For those of you who follow TWTM, do you use Teacher File Box or Evan Moor materials?

[Happy2BaMom]

I purchased a subscription to TeacherFileBox.com last year through Homeschool Buyer's Co-op. I haven't really used it much (our schedule was pretty full this year - will be less so this next year), so I'm thinking I'm not going to renew it. However, I get the Evan Moor catalog and look through it and think "oh, that would be neat", "oh, this would be neat" (just to mix things up a little bit), but I'm not sure we need it, really.

 

We largely follow TWTM's suggestions. I know people on this board use a variety of materials and philosophies; I'm hopeful some of you other WTM followers will comment - do you use these type of supplemental material? Do you find them worthwhile? How do you incorporate them?

 

Just curious.:bigear:

[JudoMom]

I use Daily Word Problems and Daily Handwriting Practice. My ds7 is using Beginning Geography, and I'm using the new 7 Continent series and Fabulous Sentences and Paragraphs with my older 3.

 

All of these suit a particular need in our school, and I consider myself a WTM follower.

[Satori]

:bigear: We're using Evan Moor materials as well, so I'm wondering if their Teacher File Box would be so complete that we wouldn't have to purchase all the separate workbooks.

 

We're happily using the following Evan-Moor resources:

• 7 Continent Series/Geography Units (currently doing Africa on both)
  
• Daily 6-Trait Writing
  
• A Word a Day
  
• Daily Paragraph Editing
  

My daughter enjoys workbooks and the daily language arts workbooks take only 10-15 minutes or so for all of them, even though we do a week's worth at a time. If she didn't enjoy language arts, workbooks, and geography so much, I wouldn't use the above resources. You can see in my sig our main programs we're using. I definitely consider us WTM-focused homeschoolers.

[Halcyon]

We're using, or going to be using, Daily Geography 4, Fairy Tale Math (wonderful), Dazzling Math Designs (I think that's the name; we love it), Blackline World Maps and a few others. My youngest really enjoys "mixing it up" when it comes to worksheets and such so I like the flexibility of having a number of workbooks and activities to pick from.

 

Does the TeacherFileBox subscription allow access to all the Evan Moor stuff?

 

ETA: oops---i realize now that most of those I listed were from Scholastic Teacher Express. Sorry! We do like Evan Moor Daily Geography!

Edited April 6, 2011 by Halcyon

[FairProspects]

We used a unit on Pilgrims/Native Americans successfully last year, and are going to be adding their Geography books as per LCC recs soon.

 

Of course, my kids are still young and we still have time in our day for some fun supplements and cutting/pasting. I don't know if I would feel differently about them if my kids were upper grammar or early logic stage.

[Tammyla]

We don't use either of those here, but I think I'm a TWTM old-timer.

[Dmmetler]

I use quite a bit of Evan Moor and Scholastic, but again, my DD is young and fairly writing-phobic, and enjoys the supplements. We use history pockets, some of the daily stuff, and the occasional math worksheet when DD needs extra practice or just something fun. I figure I probably spent $70 on the Scholastic $1 downloads last year, so hopefully Teacher File Box will be equally well used. I think it will especially be helpful for Science, where I tended to have ideas, but not follow through beyond the "box of books from the library", because a lot of their activities include the hands-on suggestions while still having the worksheet/workbooky stuff my DD thrives on. We're doing a unit on rocks/minerals right now, and I'm using parts of Daily Science, The Big Book of Science and a couple of other Evan Moor books (it was this that pushed me over the edge to going ahead and subscribing to Teacher File box-I realized that buying the books I wanted to buy at the teacher's store was about half the price right there, for ONE unit-and they were all Evan Moor!).

[GTJo1996]

I have just read TWTM 3rd ed. and will be converting my DD7 to this method for next year. I have used EM's geography this year and honestly wasn't really impressed with its depth, but I only needed a introductory Geog book and it seemed to fit the bill. The text seems to be awfully basic and they could have expanded on basic types of maps without getting too far advanced. The Teacher File Box deal would equate to the price of about 3 workbooks, so if you are going to need 3 or more textbooks, it's probably worth the deal to buy into TFB. I guess I would hesitate to rely on EM as a primary resource for a major subject, but it's just fine for a secondary subject. On the other hand, there are soo many free worksheet resources out there, why spend the $90 on TFB when you can pull fillers for free - unless you're short on time and need it all in one place. I'm only HSing one child so for me it's better to save cash and pull from multiple free websites.