ubermomto5 Posted February 3, 2010 Share Posted February 3, 2010 we're going to try cw with my 5th grade daughter. i've read all the threads i can find and checked the cw website and i'm still a bit confused. she 'gets' grammar, is a great reader and speller, but it does sound very..concentrated and we're not used to that. i'm certain aesop a is not for her, but this... "begin in Homer Workbook A if they can accurately retell longer narrative and have mastered the grammar skills covered Aesop." from the website is not helping me figure out if she has the 'grammar skills covered'. can anyone help me out? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elfinbaby Posted February 3, 2010 Share Posted February 3, 2010 I have NO experience with CW but, next year, I'm placing my (will be) 6th grader in the book for Older students. I think it's for 7th graders; however, I'm confident that he'll do fine. Did you look at this page http://home.att.net/~classicalwriting/Older_Beginners.htm Google Harvey's grammar and you should find a free copy you can look through to see what kind of grammar is ahead. Harvey's doesn't look intimidating to me but I've been putting ds through the ringer this year. Anyway, the site notes that if your student has little grammar experience, it will simply take her longer to get through the material. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MariannNOVA Posted February 3, 2010 Share Posted February 3, 2010 we're going to try cw with my 5th grade daughter. i've read all the threads i can find and checked the cw website and i'm still a bit confused. she 'gets' grammar, is a great reader and speller, but it does sound very..concentrated and we're not used to that. i'm certain aesop a is not for her, but this..."begin in Homer Workbook A if they can accurately retell longer narrative and have mastered the grammar skills covered Aesop." from the website is not helping me figure out if she has the 'grammar skills covered'. can anyone help me out? I did homer with my fifth grade DD at the beginning of the school year. We liked it, she liked it -- we did switch to something else, however, but only because I was not committed to CW for the long haul (and I should mention that I LOVE Aesop - I was using that with the twins). You say that your DD is a great reader -- I would have to say on that basis, you should give Homer Workbook A a try and it will probably work well for you. I do have an AESOP workbook and TM back at my house -- if you'd like, I can get my hands on them tomorrow when I head over there and check out 'grammar skills.' Let me know -- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialmama Posted February 3, 2010 Share Posted February 3, 2010 Here's a post where I asked Siloam (Heather) the same question. ;) I ended up getting my dd Homer (mid-year gr. 5) and it has been going great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubermomto5 Posted February 3, 2010 Author Share Posted February 3, 2010 thank you for all the wise advice. the link to the previous post helped a lot too! thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MariannNOVA Posted February 3, 2010 Share Posted February 3, 2010 thank you for all the wise advice. the link to the previous post helped a lot too! thanks! Heather was a huge help to me when I was wrapping my brain around Homer. Glad that someone remembered! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siloam Posted February 4, 2010 Share Posted February 4, 2010 we're going to try cw with my 5th grade daughter. i've read all the threads i can find and checked the cw website and i'm still a bit confused. she 'gets' grammar, is a great reader and speller, but it does sound very..concentrated and we're not used to that. i'm certain aesop a is not for her, but this..."begin in Homer Workbook A if they can accurately retell longer narrative and have mastered the grammar skills covered Aesop." from the website is not helping me figure out if she has the 'grammar skills covered'. can anyone help me out? My own post is too long to read. :D Aesop covers the parts of speech, with book B having diagramming exercises (they are listed as optional). Homer A again covers parts of speech, this time the diagramming is not optional. Homer B moves into phrases and clauses. As long as she already knows the parts of speech, and can parse a sentence, she should be fine starting with Homer A. Heather Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siloam Posted February 4, 2010 Share Posted February 4, 2010 I have NO experience with CW but, next year, I'm placing my (will be) 6th grader in the book for Older students. I think it's for 7th graders; however, I'm confident that he'll do fine. Did you look at this page http://home.att.net/~classicalwriting/Older_Beginners.htm Google Harvey's grammar and you should find a free copy you can look through to see what kind of grammar is ahead. Harvey's doesn't look intimidating to me but I've been putting ds through the ringer this year. Anyway, the site notes that if your student has little grammar experience, it will simply take her longer to get through the material. You know your child better than I. The authors of CW recommend waiting till 7th to do older beginners because it covers so much material-all of Aesop A, Aesop B, Homer A and Homer B in one year. I wouldn't attempt it with a child younger than 7th grade unless you planned to take two weeks to cover a model or they were strong in grammar (parsing and diagramming, including clauses and phrases) and was the type of child who liked a challenge. My oldest is pretty academic (6th grade), but she finds the Homer weeks to be a lot of work. Not that it is overly hard, just a high volume. Breaking the model into scenes, identifying important details and unimportant, writing summaries of each Act and Scene, doing the word work, the six sentence shuffle, the paragraph work and the rewrite. With 1 pages stories it isn't bad, but with 3+ page stories there is a lot of to do. In O/B I would suspect the hardest part would be the constant change. With Homer A you generally lean a new skill, then the next couple of weeks you will apply it in different ways (one a week). With O/B I suspect you learn it then you jump to applying in all the different ways the next week, then the 3rd week you are on to a new skill. Not saying it can't be done with a 6th grader, but if you have doubts at all I would start with Homer A instead. Heather Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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