old

[Paisley Hedgehog]

nm

[dangermom]

He's too old for Primers. You'd start in Aesop. He's old enough to get through Aesop at a faster pace, if that works for you.

 

It might work well if you write everything down from his dictation. Does he type?

 

I don't know enough about dyslexia and etc. to be able to say whether it would work for you. I'd advise you to go to the CW message boards and ask there; the authors usually answer pretty promptly.

[SilverMoon]

I would also start him in Aesop. :)

 

Rewriting other pieces hasn't hampered my ds's creativity. He changes up the characters, settings, and details rather than straight rewriting. The Princess and the Pea became Catwoman and the Crystal when he rewrote it. His sequence of events and main point or moral stayed true to the original.

[Mama Lynx]

His imagination will not be stifled :) This is a silly rumor that is persistently brought up about CW. Yes, your child will be rewriting someone else's stories; however, it's not like you forbid him from being creative within the framework, or from writing creatively outside of your CW lesson.

 

If your child has great difficulty getting thoughts down on paper, You might actually want to start with Writing With Ease, and then ease into CW. CW does assume that the child can handle copywork and dictation, and can retell a short story. WWE teaches those very basic steps systematically.

 

Once your child is able to handle copywork and dictation, and can retell a story in his own words, Aesop will be wonderful for him. In Aesop, you can have him dictate his stories to you, and you can type them or write them; however, with his writing issues my opinion is that you want to have him working on copywork and dictation every week, starting small, to build up his ability and confidence.

 

Right now I'm using WWE2 with my 2nd and 3rd grader. The level of dictation in WWE2 is actually to great for my boys, so I give them simplified versions. But now that my 3rd grader is good at copywork and retelling, I am working some Aesop in with his WWE. After we do the WWE we will read an Aesop story together. Then I will guide him through the very simple grammar exercises in Aesop. Then I will have him retell the story to me in his own words. WWE has already taught him how to retell a story as a summary, so his retellings are short. I write it down for him, and he recopies it. (We do not do all of this in one day.)

 

As time goes on, he will get better with dictation, and then we will gently more more fully into Aesop. After several years experience with CW and teaching boys to write, I do not expect my kids to fully do a CW program as written until they reach the Diogenes level, in 7th grade.

 

Also, don't worry about completely *all* of Aesop, or *all* of Homer. Skip portions of the workbook. Read the core books and teach the lessons your child needs, at his own pace. You have time. Since he is dyslexic, he will need a great deal of patient work at each level.

 

Now I've rambled on, but here's my short summary: WWE teaches those basics step by step better than Aesop. CW is an excellent program which will not sap your child's creativity; however, you want to have those basics down first.

 

HTH

[Jami]

I'll just add my agreement about creativity and imagination. My 7 and 8 year olds have just started Aesop this year, and they're having a ball. Their retellings are full of their own personalities and creativity. And since they don't have to start from scratch with coming up with something to write, it frees them to concentrate more on word choice and their own clever changes to the originals. :)

 

 

 

His imagination will not be stifled :) This is a silly rumor that is persistently brought up about CW. Yes, your child will be rewriting someone else's stories; however, it's not like you forbid him from being creative within the framework, or from writing creatively outside of your CW lesson.

 

If your child has great difficulty getting thoughts down on paper, You might actually want to start with Writing With Ease, and then ease into CW. CW does assume that the child can handle copywork and dictation, and can retell a short story. WWE teaches those very basic steps systematically.

 

Once your child is able to handle copywork and dictation, and can retell a story in his own words, Aesop will be wonderful for him. In Aesop, you can have him dictate his stories to you, and you can type them or write them; however, with his writing issues my opinion is that you want to have him working on copywork and dictation every week, starting small, to build up his ability and confidence.

 

Right now I'm using WWE2 with my 2nd and 3rd grader. The level of dictation in WWE2 is actually to great for my boys, so I give them simplified versions. But now that my 3rd grader is good at copywork and retelling, I am working some Aesop in with his WWE. After we do the WWE we will read an Aesop story together. Then I will guide him through the very simple grammar exercises in Aesop. Then I will have him retell the story to me in his own words. WWE has already taught him how to retell a story as a summary, so his retellings are short. I write it down for him, and he recopies it. (We do not do all of this in one day.)

 

As time goes on, he will get better with dictation, and then we will gently more more fully into Aesop. After several years experience with CW and teaching boys to write, I do not expect my kids to fully do a CW program as written until they reach the Diogenes level, in 7th grade.

