Do I need a Reading curriculum?? and a couple other CLE?s

[Heather in OK]

My head is spinning. Help!! I'm sitting here looking over CLEs website again, desperately needing to get curriculum ordered and I can't decide what to do.

 

A little background: My girls are 6th, 4th and 2nd grades. I have been looking at CLE for a while now. My oldest daughter is burned out on R&S Math and English. We've been trying to find a good fit for LA for her as well (tried FFL and Abeka...hated both). So I saw CLE mentioned here many months ago and when we looked over the books, she was interested.

 

So my plan was (is??) to switch my 6th grader to CLE Math and LA. Then I was also going to switch my 4th grader to CLE LA (she still enjoys R&S Math).

 

Then I started looking at their Reading curriculum and thought I would start my older two dd's doing that. They LOVE to read but we've never done any comprehension or analysis exercises. Should we????

 

Their Reading seems to have more than just those type of exercises, for example Grade 3 (where I thought my 4th grader would place) seems to have some LA topics in it such as alphabetizing, prefixes, parts of speech, etc. But perhaps it would be a good review since with the placement test she placed in LA 5.

 

Am I making this decision harder than it needs to be? :lol:

 

Also...I have an almost 4yo ds who for weeks, as we have been gathering other curriculum and supplies, has been begging to "do school". I have a couple things for him (coloring, cutting/paste, numbers) but I'm wondering if he would enjoy the CLE Beginner's Activity Set..? There aren't any examples and the used bookstore here doesn't have any of these so I have no idea what the activities are like. I'm thinking that maybe it would be something he could do to learn (duh..lol) but also just feel included in school time.

 

TIA!

[sandalwood]

My head is spinning. Help!! I'm sitting here looking over CLEs website again, desperately needing to get curriculum ordered and I can't decide what to do.

 

 

 

Then I started looking at their Reading curriculum and thought I would start my older two dd's doing that. They LOVE to read but we've never done any comprehension or analysis exercises. Should we????

 

 

TIA!

 

We started doing comprehension & analysis exercises last year with R & S (6th grade currently) and it really helped us. The CLE looks really good to me, but I have not tried it. However, I am absolutely LOVING their math program. I found the yahoo group to be very informative, when I was looking at CLE. I think they have samples on the group, too.

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christianlightfamilies/messages

[shinyhappypeople]

 

Also...I have an almost 4yo ds who for weeks, as we have been gathering other curriculum and supplies, has been begging to "do school". I have a couple things for him (coloring, cutting/paste, numbers) but I'm wondering if he would enjoy the CLE Beginner's Activity Set..? There aren't any examples and the used bookstore here doesn't have any of these so I have no idea what the activities are like. I'm thinking that maybe it would be something he could do to learn (duh..lol) but also just feel included in school time.

 

TIA!

 

You can see samples at the Rod and Staff Books site. HTH. :)

[Frontier Mom]

I am doing the reading with my 4th and 6th graders but not with the older ones. They also did the reading 4th through 6th grade because I thought it helped them read for comprehension. By 7th grade I felt they had enough reading and discussion to do the same thing.

 

Not sure this is the "best" way but I found by 4th grade they were reading well and ready for some comprehension questions. Also, with three years, they seemed to have grasped how to read for comprehension and read for enjoyment. By 7th they are ready to do more reading in a study mode so CLE reading worked great for me.

 

BTW, it is only 5 light units so you can easily finish it by Christmas.

[Mary in GA]

Your post made me chuckle. Over the years I've gone 9 rounds with myself over the question "do we need a reading curriculum?" I think I have finally decided the answer is no! I have never used a reading curric with dd, 7th. We do discuss books. I will sometimes pick out some literary elements mentioned in a study guide to discuss too. Dd has always tested really well in reading on standardized tests, so I'm gonna quit worrying about it.

 

I used a reading curriculum with ds, now 19, when we first began hsing him in 3rd but dropped it after 6 months. He has always tested well too.

 

This dd is using CLE LA 7 this year. We switched from R&S. We've only been at it a week, but so far so good. I looked through the LA when I first got it, and I think it is way too light on composition. We will be working through the composition exercises in R&S 7 (I own the whole set!) I also throw in some Writing Strands exercises. I think WS does a good job of introducing many elements of literature. This may sound like overload, but we don't use the whole book!

 

That's my 2 cents.

 

Mary

[Heather in OK]

You can see samples at the Rod and Staff Books site. HTH.

Oh wonderful! I didn't know they sold the same books at R&S site!

 

Thanks ladies! Great things to consider!

[FriedClams]

I really, really like the CLE reading. My kids are both advanced readers and are comfortable with reading and comprehending things 3-4 grade levels "ahead" of where they are academically. But - the CLE reading teaches much more than comprehension. It included vocabulary, literary terms, dictionary skills (reading pronunciations, finding definitions, etc - for 3rd grade as an example), applying bible verses, etc. It's really fabulous and I am super glad that we are using it. I have used R&S 2 reading in the past, and I just felt it was really busy work. There was some great stuff there - and I loved the readers - but the work was laborious for the age of the students. CLE is a great balance between writing, fill in the blank, etc. My kids love the stories and the morals they teach are great. So - there's my soapbox!!