Hello, I am having trouble opening the Galore Park website, but I watched a few youtube videos by the author, including Book 1, Lesson 1--and really liked it! Truthfully, he hit a few points straight-up that my 3rd grader has been struggling with in Latina Christiana--so...would anyone care to share experience with Galore Park? Also, if there is anyone familiar with GP and MP, I would love your opinion on pros and cons of each. Thanks Edited to Add: this morning I tried again and could open the page; it must have been down for maintenance. It looks like Latin Prep is no longer for sale new? Only the workbook A for Latin Prep is still available.

My situation is nowhere near as severe as yours with my daughter, but this thread caught my eye because my 3rd grader is also struggling to make her way through 3+syllable words. Just last week I put away her full curriculum to make space in our day for hard-core multi-syllabic work. I started her in Webster's Syllabary, so she knows open/closed syllables. For 2nd grade I used Elizabeth Brown's phonics lessons on the computer, which taught some syllabication. However, something you said about the sliding syllables I wanted to address. The ABCs and All Their Tricks addresses the reason behind this. The author says those words are often from Latin, not old English, so the rules really are different. She goes on. It might be a useful reference book for you. I was looking for a way to use it for my 3rd grader. This week, for example, she is working on -aste pattern. Her dictation is "Haste makes Waste." Then she has spelling words picked from the tables in ABCs & All Their Tricks--hasty, tasty, distasteful, baste, basting, hasten, etc. (After an exhaustive hunt, I found Delightful Dictation with Spelling which has dictation maxims keyed to the ABCs book!) Mon/Wed we are working through 3-syllable tables in Webster's Speller. The syllables are already separated, and the stressed syllable is marked, but it is still hard enough. Tu/Thurs we work through an old syllable worksheet book by called Prefixes Suffixes and Syllabication by Sherril Brooksby. A previous owner laminated all the pages, so she uses a wet-erase marker. She thinks they are so fun! I know those aren't very kinesthetic, but I thought you might be looking for other ideas for morpheme and syllable work. I have been doubting myself, feeling guilty for taking her out of the full curriculum, but it has been so helpful to read this thread and see that other mothers focus on syllabication, and that others see 3rd graders tanking and stop--she's about the only dyslexic homeschooler in our circle, and it can be hard for me to stay true to what intuition is telling me to do for her. Thanks for all the info on the other resources, and really, the ABCs book has been very helpful to explain the history of the language and why those syllables slide. HTH,

I saw earlier today that Young Folks' Plutarch is in progress on Librivox:)

okbud, did I say it did? and, did you actually read the article? If so, how did you miss that this is about more than one fossil? If you have a bone to pick about macro-evolution, please find someone who also is trying to engage it that debate with you. I am only really interested in having conversations with others who are calm and want to get closer to the truth through contemplative conversation. I am turned off by anyone who just tries to zing someone with a one-liner.

This is fun; I love puzzles. i am just beginning Latin grammar studies with my eldest, but I have heard from other who are ahead o me that grammar is easier to teach in Latin. And that in days when it was common to know Latin, if a writer was having trouble composing a clear sentence, s/he could translate it into Latin, then back into English and find the pitfalls. Here's hoping!!!! Lol

It isn't a big deal, but just to keep the record straight, the new version is not Leigh Lowe. Her name is Jessica Watson, and she is currently a third-grade teacher at Highlands Latin School. We enjoyed watching her videos on youtube, also.

I am working through it right now, too. If this helps, I keep popsicle sticks and cups handy with rubber bands for showing place value. One cup is tens' and another is ones'. For eleven, we counted as we put popsicle sticks in the ones' cup. Only nine in a cup! The tenth meant we had to bundle them with a rubber band and it moves to the tens' cup. Then a lone popsicle stick is put in the ones'. This works for us; my daughter likes to bundle with the rubber bands:)

