I'm trying to decide what to do for 6th grade writing, and have been looking at MCT. It kind of blows my mind. I'm not sure if I don't really get it or if it's awesome! Probably both. Anyway, after spending about an hour reading through it all, I'm now thinking that maybe I should use the whole LA program rather than just the writing portion. But if we do that, I'm not at all sure what level to go with. So if anyone could make suggestions, I'd love that. I'm also wondering if it's a bad idea to mix the components from a couple different levels. I think we should probably do Town or Voyage - please correct me if you think that's wrong! Grammar - we are currently doing Rod & Staff 5, so I think that doing Grammar Town next year would be nothing new at all and potentially too easy as far as the grammar book. It seems like Voyage would be a better fit. Vocabulary - currently doing Vocabulary from Classical Roots 5. The MCT vocabulary books look pretty advanced to me. I guess it isn't really the words, but it isn't super-simple like VFCR but has difficult reading passages. I suppose Caesar I would be a slightly better fit here, not sure. Writing - omigosh, my son HATES to write. I mean the physical part of it. He actually likes creative writing, and on his own has written stories (heavily influenced by "Redwall", which is pretty adorable). When we do Rod and Staff, we do as much of it orally as we can since he takes so long to write it out (mostly due to messing around/;becoming distracted), and he hates it. This is good and bad. Good because it is less tedious for him. Bad because it requires more of my time to go through each question with him. Anyway, we are using IEW SWI this year. He is doing ok, likes it ok. He LOVES to read, reads all the time and at a fairly high level. The writing is the one where I am most unsure. It seems like it's a big jump from Town to Voyage, and that he might be in between. I like the idea of Voyage more, and think he's ready to do essays rather than paragraphs. But I don't want him to struggle. Poetry - we haven't done much of this, other than memorizing poems and a few poetry lessons from the English book. I already have the MCT Town level poetry book - Building Poems. It sure would be nice to just use that and not have to buy an additional poetry book. Has anyone combined books from different levels, such as Town and Voyage? So I'm really unsure what level to go with. I like the idea of Voyage, but part of what is really holding me back is all the excerpts and articles and things. WOW, they seem really advanced. It seems like they will be hard for him to understand, and likely bore him. He isn't gifted (I see that the curriculum is a good fit for gifted kids), but he's pretty bright. What do people's kids think about these? I should mention that next year will be my last year homeschooling him, so if we choose Town we are unlikely to ever get to Voyage. I sure wish we could do Voyage, but want to choose the right level for him. ------------------------------------------- One other question! I also have a 7th grader (finishing 7th grade) at school who really needs some writing instruction. I want to start this after school and through the summer (and into next year 8th grade). So it needs to be pretty painless. His grammar is awful, so I'm thinking of doing Easy Grammar with him (it looks like he can do it on his own mostly). Do you think I could jump into MCT Voyage with him for writing? I really hate to start him on paragraph, since I don't think I'll get him to agree to more than one course. So if we do Town, that'll likely be the end of it. His ideas and organization are fairly decent, it's mostly his sentence structure/grammar/word choice that is problematic. THANK YOU for reading through all this and offering any advice. Heidi