I buy a lot of used books off of Half, because they give you shipping discounts for ordering from the same person. That said I keep a wish list on Amazon so I can check quickly what books I need and which are cheaper used on half. I do have to allow more time to get the books when I buy used just in case something goes wrong. I have ordered from most of the bigger suppliers (betterworldbooks, thriftbooks, GreenEarthbooks, ....I know there are more.) and have had problems with most of them at one time or another, and they have all made good. Sometimes the book has writing that was not detailed, sometimes the book doesn't show. Thriftbooks once shipped an order out in two boxes and when one didn't show they asked me to give it more time, as it was around Christmas. Two weeks later (now about 60 days after my order date) they refunded the whole order, not just the lost books. Green Earth books is one I don't order from so much, not because I have had problems with service, but because they used to have a high rate of canceling my order because they had already sold the book to someone else on another site. But I also just buy a lot of new books on Amazon. Their buy 4 for the price of 3 deal is great, and has been going on for years. Heather

The activity sheets haven't changed much over the years. I use a 2002 version and they still look the same. Take a look at the sample here at page 5 and 8. From the way the sample is organized I would assume you should be seeing the schedule page, the instruction page, then the student page(s?), then it would go to the next week. Though in my older version they are all in one separate section. I also wouldn't worry about it turning out to be a 2009 version, because they didn't make any changes for 2010. Here is the update chart. I wouldn't overly stress about 4 missing sheets. If you look at the instruction page you can probably recreate them in Word. I would let the seller know of their errors and that they need to better represent their product in the future. If you can rate them (here on WTM yo can) I would give this a neutral. Also check and makes sure they have the clip art, and vowel activity sheets. The Pre-ETC books SL schedules doesn't include vowels, so those are generally provided by SL in the appendix. The clip art is for making letter pages of things that start with that letter sound. Those are common things to be left out. Heather

You can use the books you have, it is just more work then because you have to schedule them. The Classic was designed to be used with the Library. The spines sometimes overlapped between levels. The D level doesn't have as much discussion work. It was not color coded in the same way. You do have different colors for the sections. The schedule is yellow, the student activity pages are blue, the teacher notes are white. I honestly still haven't used Redesign I am still using classic. I was always one step ahead of the redesign, so I was stuck. :D But the reason why I love TOG is different than many people. I have specific books I love and want to use MOH, Guerber, SOTW. I always re-wrote anything I did use: SL, WP. It was just easier to use TOG and have more pieces to choose from, given I was going to tweak it anyway. With TOG the vocab, timeline, mapping, literature, writing assignments, activities and such all still work because they are topic based and not book specific (well the literature is but I use TOG recommendations most of the time). That is a lot of work done for me. I just have to schedule in my books. The discussion would be hit and miss. I expect to have to do some lecture on the fly and such because my texts won't cover what their first choice did. I haven't used them to date, but philosophically I am OK with that sort of on the fly change directions between lecture and discussion. It would work fine in our school environment. Some people find classic difficult to follow, but I never had a problem with it. Heather

The biggest difference between SL and TOG, for me, is the integration of topics. SL treats Bible as a different topic. TOG integrates all the topics and helps you see how the related to one another in history. Heather

Amy, If you are talking about him physically writing, I would agree. I purposely teach my kids to type, because the quality of work I get out of them goes up 10 fold when they don't have to write it out. :001_huh: Heather

That is weird. I have never had a problem with Half, and I do have security running, a firewall and other precautions. I hope that isn't a trend. Heather

Yes you order used. I generally order off of Half because I can combine shipping charges, but I also order off of Amazon. Heather

The Student Solutions is the odd problems and both odd and even of the chapter review worked out in full. Just the answer to the odd problems are included in the student text itself. Heather

Probably because most people don't need two of the student books, and if they only need one the basic package. If they buy new, after discount, it is $59, so they would only save about $9 on shipping. If you stumble across someone who needs to books then that runs $69, so they would save $9 on the books and $10 shipping. You just need to find the right buyer, or cut the price more to make it attractive to someone who doesn't need both books. Heather

No a person can be right brained and none of them, it is just very common for those who have these issues to be right brained, VSL learner. Heather

Melissa, It is really easy with TOG to do too much. You have to pick and choose. My advice would be to wait and do something simpler, unless you as the teacher will do the R level work, as TOG recommends to prep for future years. I personally would have never followed through with it. Heather

What she said. Given you have multiple kids you might consider the worksheet CD, which covers level A-E, but it is $100 up front. Then you don't have to keep buying workbooks. Heather