I just wanted to copy this in rather than leave it as a link because it is so important that people quit using the fake archaeoraptor as a basis. This really did not receive the attention it deserved. We have one of the original examiners of the fossil recanting its veracity. Archaeoraptor Hoax Update—National Geographic Recants! on March 2, 2000 Share: Email Using: Gmail Yahoo! Outlook Other As more evidence of altered fossils begins to surface, one must seriously question the integrity of the fossil industry and the stories these fossils are supposed to tell. In stark contrast to their sensationalistic “Feathers for T. rex†article, National Geographic has printed a brief, yet revealing statement by Xu Xing, vertebrate paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing. Xu's revelation appears in the somewhat obscure Forum section of the March, 2000 issue, together with a carefully crafted editorial response. The letter from Xu Xing, vertebrate paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, reads: National Geographic followed the letter from Xu with this statement: “After observing a new feathered dromaeosaur specimen in a private collection and comparing it with the fossil known as Archaeoraptor [pages 100–101], I have concluded that Archaeoraptor is a composite. The tail portions of the two fossils are identical, but other elements of the new specimen are very different from Archaeoraptor, in fact more closely resembling Sinornithosaurus. Though I do not want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body.â€1 As more evidence of altered fossils begins to surface, one must seriously question the integrity of the fossil industry and the stories these fossils are supposed to tell. A Feb. 19, 2000 New Scientist article sheds light on the growing problem of faked and altered fossils. Referring to the Chinese fossil birds, paleontologist Kraig Derstler from the University of New Orleans in Louisiana says, “almost every one that I’ve seen on the commercial market has some reconstruction to make it look prettier.â€3 “Xu Xing is one of the scientists who originally examined Archaeoraptor. As we go to press, researchers in the U.S. report that CT scans of the fossil seem to confirm the observations cited in his letter. Results of the Society-funded examination of Archaeoraptor and details of new techniques that revealed anomalies in the fossil’s reconstruction will be published as soon as the studies are completed.â€2 The illegal yet highly profitable market of Chinese bird fossils has enticed the local farmers into creating marketable fossils, real or not. Derstler points out that “adhesives and fake rock have become very easy to make and very difficult to spot.â€4 The paleontologist Luis Chiappe, of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, describes how one such specimen almost fooled him, till he noticed that one leg was longer than the other. “I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it,†Chiappe said. Only close examination revealed that two slabs had been mortared together. “On the surface you really couldn’t see that.â€5 Dr Larry Martin of the University of Kansas, who is a staunch critic of the dino-to-bird theory, commented, “I don’t trust any of these specimens until I see the X-rays.â€6 Joints and gaps in the reworked fossils are revealed with X-rays. Martin went on to say: https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/feathers/archaeoraptor-hoax-update-national-geographic-recants/ “The farmers do not believe this is wrong, they look at it as restoring an art object to make it more marketable. The whole commercial market for fossils has gotten riddled with fakery.â€7

I am trying to flesh out the writing. I have read volumes 1,2, and 3 of CM's works in a mother's book study. I have skimmed the book study leader's library of Andreola et al stock of "this-is-how-you-do-CM" authors. While there is a lot of good there, I wasn't impressed with the writing instruction/practice that I gleaned from all that. I stumbled on the progymnasta and haven't looked back, but now I see from Kfamily that there was more to CM narrations/composition. Narrations are not just a retelling/rewriting of every detail--and I am curious. I don't know how yet, and I am not willing to stumble around with my children's written communication to figure it out, but I hope to concurrently figure it out while they are learning to write through the progym. Maybe someday I can figure out what PNEU was really doing in composition, and use it if I think it will work better for them.

