again?..... or still? or is it just me?

We LOVED it. I am finishing it with Dd9. I used for both my kids. In fact, I am selling my teacher's book since I am almost wrapped up with it with my youngest. And, including the index in the back, the book is 468 pp. if that is important. I love that I don't have to prepare anything. My kids retain the information very well, they love memorizing poems, and they do apply it to their use of language in other subject matters. HTH, Ivette

Have a ds11 doing R&S 5 this year. I sorta remember seeing something about kids doing R&S independently. If you do that, how do you implement it? Thanks!

Starting R&S 5 with ds this fall. It is my first experience with R&S, coming from FLL 4 (which I LOVED!!!!). I haven't the faintest how to work with R&S. Do you do a lesson per day? How do YOU use the teacher book? Do you do it all? Do they write anything, or is it oral? HELP!!!:scared: I know this has been hashed out extensively in earlier posts, so a link to your already-posted wisdom is just as welcome. God bless! :bigear: Ivette

Hi, Cindi. If you're determined not to print at home, I am not much help. But maybe the bump will get you more responses. I print it at home for 2 dc. I ONLY print the 'practice book' for each child. I do NOT print the lesson plans; I find that completely unnecessary. I read those from the computer screen, even though I prefer paper to a screen any day. I also do NOT print the copymasters; not all of them. On Sunday, I go throug the LPs for the week for each child, then I identify which copymasters I would need to print. I typically print them for exercises that would require a lot of writing on the whiteboard for me. Printing those saves me time. For other activities which are not on the 'Practice Book' we work on a white board. Depending on where in the house we are doing math, it may be on my white board on the wall. If not, then we use a 'portable' one (12x24) and we just use it as a slate of sorts. I hope that helps somehow. If nothing else, it lets you know you don't have to print everything. ivette

This is a blessing! I have a student transitioning from FLL4 to R&S 5 and had no idea how to tackle it! :hurray:

:iagree: I agree with this poster, especially, BIG nod to the bolded part. I would go so far as to start off with passages not from "literature" (put away your guns:lol:). I had a dictation-averse child, then I started dictating made up 'passages' about Star Wars, Legos, and other familiar/favorite topics, mimicking the structure/construction of the passages in WWE. After a few of those he felt confident listening to, and memorizing dictation to copy down. You've gone through the book, so it is not a matter of covering all your parts of speech, or your commas in a series, or your direct quotations, etc. Now it is more a matter of getting your child comfortable with the mechanics of dictation. I would not move into WWE 3 before then, or it will be a more intense version of your current struggle, more like WW3. :tongue_smilie:

anyone?! :-)

:lurk5:

Hi, all! We MEP for math during the schoolyear, and LOVE it! I am not planning on teaching math through summer. But I don't want the kids to come back in August and say "multipli-who?". So, do any of you use a simple sort of page-a-day math workbook for the summer? Maybe something that only takes a couple of minutes (okay, maybe 5 to 10 min.) and just keeps their number area of the brain alive through the summer? Prefer a worksheet that does not involve me! :-) Thanks!! :bigear:

Hi, I've seen in many posts (about different topics) here people casually say something like "Oh, yeah, I just got them all from Amazon with their buy 3, get 1 free." And I have always wondered what special powers these people have at Amazon, because I have bought books there before and never got one free. Any light on this matter would be great, as it is book-buying time!:lol:

Thank you both for your responses. I will stick wtih FLL for 3rd and 4th, unless we feel led otherwise in the middle of it like SilverMoon said. I didn't know R&S could be done independently. Will have to research the threads to learn the how-to's!!

There is a scope and sequence document on the website here:http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/primary/y126sw.pdf It's called 'Scheme of Work', but there are no placement tests as such.

I am not at the 60 word passage level yet. But I would love to hear what others do. In fact, I would love to hear what the author has to say about these. I don't think *I* could retain 60 words to copy down in a dictation after having heard them only 3 times. Even though I am pretty well trained in memorization and dictation. Anyone know what to do?

bump?

