger kids, or can only remedial kids (in grade 2 or above and requiring systematic phonics) gain from using it? How strong is the spelling portion of the program? Why is cursive-first approach recommended?