I have been lurking about two weeks now, reading through the old thread . . . and really have had a moment of vindication. Last May, I began planning for this year, and my DD8 was working through a Cyr Reader. The second one has a lot of Longfellow in it. I like Longfellow, and we had the Susan Jeffers' illustrated version around the house--I decided we were going to memorize Hiawatha's Childhood. I printed it off in large font-3 copies- . . . and ended up ditching my original third-grade plans to buy Memoria Press. Now, I am not saying anything against MP; I like it a lot, actually, and I needed open-and-go as we put our house up for sale, moved, are planning to build, etc. but I am still somewhat restless in certain ways. When I began reading the first EFL thread I was elated--"Hiawatha!" I haven't read any of her actual works yet; I didn't even finish the posts--but I did pull out those copies of the poem and start my children on it. I have 1st and 3rd going this year. Sometimes I think I am making homeschool too hard. Maybe I could just go with my gut, instead of always searching out someone else's ideal situation? I am a bibliophile; I have so many books around. Yes, I have surrounded us with "living books," but I haven't been able to stop myself from snatching up a set of Land and People, or Audobon Society Nature Encyclopedias. I am starting to think that a few books ( well-read and oft-read) and a few reference books (oft-perused) might be a good start for independent learning. I say that last part based on my own experiences growing up--while the library was open to me and I went a lot, we didn't own much beyond a set of encyclopedias and a few books my older sister had. I was so bored I had to read encyclopedias. Fluency probably came from repeated readings of my Beatrix Potter collection and my black-and-white checked copy of Mother Goose. And later, a handful of novels. Recently, I mentioned something in passing to my fifteen-year-old niece about rereading a book, and she looked at me surprised and said she couldn't remember once rereading a book. She is competent, an A student in PS--my sister has reared her well, but still--she doesn't LOVE reading like my sister and I--and I am wondering, did she have too many? I am thinking of the tubs of books I have in a storage unit, the boxes I have in the garage here in our rent house, and the boxes I have in my bedroom behind the door, wondering, will my children be the same way? Does EFL speak to that? I am wondering because of the discussion of reading too much at the expense of oral sharing, etc. I am looking forward to reading some of her work Meanwhile, we are memorizing Hiawatha, and this weekend I picked up a second-hand copy of a book marked for Calvert 8th grade called Stories in Verse by Max T. Holm. I am hoping to learn a lot of narrative poetry and share it with my family. Thanks for this discussion!

"Que?" :laugh: Love Fawlty Towers!

Maybe someone who is currently using Shurley Grammar will weigh in?

I think: Statement 1-She (subject) is calling (helping verb and verb) her mother (direct object). The mother is literally the object of the call. She "receives" the action. Changing that to "She is calling to her mother" makes it: she(subject) is calling (helping verb and verb) to her mother (prepositional phase). Maybe this is a difficult sentence to use as an object lesson because it is hard to imagine the mother not hearing the call in both examples. Change it to a sentence like "She is singing a song" or She is singing to a song." First example, a song is receiving the action; it is being sung, therefore it is the direct object. The second sentence doesn't make sense. She is telling a story vs. She is telling to a story...you see where this is going. "To" is working as a preposition; prepositions just connect nouns to the rest of the sentence, but they are expendable. Statement 2--I am explaining to her why she needs to wash her hands. Who is the sentence about? I- Subject I what? am explaining-verb phrase (helping verb and verb) I am explaining what? WHY she needs to wash her hands (I can't get into all this right now; it would hurt my head) explaining to whom or what? her-indirect object "to her" is a prepositional phrase, but I think it might be working as an indirect object.

My friend's daughter is An artist, high-school age now--and that is a hard-core Charlotte Mason family. So the girl has been raised steeped in dry-brushing nature journals and artist study. After studying at least six prints from one artist, each child chooses one to recreate. They discuss technical aspects first. Now, there are six children and while they all do work levels above anything I can do, that one girl is a cut above--she is a true artist, like your daughter. Still, she has grown under the techniques I listed above. It isn't a complete plan, but maybe a cheaper option for some of the instruction, allowing you to conserve money for instruction later, yet still keep her moving in learning and perfecting. I also recently saw David's sketchbook at the Art Institute in Chicago; he used the gridding technique and his first sketch of a person was a nude. Then he clothed them.