I think you can start him with FLL3. It reviews everything covered in FLL 1/2 (which is all in 1 book). FLL 1/2 is designed for early readers/writers, and I think FLL 3 will be better for your son if he is comfortable with a pencil. ha, ha. Now, WWE is another story. That will depend on how much copywork, dictation, narration experience your son has. For example, at the beginning of this year, I started my 4th grader on FLL4 (which also reviews all the grammar, as it should) and WWE 2 because had zero experience with copywork/narration/dictation. That has worked for us. HTH

Hi, We use MEP exclusively, all of it (workbook plus oral/written puzzles, problems etc. from the teacher's lesson plan). I would consider MEP rigorous for the mathy kid indeed. In fact, the website states that it is designed for the mathy kids in the UK. We are happy with MEP so far. My ds 10 is finishing Year 3 (UK 2nd grade), and my dd 8 is finishing Year 2 (UK 1st grade) and both are challenged by the material and the way it makes them think. So it shows you the curriculum is pretty advanced even at the lower grades. Mine are not super mathy (above grade-level natural-born mathematicians). I would call them math-competent (solid math students). Based on other posts I have read here, MEP and Singapore are very different in style, but very comparable in approach to math, and even scope and sequence. You might search for posts by 'spycar'. I know he combines MEP and Singapore in his son's math. HTH

HI! daughter -- I am finishing FLL 1/2 with dd 8. I have the FLL3 set to do with her next year ('10-'11). son -- We are finishing FLL4, and I have R&S 5 to do with him next year. (ds only had PS grammar, an oxymoron, I know :lol: , so we didn't go straight into R&S to avoid shock treatment :D ) My question: should I use FLL 4 with my dd the following year ('11-'12), since I would only have to buy the student workpages/workbook part? Or should I start her on R&S 4 (which I don't currently own). Money is not my main concern here, but I'd rather not spend more than I have to, if either option will work well. Your thoughts? Bonus question: :tongue_smilie: Should I just go straight into R&S 3 with her, and sell my unused set of FLL3 materials? Many thanks in advance!!!

:iagree: .... let alone nuances among verb tenses that in English all sound the same, but are markedly different in most other languages. It's fine to master the bulk of it and move on, but I would counsel against stopping it altogether. It's not like riding a bike. It may not require as intensive a drill. But review every year, to keep the "grammar muscle" healthy, especially as the student nears college or learning a foreign language.

MEP!!! Highly recommended for the mathy ones. http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/primary/default.htm

We do library, and we substitute where we can't find what TOG recommends. So far, I have bought the Bible Atlas, and the Atlas of World History, since these are excellent reference materials I would like to have regardless of TOG. Everything else has been library, suitable substitute, or not at all. I keep reminding myself that my dc would never have studied ANY OF THIS and NEVER THIS IN-DEPTH if they were in PS. So TOG is really an embarrassment of riches when it comes to material covered.

By the way, whenever my dc (who were also pulled out of the PS Gifted and Talented track, for similar reasons to yours, only to find out there were huge gaps in knowledge too) when they ask why are we using level 2 of writing in 5th grade, I simply reply that HS'ing books don't have grade levels, and they teach things in a different order than PS teachers, so that is why the number on the spine of the book won't match their grade. End of story. Most HS curriculum is deliberately not associated with a grade level for this very reason.

:iagree: I am using TOG with a 7yo and a 10yo. I am really glad I started with them this young. I concur with previous poster that the real meat, and the blossoming will happen more during the Dialectic and Rhetoric stages. But I could not be happier with how much my children already know. TOG in the lower levels is all about setting up those foundations that WTM talks about. We have really picked and chosen out of the TOG buffet here in Year1, so that is REALLY IMPORTANT. They have so much time later to dive down deep later. That doesn't mean it is light or that they are not learning "enough." My children know more about ancient history, the middle east, Greek mythology, and Old Testament history than most average adults. So I would say, dive in, trust the process, and overall, don't try to do it all.

Hi, all! Almost 3/4 of the way done with my first year of homeschooling. I am wanting the dc to take a test at the end of the year, just to get a baseline. I am in TX; nothing is required. I wanted to hear opinions from the wonderful, wise people here on whether to choose Stanford or Iowa for testing. I don't really understand the difference between them, or why one would be better than the other. My dc are finishing 2nd and 5th grades. Many thanks! Ivette

:001_smile: Thank you for this suggestion. I own the WWE textbook you mention. I originally purchased it, with the intention of pulling together the readings, copywork, etc. myself. Unfortunately, as a working-FT-homeschooling-mom that was more than I could manage, so it was worth the investment for me to purchase it ready-made. And I am glad I did. It has given us glimpses into many wonderful children's books that we are queuing up to read together. But it had not occurred to me to do my fast-forward using that resource. I think I'll try that! :001_smile: