Sonlight LA questions

[sted]

Has anyone used LA 3 or 3+4? Did you like the writing assigments? I'm considering that for Am. History LA or using IEW Am. History Theme book for writing. Need opinions! My daughter is pretty good at creative writing but has never done a formal writing program. We are studying AM. History this year.

 

Thanks,

Shannon

[MerryAtHope]

Has anyone used LA 3 or 3+4? Did you like the writing assigments? I'm considering that for Am. History LA or using IEW Am. History Theme book for writing. Need opinions! My daughter is pretty good at creative writing but has never done a formal writing program. We are studying AM. History this year.

 

Thanks,

Shannon

 

I used LA 3. If you are looking mainly for writing assignments, this is LA 3's strong point--great ideas for writing assignments, my kids liked them a lot.

 

My review no longer comes up on the LA 3 page, I guess they changed it enough that they changed the item #? It could also be that my item # was different only because I ordered it w/o the binder. When I click on the permalink, it says page not found. So, I don't know if what I had to say applies to the 2009 version or not.

 

I used the 07-08 version (when it was first revised). I gave it 4 stars. I would have given it 3.5 if I had the option, but I wouldn't go down to 3, so gave it 4. I used about 20 weeks of it, then took a copywork/dictation class & started making up my own stuff.

Here's what I had written:

 

LA 3 has many good points. One of my favorites was that I could do it with both of my kids together (3rd & 5th grades this year). What a time saver! The writing assignments had good variety and were interesting. Buyers should realize the dictation/copywork for this year do not come from the readers as in other years. The selections are mainly scripture, sometimes poetry or quotes. My kids enjoyed the selections, so this wasn't a negative for us but might be for some.

 

The reason I don't give this product 5 stars:

 

1, We found the pacing to be a bit fast. Writing and revising on the same day would be overwhelming for my kids, so I never required that. Which meant we either didn't revise assignments, or we had to skip some to do that. Sometimes there were "mini reports" to look up information and write a short report all in one day. I think assignments like this need a bit more time.

 

2, I really want to do more with dictation. With only a few exceptions, the dictation in LA 3 has nothing to do with what you learn the rest of the week. It doesn't show examples of concepts (or if it does, they are not pointed out)--there's really no teaching included on what to point out to your kids from the passage or why it was chosen. It's just something to do on Mondays without tying into the rest of the week.

 

Overall, a good, strong product that your kids can learn a lot from. The biggest thing my kids took away this year was the value of a good hook. They recognize it in their reading, and try to apply it in their writing even when I don't prompt them to. And their writing ability improved a ton this year between doing dictation (we actually did it as copywork on Mondays & dictation on Fridays to get a bit more mileage out of it), and the writing assignments.

 

In general, the pre-writing assignments helped them (a few in 2007 were a bit rocky, don't know if those got changed for 2008, but overall great), and they enjoyed the few picture "story-starters" included in this core.

 

***

 

Hope you find this helpful and again, I don't know how the changes will affect what I've written, I know SL was going to add more teaching/examples in--don't know if the pacing issues we had were changed or not.

 

HTH, Merry :-)

[sted]

I noticed you have Bravewriter listed in your signature. I haven't bought Writer's Jungle yet but my daughter did take the Kids Beginner Class and enjoyed it. This program interests me and my daughter loves creative writing. I'm just nervous about purchasing it because I feel she's at the stage where maybe she needs more to learn all the "structures" of writing rather than just focusing on creativity. Do you mind sharing how you've used the program?

 

Thanks again,

Shannon