lotsofpumpkins
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Posts posted by lotsofpumpkins
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Going with First Form with the 6th and 7th graders makes sense, mainly because you already have it. But that leaves out the 4th grader. I wouldn't do First Form with a 4th grader unless he already had some Latin background, like Prima Latina or Latina Christiana (or unless he were exceptionally bright and motivated).
You could do Latina Christiana with the 3 older ones this year, then move into FF next year. LC would be quite easy for the older ones, but it's a great intro and would make FF the next year that much easier. I think that's what I'd do. My middle son did Prima in 5th, LC in 6th, and FF in 7th. He has a great foundation in Latin. I'd rather things trend toward easy and enjoyable than difficult and frustrating, particularly with a subject like Latin.
I asked the 4th grader if he's even interested in learning Latin, and he said he is. So, I'm thinking of getting LC1 for the 3 oldest. I'll save FF for the following year.
Thanks for the advice. :)
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My rising 6th grader just told me he wants to learn Latin (he saw me looking at samples). He has told me that before. So, I'm thinking it might be a good idea to try it now rather than wait. (I have a thread going on the K-8 curriculum board to ask details about that.)
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So, would it be better to put the 6th/7th graders in First Form or Latina Christiana? I don't want it to be TOO challenging. (But I also don't want to be lazy, either.) I kind of want the first year of Latin to be fun.
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I'm thinking about maybe doing Latin in our next school year. Here's the details: I will have 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 7th graders. We briefly tried Spanish a couple of years ago, but that kind of fizzled out. (I didn't really like the program we were using.) Other than that, we haven't studied any foreign languages.
If we learn Latin, I want to use MP products. I already own a First Form set, but I'm thinking it might be better to use Latina Christiana 1 so I can combine the 4th, 6th, and 7th graders.
Or would it be better to put the 6th and 7th graders together and then do something easier for the 2nd and 4th graders?
My goal is not necessarily fluency. My 6th grader has expressed an interest in learning Latin several times, and I know that any exposure will be helpful. I had planned on just learning Latin/Greek roots in middle school and save the actual foreign languages for high school, but I don't want to hold back my dc just because languages aren't my personal strong subject. I can get the DVDs and we can all learn together.
Anyway, IF I go the Latin route, what sounds better? Everyone learning together with an easier program, or splitting into 2 groups, or what?
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I'm thinking if we do a foreign language next school year, I'd want to do something that the 4th, 6th, and 7th graders could all do together. OR, I could combine the 6th and 7th graders, and do something easier with the 4th (and let the youngers tag along).
This is something I ponder almost every year, and the years are slipping by. Now that my youngest is not a baby, I actually have time for the extras! I don't want to overload the schedule though.
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As for goals, my oldest wants to be a SAHM and bake cakes and write books (and several other things, LOL). My 10yo ds wants to be an engineer (maybe electrical). My 9yo just told us that he feels like God is telling him to become a pastor when he grows up.
Greek is a good one for Bible study.
Spanish is a good one to be able to communicate with Hispanics in our community.
Latin is good for those headed into science fields.
Any of them are good for the brain in general though, right?
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I go back and forth on this. I'm a math/science person. I did great in German in high school and college, but I think all the pregnant brain since then has about killed the foreign language part of my brain. :lol:
Anyway, we tired to do some Spanish a couple of years ago. That didn't last very long. (We used Speedy Spanish, and I didn't like that there wasn't any grammar to help ME make sense of it all.)
I considered starting my oldest two in Latin next year, but then I decided a roots program would be better for now. Then they can study a foreign language in high school. I'd probably ask them to decide between Spanish, Greek, and Latin.
But, it occurred to me that perhaps languages will come easily to one or more of my children, so am I doing them a disservice by not even trying any at this time?
Opinions?
Those that are for starting languages prior to high school, which programs work well in large families (either through combining or utilizing DVDs)?
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We are really really really loving Latin for one and Greek for the other. HEre's our story.
My son had 3 years of Koine Greek and it was always a successful feeling,regardless of how slow he was moving. He was actually beginning to use it to study the Bible and was understanding Greek references our pastor used. And, he was recognizing Greek roots in English often so we were pretty excited.
We decided to switch both dc to Spanish, a living language. They have grandparents fluent in Spanish and my mother is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish and so Spanish comes naturally to me although I am not fluent.
It was a failure.