 

Also, don't worry about completely *all* of Aesop, or *all* of Homer. Skip portions of the workbook. Read the core books and teach the lessons your child needs, at his own pace. You have time. Since he is dyslexic, he will need a great deal of patient work at each level.

 

Now I've rambled on, but here's my short summary: WWE teaches those basics step by step better than Aesop. CW is an excellent program which will not sap your child's creativity; however, you want to have those basics down first.

 

HTH

[siloam]

I am wondering where to start with Classical Writing. I've looked over the samples, but I'm in a curriculum fog and can't seem to sort out what I'm looking at! :blush:

 

My younger ds is dyslexic and borderline dysgraphic. He has great ideas, a wonderful imagination, loves to make up stories, but has absolutely no ability to get his thoughts on to paper. His spelling and handwriting make the physical act of writing torture for us both, but he would talk for hours if I would write it down for him. :001_smile: I'd like to start building his confidence in his own writing ability, and CW is one of those programs that I keep hearing about being good at teaching step-by-step procedures. At the same time, I am wary about his imagination being stifled by rewriting someone else's stories/thoughts.

 

Where does one get started in CW? Is it the primer? What would I need to order? Would CW even be a good fit for our situation?

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

Get him typing as quickly as possible!! :D

 

My oldest is probalby slightly dysgraphic, and I have her type all her writing. If I make her physically write it out the quality goes down 10 fold, and the length. She also can spend all day upstairs in the hall bounding her ball around "telling her stories" but ask her to do a creative writing assignment and she freezes. CW gives her a starting point and from there she has fun changing the details, setting, characters without changing the basic outline and moral.

 

Heather

 

 

[dangermom]

That's my kid too, Siloam. She will make up stories all day, even write them down (no dysgraphia), etc. --but assign her to write something and she freezes. The imitation of CW allows her to relax some and work on specific steps in writing, while still doing creativity on her own terms when she likes.

[lovemykids]

I hate to hijack, but I wanted to start a thread on this too. How easy is it to use the TM without the student book and plug your own material in for assignments?? I am looking at Homer.

 

TIA!

 

:bigear:

[siloam]

I hate to hijack, but I wanted to start a thread on this too. How easy is it to use the TM without the student book and plug your own material in for assignments?? I am looking at Homer.

 

TIA!

 

:bigear:

 

How determined are you? You can do it, but it does require a bit of work. My dd doesn't like re-writing Biblical Models, so I rewrite 2-3 of those for each level. You have to pick out vocab, pick out word work, pick out sentence work, pick out paragraph work and then provide yourself with all the answers. It isn't horrendous just a lot of leg work. I think the hardest thing was to find a good model to begin with. The first one I did for Homer was a bit too ambitious, and gave me a lot of trouble. The second one I chose a much simpler passage and it was much easier.

 

Heather

 

[lovemykids]

How determined are you? You can do it, but it does require a bit of work. My dd doesn't like re-writing Biblical Models, so I rewrite 2-3 of those for each level. You have to pick out vocab, pick out word work, pick out sentence work, pick out paragraph work and then provide yourself with all the answers. It isn't horrendous just a lot of leg work. I think the hardest thing was to find a good model to begin with. The first one I did for Homer was a bit too ambitious, and gave me a lot of trouble. The second one I chose a much simpler passage and it was much easier.

 

Heather

 

 

 

Thank you. I'm not sure how badly I want this. I'm glad to hear others are doing it though. I guess I just wondered how many of you were attempting it.

 

:tongue_smilie:I'll let you know if I decide to try it.

[Renai]

I hate to hijack, but I wanted to start a thread on this too. How easy is it to use the TM without the student book and plug your own material in for assignments?? I am looking at Homer.

 

TIA!

 

:bigear:

 

I got CW long before the student book even existed (it was originally written to the teacher to devise her own program, although there were many suggestions), and used it as a base for a Spanish writing program. So, yeah, it can be done. But, also, yeah, what Heather said.

[lovemykids]

I got CW long before the student book even existed (it was originally written to the teacher to devise her own program, although there were many suggestions), and used it as a base for a Spanish writing program. So, yeah, it can be done. But, also, yeah, what Heather said.

 

 

Thank you, yes, that’s what I remember. There originally wasn’t a student workbook, so they changed the core book to only be used with the workbook? I think I will try and figure it out! ;)

[Renai]

Thank you, yes, that’s what I remember. There originally wasn’t a student workbook, so they changed the core book to only be used with the workbook? I think I will try and figure it out! ;)

 

I think I worded that badly. To be honest, I still have the old book so don't know what the core book looks like now. But, I've seen many posts here stating you don't need the workbook, it just makes things easier. I'm assuming the core book is the same.