[quote name='mtcougar832;2521069 I'd like to choose my own models' date=' but I want some examples as well.[/quote'] The CW Core books have examples of models and their children's work. I do not have much money to spend on this. So I don't think I can do 5 books for CW Aesop, but I could do the CW Core/CC Teacher book with an overview type book to help me figure this out. If you wanted to cut, I would cut the TM. It has the main grammar answers (not the review), suggestions for spelling and vocab, but at the Aesop level, not a whole lot more. The Student Text would choose the models for you and give you forms laid out to use for vocab, spelling, etc... They also choose out the passage for dictation for you. Both Aesop and Homer schedule this. Though they do it all in one day and I spread it out over the whole week. In Homer you do have to pick out your own, but I don't find it difficult to do. Aesop covers the parts of speech, then Homer covers parts of speech (A), phrases, clauses, verbals and more (B for the rest). BUT it does assume you use a separate text to teach it then you apply it to the Homer models. They recomend Harvey's Grammar, but I prefer to use AG. You can use anything you want as long as you make sure the student has covered the topic before they need it in Homer. With Aesop I prefer JAG, so I only do the main grammar and none of the review, because the work load is too heavy if I do both. I am the same way. It really depends on your style with Homer. Some people don't seem to be able to find a groove, but we did. My oldest only has a few weeks of Homer left. That is actually the way the program is designed. They published the Core books as an how to guide. Then one of their biggest fans put together the TM and ST. We have always done them in a week, but I have a friend who does the analysis one week and the writing the next. Different work, so I wouldn't think it would be a problem, but maybe that depends on the kid. I don't see where it allows it. You could put it in page protectors, then have them do the work with permanent markers. They don't erase like dry and wet markers. Then I pay the kids to take a wet erase marker and go over the permanent, which will remove the permanent, so it is ready for the next child. I think the difference is CC is directed towards high school students. That was my understanding. CW is direct at younger students so it moves more slowly. You might have to make allowances for a heavy writing year, if you want to also work on CW at the same time. You might just pause CW and then go more quickly through it later. The gals who have done Diogenes tell me that it is much easier to speed that one up than Homer, because the volume of work is much lighter. You can modify anything. ;) Aesop does get into longer models and Homer has several multi-page stories. Are you saying he can't do a long narration or he can't write a page on a given topic. In my mind those are vastly different skills. Most younger kids can't come up with content when given a topic. They just don't have the skills yet. My oldest is not 7th grade and still hasn't written an original paper for school (though she writes books on her own, and does roll playing games with the kids on the Sonlight forums-where you have to tell the story as if you are the character). It isn't till Diogenes that they learn essay writing and start original content. If you are talking narrations then that is a different problem. With my girls I require them to outline, then they write from their outline. I am fine with them condensing the story as long as they don't leave out necessary content. WT might be the easiest choice. WWE is also based on the same philosophy. Heather

Cool! I bought Elements for my oldest to use after AAS. Now we just have to finish AAS. :D But I love the morph approach to vocab. Heather

The last one, but you don't need the 9th edition, the 8th works fine:

If you buy the workbooks, Classical Writing has more than just a framework. That said up to the Diogenes level they expect you as the parent to understand that framework and teach it (Aesop and Homer). Diogenes is the first level written to the student and the rest, I assume, will be written to the student. If you prefer to choose out your own models and such then CW can also just be framework. Heather

There are some options that have been discussed on the Heart of Reading yahoo group. You might join that to see if you can find something. My only idea is On Cloud Nine, so they develop the ability to see quantities and numbers in the mind first. Along the ideas of what RS begins with but with more direct instruction. Heather

First thing in the morning here, at home on the treadmill. They kids get up and start their independent work in the meantime. When they were younger they were required to stay in their bedrooms till I finished and came and got them. They could play with anything they wanted, but I needed them to stay put. When they were really young I exercised as soon as they went down for the night. Heather

Hmm that is hard. Singapore is written to mathy kids and will make logical leaps. My kids can do it, but only after doing RS math, which directly teaches the things Singapore assumes the child will just get. If you do go with Singapore you would want the Home Instructor Guides, the Textbook and the Workbook at the very least. I recommend the Standards version because it is newer and has little extras that the original series lacks. Though the original still works fine and I didn't jump ship to the new version. The Extra Practice books are exactly what they sound like. They Intensive Practice books takes the concepts on step further and are great for critical thinking. The Challenging World Problem books that are out now I can't comment on as I use the older version, but they used to also be good for critical thinking. I use everything but the Extra Practice books. You might also look at Right Start and Math Mammon. I use and love RS, and I hear Math Mammon also teaches why, and I don't think it makes the logical leaps Singapore does, but I am not positive about that. Heather

No you can do higher level math and still be a confirmed finger counter. I used to schedule my calculus classes for 8AM because I could skip them and still get an easy A. I also counted on my fingers until I taught Singapore and RS math and learned to do mental math. Now I don't need to. Heather

