sleepymommy Posted October 1, 2009 Share Posted October 1, 2009 Has anyone tried any of the books printed by Shoelace Books? http://shoelacebooks.ecrater.com/ They are CM style books for math, LA, etc, they look nice but are really $$$. If you've tried it, is it worth it? Anyone know of cheaper alternatives that are similar? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LadyAberlin Posted October 1, 2009 Share Posted October 1, 2009 (edited) Well if you need the kindergarten-2nd LA I have it for sale on the swap board for $15ppd. I'm really not a CM type person so it wasn't for me. You can pm me if interested. Edited October 1, 2009 by LadyAberlin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle T Posted October 1, 2009 Share Posted October 1, 2009 I used their phonics book and math book several years ago. They may have updated or changed them since, but I dropped both of them. Phonics was okay, but every sound had a cute little story associated with it, which really annoyed my DS. Also, they used the sound of "i" in the word "ink" as the example of a short "i" sound, which really bugged me. At least the way I pronounce it, "ink" sounds more like a long "e", not a short "i", as in the word "igloo". The math book was very annoying. Each "lesson" was just a seemingly random set of math problems, with no instruction at all. Often the lesson was based on an illustration (count the kittens in the picture type stuff) but the illustrations were usually so blurry and blown-up from low-res pictures, that I couldn't even tell what we were supposed to be counting. I do believe they have changed their math books since then, so maybe this isn't a problem now. But the low-res illustrations were just awful. CM doesn't really work for my DS anyway. Too much of it seems to be based on the assumption that darling Victorian girls holding kittens are of interest to kids these days. Maybe some, but not my boy! Anyway, I was highly unimpressed with the Shoelace Press books. Michelle T Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sleepymommy Posted October 1, 2009 Author Share Posted October 1, 2009 Thanks LadyAberlin for the offer, I'm really just trying to learn more about it right now. Just found it this morning while looking up other stuff. I can't even get it together with the plethora of curriculum I've gone a little nuts on this past summer! Thanks Michelle for your thoughts. I can see how my little boys probably would be bored of the pics too. They're completely the guts and gory types! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MerryAtHope Posted October 2, 2009 Share Posted October 2, 2009 Phonics was okay, but every sound had a cute little story associated with it, which really annoyed my DS. Also, they used the sound of "i" in the word "ink" as the example of a short "i" sound, which really bugged me. At least the way I pronounce it, "ink" sounds more like a long "e", not a short "i", as in the word "igloo". I was equally unimpressed but for different reasons! I used the phonics book for my oldest because the pictures/stories were the only way I could hold his attention to get him to learn the sounds. He loved the first 35-40 lessons because they were all a picture & story. And, he did learn his sounds, so it accomplished that goal. After that the book was tedious and boring for him (not many more pictures & stories). I didn't know the book would be that way because the samples that were up showed the best looking pages. From there I moved on to Reading Reflex, which really helped. A few other things that annoyed me, (and this was 7-8 years ago, so they may well have changed by now)--the book had no table of contents! So, if you wanted to line up the lessons with Bob books or some other early phonics reader, for example, you had to go through page by page yourself & figure out when sounds were introduced. I emailed the author (who was very accessible and friendly) and she said it never occurred to her that people would want that. Also at that time she was printing a few books at a time herself and having them comb-bound locally. She was revising "on the fly" because it was easy to do so--however, that meant mistakes were easily made. No books, no matter how carefully edited, are mistake-free--however, I felt her books would have been the better for some careful editing. I'm guessing (hoping) by now that she'd no longer be needing to produce things this way though. Merry :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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