I tapped that out on my phone-so many typos-I-yi-yi! Sorry:)

I am learning, too, and no expert, but what is working for us to transition a child is this: I do interrupt her. I am typing as she dictates, but of course she gets ahead of me. I say "wait." She stops until I say "go ahead" or "ok." Yes, sometimes she loses her train of thought, but she leans over and rereads the screen now and picks up the thread of her thoughts. Now, last year when we started I was handwriting, with the intention of typing later. It was so sloppy in my haste I had to read it to her-which also worked--she would ask me to read the last sentence to get her flow back. There were tons of sentences beginning with "and then" but I chose to record what she said, incorrect or correct. Zero of those ever were typed, so this year I type it as she dictates. We do one a week on a good week. She has already begun telling me to go back, take that out, change this word to a different word, etc. When that started, I was so encouraged that the method might actually work! Honestly, me having to stop her so often to catch up is what created that situation. So go ahead and be human! You aren't trained in shorthand and can't keep up! So what? They will never write as fast as they can think or talk either, and maybe you are saving them from hating to write their own narrations later because born of that frustration. They will have picked up the habit of stopping often and picking back up. I hope that helps your situation, too.

Hi, I post with trepidation because each situation is so unique, but to qualify my post, let me add that I am have struggled with ADD my whole life. Also my eldest child, about to turn 9, is uppermost in my thoughts. I almost didn't post, but then I imagined being you, seeking input, trying to save this relationship and still draw them along in their education, and I just have to add what I can. If it helps, great; if it doesn't, no worries. Question 1 to ask yourself: Does DS2 respect you? Have you backed down from challenges with him in his earlier life? Does he know you love him but that he owes you respect? Do you have to wheedle to get him to do what you say, or does he earnestly try and can't? Question 2: Have you tried alternating "inspirational" studies with "disciplined" studies? Example: Literature, then grammar. Science, then math. It might give his brain a break. "A change is as good as a break." Question 3: Have you put the weight back on him? He might be choosing to have an unteachable spirit, and the Bible says that is foolish. Just today, I had to go back through this with my daughter over hand position on the pencil! She ended up causing a big to-do over me expecting her to hold the pencil better so her hand would not be unduly fatigued. Ultimately, I had to remind her that she could only really learn what she chose to draw in, and she was choosing to have an unteachable spirit out of pride or something. I told her I couldn't make her want to do it right, but I could stop her from continuing to do it incorrectly, so if she chose to get behind in her written work, so be it, we would continue with what she could do verbally and she would make up the rest of it on her own, or fall behind. In about ten minutes, her heart softened, she came to me, asked forgiveness, hugged me, and when I asked her why it had happened, she gave me a reason that was so much deeper! It was a real thorn in her heart manifesting itself as refusal to cooperate in lessons. We went forward with renewed closeness, and the rest of the day she voluntarily worked to correct her own positioning. I only tell that story to illustrate that there might be more going on than you realize. Maybe ask him the motives of his heart sometime in a quiet, non-threatening time. I hope this bears fruit in your life. Sincerely,

And, I really should add that with MP the stages of Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric seem to be understood as stages we all go through when learning, but that it is possible for a young child to get to Dialectic in an area, and so forth. More flexible, it seems to me. More of a medieval usage of the words instead of Dorothy Sayers.

I can't think of an actual article, sorry, but I will outline what I know, if it helps. My introduction to Classical Ed was through Classical Conversations. It is neo-classical. Totally fixed on Dorothy Sayer's article. The three stages of Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric are treated as rigid, based on age ranges. I read TWTM. It lays out many options for designing your program. Skills build. I also read Teaching the Trivium by Bluedorn. This is the one that is marked up, pages bookmarked, heavily annotated. This book goes through each of the three stages, giving many references to studies to back up the assertions being made. It gave lots of good resources for starting all classical languages young, gave good advice in math (IMO), and takes Charlotte Mason seriously. This was actually my introduction to seriously researching Charlotte Mason. There is a lot of heart in this, a lot of meat. Seems very integrated. I haven't read LCC but I am using Memoria Press, which I gather has been based on LCC, 2nd edition, or else LCC 2nd edition was based on MP--not sure without reading the book. I can only answer for MP: it is very classical--modern history is a summer-reading suggestion! The literature guides are so well-integrated with the rest of the core curriculum, I am so thankful to be using it all. Honestly, though, if I were just using pieces I think I would be happy with the results and not know what I was missing. It is very well done, and I don't have to spend my summer worrying about curriculum! We just "do the next thing." It is lovely. It pairs nicely with Charlotte Mason practices; it is easily tweaked where I prefer to use CM practices without derailing the entire curriculum. I keep all the Classical books on my shelf, as I do Thomas Jefferson Education, but I refer most readily to the Bluedorn book. It got overwhelming to try to put it all together, though, and I wasn't being as efficient or productive as I needed to be for my family. So, MP is our home base, with tweaks. I hope that helps you get started, and that someone else might be able to answer you more to your benefit.