1. Spanish is still not highly supported in the homeschool market. There are very few options!
2. In our area, we are surrounded by kids fluent in living languages from birth. They speak Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Spanish...75% of their homeschool friends speak another main language at home! So they feel TOTALLY defeated. They, and I, feel that there's not much point in trying. If they are going to get a job on the basis of foreign language skills, they would have to learn 3 languages in this area, AND be as good as someone who is fluent from birth. And let me tell you, Spanish would not be the language of choice anyway! The languages of choice would be Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, or perhaps Russian or Korean.
3. When you study Latin or GReek, you have a 100% successful feeling because you are studying a dead language. THe point is not to become fluent enough to communicate with living people, or to surpass other people in order to get a job. THe point is to learn language for language's sake, and to learn HOW to study a language, and to learn about the Roots of English, and to study ancient literature (ie the Bible or Latin literature, etc.) So it's really a successful feeling.
That, combined with the readily available many, many Greek and Latin programs available for homeschoolers, made us switch back. My daughter LOVES Latin for Children and we plan to go all the way through that series. My son will be taking the MEmoria Press Greek course with live teaching. FOr 500.00 for the whole year. (But as I said, he already had 3 years of Koine Greek so some of it should be review)
Thank you for sharing your experience! You make some really good points. I've been thinking about foreign languages for our homeschool, and your post really helped put things into perspective.
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I 2nd the CLE suggestion. You can jump in wherever the child places, and if you are looking to speed through earlier levels to work on gaps, you can skip the -01 book of each level, plus lessons 16 and 17 of each book can be combined (16 is the test, and 17 is "just for fun"). Some people even skip quizzes and tests if they are trying to move through material quickly.
CLE has enough levels to save Algebra 1 for 9th grade if you need to. So, you can take your time if you want/need to. Or, if Algebra 1 in 8th grade is the goal, it's not too difficult to move along a little faster. (Some say it's fine to skip the 800 level entirely if the child did well in 700, so that's another way to hit Algebra 1 in 8th grade. I think 800 has a lot of good stuff in it though, so I'm having my dc do it too.)
FWIW, our evaluator was here the last 2 days looking at the dc's work, and she was VERY impressed with CLE. :)
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Our evaluator was here last night looking at dd's portfolio, and I told her if it wasn't enough, I could get the big box of ALL the work out of my closet. She said the portfolio was plenty!
Tonight she's coming back over to finish (she just did 2 of them yesterday). She won't take money from us, so I'm giving her homemade bagels and some raw honey. She loves honey, so it's a great way to "pay" her.
Dd has informed me that the bagel dough is "puffy", so I guess it's ready. Time to go back to the kitchen!
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OP, I'm glad your eval went well. We are trying to set ours up for sometime this week. I'm looking forward to getting that checked off my list so I can officially put everything from this year away.
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For math, she liked to see the ENTIRE year, every page. This was a personal preference of hers. I finally asked her why, and she had said that in 15 years of doing evaluations, math seemed to be the place where some moms really fell down and dropped the ball. And, since math is so foundational, it was a big concern for her.
It's a good thing ours doesn't require this. This year I have 4 dc who are "official", multiplied by 10-12 LightUnits of CLE math, and that's a HUGE stack our evaluator would have to look through! It takes long enough as it is, as the dc get chatty (she's a good friend).
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Wow. Never mind about what I said before. It sounds like he's fine in the 3Rs department. Let him keep doing what he's doing. The only advice I would give is to make sure the outside-the-house lessons/recitals/etc aren't negatively affecting the younger dc. But at home, I wouldn't change a thing. :)
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I would just make sure your younger children are given the opportunity to pursue their interests as well. This might mean cutting back for the oldest eventually. For example, we want our younger dc to be able to play T-Ball and Rookie baseball. This might mean having our older dc stop playing baseball at a certain age so we have time. (The oldest already decided to stop playing softball on her own, though.) Mine are playing piano, but I am their teacher, and we have no recitals or outside lessons, so everyone can play.
And even though your oldest is doing almost no regular schoolwork, is he keeping up with math? And can he write well? Just in case he ends up not going into music, he needs a good foundation in the 3Rs.
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It sounds like he has a future in music! If you can afford the lessons and he is able to get his regular schoolwork done, then I would let him pursue his passion.
Other than cost, I would cut back if his activities are affecting other members of the family. Does he have any siblings? If one child's activities are keeping other children from having extracurricular activities, then a balance needs to be found.
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I probably put more in our portfolios than I need to. We use CLE for math and LA, so I included all of the LightUnit tests. That's 10 tests per year per subject. I figured that shows everything that was covered for the year. I also included 10 spelling tests. For content subjects, I try to include 3 or 4 pages for each subject. For example, dd did Apologia Anatomy and used the notebooking journal, so I had her pick out several pages she liked and we put those in the portfolio.
