Those of You Who Use MFW High School

[1Togo]

I have posted several threads about my plans for dd's high school years. I am still trying to make a decision between several options. MFW is one of those options. Can you give me an approximate time for the daily MFW work? Also, what does the student do with the Notgrass spine? Does the student take notes, outline, and build a notebook as in WTM? Does she take the corresponding tests?

 

I appreciate the time everyone has taken to respond to my questions.

 

Bonita

Edited August 2, 2010 by 1Togo
Corrections

[cbollin]

My oldest is only finished through week 4 of the first year (AHL).

 

for daily work in MFW. about 3 hours to do all Bible/history/English assignments. that's the mfw stuff

Then she's also doing Geometry, Biology and Russian. So she's doing school for all subjects and taking about 5-6 hours a day.

 

In logic years in MFW we did outlining of texts. But in AHL and especially with the Notgrass book, it's a little different. She's using the Notgrass review questions as another way to "outline" the information and process it. So instead of making an outline, we use what is in the "quiz/exam book" with the review questions to follow the chapters in logical order and look for comprehension that way.

Those review questions seem to follow along the order of the text and also ask for a little bit of thinking and processing. The way MFW schedules the readings in Notgrass chapters makes it not useful to use the multiple choice end of unit quizzes. In other words, the Notgrass schedule in MFW isn't start at chapter 1 and work through. It gets arranged to fit a slightly different order. So, using the multiple choices quizzes in there gets to be less needed. I keep looking at them and thinking there might be a way to use them eventually? but I'm not worried about it unless we start to get to need "extra credit" or something.

 

So the history notebooking in AHL includes answering the review questions, writing of some essays to process even through discussions and thinking. And they build a very large timeline. There is map work involved too. Some essays from Notgrass spine are part of the history grade instead of the quizzes.

 

here, take a look on the online sample starting around page 8 to see more break down of the grading involved with history and page 8 for English grading.

http://mfwbooks.com/pdf/ahlsample.pdf

that shows how it's broken down for even a tired mom like me to know what to grade and calculate all of that. I'm very thankful for it!

 

English has plenty of reading going on and learning to focus on writing the argumentative essay.

 

Bible, she's reading through the entire Old Testament and has to answer review/comprehension questions along the way. We do a service project with it too.

 

We're only 4 weeks into it. Liking it a lot.

 

-crystal

[1Togo]

Crystal,

 

Thank you for the thorough reply. Six hours per day seems reasonable for our daughter. She's doing about 4.5 to 5 hours per day now for 8th grade. I planned to include logic, but that may be too much. The history/literature suggestions in WTM seem doable, but I just don't know about putting everything together. I go back and forth. Perhaps I should order MFW and go through it. Then, I can make a decision.

 

Bonita

[Nicoleab2]

My dd just finished AHL and she loved it. It took her 3-4 hours. She said sometimes it did take her longer. She had plenty of writing and answering questions. We just bought WHL and she is so excited about getting started.

HTH Nicole

[Donna A.]

My dd just finished AHL and she loved it. It took her 3-4 hours. She said sometimes it did take her longer. She had plenty of writing and answering questions. We just bought WHL and she is so excited about getting started.

HTH Nicole

 

I assume the 3-4 hours is just for the MFW assignments, not including math and science? Right? It takes my dd *about* 3 hours, sometimes closer to 4 and sometimes closer to 2-1/2 for just MFW. Math and science are more, and sometimes there's writing or research "homework" from MFW that needs to get done.

 

LOTS of writing and research in MFW high school. ;) There are some "projects", too, like learning the Greek alphabet, a Proverbs memory project, and completing the chart of Kings of Israel (to name a few from AHL).