I recently heard on a radio show someone quote statistics that students in a traditional classroom setting of teacher-student ratio, the students are more influenced by each other. The suggestion was a reversal--that for each child, five adults were needed to invest in that child. And that if that couldn't be achieved, it was better not to put the students in groups at all. It might not be the intention, but maybe it will be a side benefit to have?

Another option, as you are only expecting one or two sentences, is to have them compose the sentence with you--their ideas, you helping to shape it into a complete sentence. Then you write it down. They then copy it. They will have thought, composed, and copy from a perfect model.

We have CM-style Nature Journals that the children love to draw in. Some days I give an object lesson on a certain insect. It sits in front of us in a glass jar, and we draw it. Then my very young children dictate to me what they observe as I write it for them. This makes it all joy, no drudgery for them. I don't have to do any prep work, and they think they are getting away with drawing and coloring for school. I know they are honing their observation skills and composition skills. win-win. Also, constant review is built in, because they love to look back over their work and remember. This is not something new every year; this is our third year in the same notebook. Neither has finished one yet. So it will just accumulate until full, however many years that takes. This, paired with a small introduction to a different insect at a once-a-week-Co-op has been enough to draw my girls' interest. HTH,

I downloaded it pronto while you had it up, devoured it, and already recommended it to another friend. It addressed many of the questions many previous posters had--I would recommend it to anyone! And for what it is worth, I appreciate you promoting the step of Preparing the reading for narration, as I have totally been skipping previewing vocabulary. I was under the (mistaken) impression this was "getting in the way between the child and the book" and my child has been stumbling. It makes such sense. Thank you!

I am so thankful for such an interesting thread. I have wavered between Christian Classical Education and Charlotte Mason for three years. In practice, a lot of her suggestions work for us, and reading her work has made me a better mother for sure, but I always feel defensive when I read her work. By that I mean, I am on guard. I feel like I am panning for gold. I have to stop and filter through every three sentences sometimes! Bluegoat probably nailed down why--something I haven't verbalized well when trying to express this in our CM book study group, but there are assumptions that ring false to me, and the whole philosophy is based on that. I have wondered how much of her writing is so difficult for us to interpret fully because she was writing to her contemporaries, who also understood some references she made. For example, she writes in more than one place that she is only writing about what needs to be reformed, but that some subjects were being handled well, therefore she would not be addressing them. WOW! Let's unpack that! What was being done well? Latin instruction? Math at older grades? (I apologize for not being able to give the reference to book and page on this, but I know I was struck by it when we studied it.) So now, CM curricula tend to under-develop these areas because they are not emphasized in her writing. I am not an expert; I am just wondering. Thoughts? I attended a conference where Nancy Kelley (Kelly?) spoke a few years ago, and it was affirmed there that CM claimed it needed to be all or nothing with her methods--that a partial practice would not yield the same results. I don't think Chris Perrin made that assertion alone:) I continue to use CM for art appreciation, music appreciation, hymn study, poet study, using maps to introduce a person we are studying, and narration. I see all that bearing fruit. I cannot get on board with her approach to teaching reading, and therefore cannot follow AO or similar reading schedules. I start Latin in 2nd grade with Memoria Press, because I think it must have been one of the things being "done right." If you look at her list of attainments for a 12 year-old, reading Latin is listed, so the systematic instruction must have been going on for years. Thoughts on this?

Rod and Staff has a curriculum that teaches singing. I am looking at it. It is teaching sol-fa. I don't think it has support, though, so it may be dependent on a teacher who knows it. Sorry if this is a rabbit trail, as I haven't used the program but am looking at it.