Ideally no. The whole point is to build the ability to do it in the mind, and if you have a visual reference you don't need to. But that said my 3rd dd went through a stage where it worked best to write it out on the white board instead, then we erase it and do the visualization work. She doesn't need to anymore, but it took a while for her to learn to see the letters in her mind, and hold them there and now she is working with manipulating them (changing letters) and then reading from visual memory, or spelling them backwards. Again I don't use the tiles as a reference with he does sand work, but I have him go through the first about 34 phonograms daily (a-z, th, sh, ch and a few others). Then I have a pool of 10 that he works with more intently. I add only one new one a week. With those we use this process: 1. Say the sound, have the child repeat it (this allows the the opportunity to recall the letter before seeing it). 2. Show them the phonogram, say the sound, child repeats. 3. Put the card down, have the child write it while saying the sounds. 4. Have the child look at what they wrote, say the sounds. 5. Have the child visualize the letter in the mind and say the sounds (air write if needed). It takes a long time to get through at first, but once you both have the sequence down it goes quickly. Now that I am up to 10 letters, every time I introduce a new sound I have to retire the oldest. I take those and still cover them daily, but I just give them the sound and ask him to write the letter in the sand. Thus daily he works on both seeing the letter and recalling the sound and hearing the sound and recalling the letter. But last year he spent most of the year tracing the sand letter cards daily (Monday, because he would forget them over the weekend and the cards give him something to follow), then writing them in sand (Tuesday), then on then write in the air or white board (and erase) and then visualize (Wednesday), then on paper (Thursday). At this point he does pretty well with forming his letters, he is still spotty on recall at times. When it all clicks he can easily read on a 2nd grade level, but the recall problems happen just enough that it frustrates him to no end and he doesn't want to read. Still I have seen a big improvement from fall. You might want to take a step back and first fill in the letter formation piece, or at least work on it at the same time. Heather

For anyone reading this at a later date, I did send them. Feel free to ask if you need them either here or by just PM'ing me. :D Heather

The base 10 counting? You can skip that and use normal counting if you want. Singapore only teaches base 10 math. It doesn't teach visualization of numbers or quantities, base 5 math, or the addition strategies. It also doesn't specifically teach the double digit strategy that RS does. It assumes the child will find their own way to do two digit mental math. (It is written for mathy kids.) In fact I feel Singapore encourage counting with the pictures manipulatives at first, then it drops them and you figure out the child was just counting and not doing the math all along. But they do drop the pictures then the child has got to learn it. The bare minimum you would need is the Home Instructor's Guide, the Textbook, and the Workbook. If you want the critical thinking piece of Singapore I highly recommend the Intensive Practice and Challenging World Problems books. The Extra Practice books are exactly what they are titled. I haven't ever used them, but I use the rest of the books. Heather

What Merry said. My kids are concrete, sequential learners. My oldest is random enough...or maybe it is just that she has a good memory, that she did fine with SL. My 3rd dd, after covering homophones, synonyms and antonyms for 3 years still couldn't tell you which is which. I sat down and spend a month covering each one daily, and she owned it. The creative writing was also a bomb here. I can see abstract, random thinkers doing very well with it. Heather

Yes we work with the same set of words all week, at least my younger two who are dyslexic with visual memory problems. Day 1 they use tiles, day 2 they use the sand or white board. Day 3 we doing visual memory work using either the white board or air writing. This is based on Seeing Stars. Day 4 they write it out on paper. My oldest two have good visual memory, and are only mildly dyslexic. They go directly to writing out the words. My oldest prefers to do so in a notebook and my 2nd dd prefers the white board. But they also rarely get any words wrong, unlike my younger two. I wouldn't say tracing the sandpaper letters is exactly the same, but it gives some variety. It is like how some phone numbers yo dial by pattern, so you have to have the phone in hand. Writing developed the pattern, the writing something out enough so that you can do so without thinking. That requires a certain amount of pencil and paper work. But these kids also need variety, especially if they have any fine motor issues like my ds does. I purposely start without something that has no fine motor use (the tiles) because that is difficult for him and he can focus on the spelling. The next day he uses sand, which takes some fine motor control, but not as much as writing. The words are familiar now so spelling doesn't take as much effort either. The third day the words are easy, but the challenge here is visualizing them. He air writes the words, so again it doesn't take a lot of fine motor control. The last day, when he knows the words cold he finally uses his fine motor skills, so that becomes the challenge. Really I think it depends on where your child is. My oldest didn't require any special treatment, because she wrote well, read well, spelled well and had great visual memory. Her issues are with math. ;) But ds needs to work with the same words over multiple days with different emphasis. It isn't because he isn't smart, but because it just takes all that to overcome the processing issues. Heather