I also include a list of books read. My oldest 3 dc keep track of this themselves, so all I have to do is stick their log into the portfolio at the end of the year. For the youngers, I keep track. I also keep track of any books I read to them that are related to history/science.
When we do our portfolio review, I'll also have their science project boards out for the evaluator to look at if she wants to.
If we were using a long-distance evaluator and I had to mail/email portfolios, I would probably include much less than I do, BTW.
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I found an episode on YouTube for my dc to watch and they loved it. So, I went ahead and ordered the dvd set. Thanks for sharing this great deal!
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Thanks for the ideas! I'll look into those.
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Dh and I are teaching a science track at a Children's Camp in a few weeks. We have already decided what to do on two of the days (owl pellets and nature scavenger hunt) so we need one more idea. The class is 45 minutes long, but something that takes about 30 minutes is great because that will give us a little bit of extra time for some quick demonstrations we might want to do. The children have completed 2nd-6th grades. Since both of our other ideas are related to nature, I'm wanting something chemistry or physics, but haven't been able to come up with any ideas that are about 30 minutes. Everything is either too quick or takes too long.
Thanks in advance for ideas!
ETA:
We made a decision!
In addition to the nature scavenger hunt and the owl pellets, we are also going to build bristle bots and have races. To fill in extra time, we'll put ivory soap in the microwave, have the dc see how many drops of water they can fit on a penny, etc. We'll probably have some cornstarch available for some oobleck. That always seems to be a hit. Thanks for all the great ideas! I'm definitely keeping them in mind because I like to have fun stuff to do here at home with my own dc too.
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When I saw your title I thought you were going to warn us about something bad you came across in a read aloud.
I was pleasantly surprised that the alert turned out to be a positive one. Thanks for sharing!
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It's not a workbook, but I got my dc the children's version of "Jesus Calling" by Sarah Young so they'd have a devotional to use individually. They read the day's selection and then look up the verses at the bottom. It's nice because I'm going through the adult verson, so we can talk about it since the topics are the same. The dc also read about a chapter out of their Bibles each day during free reading time.
Then in the evening we have our family Bible time.
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After
thinkingagonizing over this for days, I showed my oldest 3 dc samples and talked about their preferences. It looks like we are going to try Easy Grammar 4, 6, and Plus. They will each have R&S Spelling too. The 4th grader will use Just Write Book 3 and the 6th and 7th graders like the looks of Jump In.It turns out none of them are even remotely interested in watching a DVD teacher, so EIW is out. I was willing to go that route if they preferred it, but they just want books.
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I'm looking to use something other than R&S for my dc next year; I was hoping for programs they can work on mostly independently. But, the other idea floating around in my head is to teach grammar to the oldest 3 (4th, 6th, and 7th graders) using R&S 5 if I can't settle on something else. Then I would have just one level of R&S to teach. I'm not sure if this would be too easy for my oldest though. She used R&S for 2nd-4th, CTGE for 5th, and CLE for 6th.
Or is there something else that is good for combining grammar/writing?
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I forgot to add Easy Grammar to the list. I was looking at that too, but couldn't really decide on writing. I know you love Writing Strands, Ellie, but I read enough not-so-positive reviews that I was not sure about that one. With Writing Strands I could combine some of the dc though, so that would be good.
I'm sure I'm making this harder than it needs to be, but I just really want to settle on something and not have doubts about it.
Math sequence- mix and match, or stick with one publisher?
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
We are using CLE for math. Oldest is halfway through with the 700 level, and is on track to complete most of the 800 level during 7th grade.
From there, we have some options, and I want to make the right decision so I don't have any regrets down the road.
Option #1:
CLE Algebra 1, then Jacobs Geometry, then ??? for Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, and Calc (lots of uncertainty in this option)
Option #2:
Saxon all the way through
Option #3:
Lials (I have some used texts here; I *think* I based the purchases on specific titles/editions suggested here, but it's been a while. I just have student texts, so I guess I would just assign odds since the answers to those are in the back)
Option #4:
Abeka or BJU
Please help me think through this! I love CLE Math and the dc are doing so well with it, so it makes sense to stick with it as long as we can, which is Algebra 1. But then that excludes using Saxon later on since CLE Algebra doesn't integrate Geometry like Saxon. So, maybe it's better to switch to something else that can take us all the way through. I don't know.