Satori Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 (edited) When my daughter was 4-5 years, there were all these MCT threads on this board. Since it was for 3rd/4th grade students, I promptly ignored them. But this year it's become apparent that DD6 is advanced in Language Arts, so I picked up the whole MCT Island level. Now that I'm totally ready to discuss this program, there are minimal MCT threads! I've spent lots of time reading old posts and schedules. I'm working out our MCT schedule, as we're almost done with Grammar Island and ready to incorporate Music of the Hemisphere, Building Language, Practice Island and Sentence Island. Due to previous suggestions, once we finish Grammar Island, I think we'll do one sentence of Practice Island everyday. We'll move right into MotH (poetry) right away, later incorporating Building Language (vocab), as people said that concepts in those books are used in the writing book. Halfway through those books, we'll incorporate Sentence Island. Who here still uses it or is thinking about using it? Thoughts on how it's working out? What days do you do the books? Edited June 5, 2011 by Satori Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamakim Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 We still use it here, but I'm not much help as far as scheduling. I have three who move through it together, and we do some every day, but once we move through the foundational book of a level, the children choose which book we'll use each day. Then one sentence from the practice book. So we don't formally schedule out the books, although we get through them. MCT really works for us, at least for the last two years that we've used it. Can't see switching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lillysmom216 Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 Satori, Do you need the teacher manual as well as student workbook? I was just sitting down to order this and it looks like I just need the teacher manual if I only have one child. Am I correct? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trish Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 My son LOVES the poetry book. We do a handful of pages a day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satori Posted June 5, 2011 Author Share Posted June 5, 2011 Satori, Do you need the teacher manual as well as student workbook? I was just sitting down to order this and it looks like I just need the teacher manual if I only have one child. Am I correct? I think if you wanted to just buy one, you could get the teacher manual. Any sentences that need to be worked on could be written on a sheet of paper or up on the whiteboard. The program is just too expensive to buy both copies for all the books, especially if you have multiple children to use it with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TracyP Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 I've wondered the same thing. I don't know what happened...and the Hummer???:toetap05: is apparently not being offered any longer. I think a few of those mommas have moved on to the hs board or maybe the newness/excitement just wore off. Anyway, we just started our summer break but we are about 1/2 way through GI. We were just going through it for about 20 min per day, 4 days per week. We also plan to hit MOH before SI but I'm not sure where BL is going to fit in there yet. My dd likes it and is retaining it. The only problem we have is that she is always in a HUGE hurry to get through it. She likes to do the reading and I have to work hard to get her to stop and discuss. She just wants to race through the it. I am VERY impressed at what she is grasping. I am less impressed with the teacher help. It is okay so far but my brain would like a bit more hand holding than MCT offers. However, since it has been okay so far, maybe I will learn as we go and be fine. I showed the Island package to my mom and she went crazy. (in a good way) She went on and on about how all kids should be taught this way, how much more she would have learned, how poetry gets neglected. I expected the complete opposite. I hope I can continue to teach it because I feel the same way. My daughter could fill in the blank all day long - MCT is actually making her think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dana Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 We used Island level last year. The Basic homeschool package has what you need - teacher's manuals for books that can work with just them, teacher & student books for ones that need both (Practice books in particular). I like supplementing with Rex Barks for sentence diagramming. The Elementary Curriculum Guide shows MCT's recommendations on when to implement parts of the program (towards bottom of page). There's a support group (forums) through the Royal Fireworks page and a yahoo group (no longer as active as it used to be). My son really enjoyed Sentence Island. He's sad that Mud isn't in Paragraph Town. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satori Posted June 5, 2011 Author Share Posted June 5, 2011 Thanks everyone! I've pretty much memorized the MCT recommendation/slide show. I also found some great schedule on here, WTM, and the Yahoo board, both of which I joined recently. But I also have read that some of the schedules might be outdated now (due to new edition), and that some prefer to do them in a different order to take advantage of concepts learned. I think I'm ready to go ahead and just schedule. Yep, I'm a total scheduler, and I adjust as I go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radiobrain Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 Well, I know I was burned out about talking about it. I felt like I was having to reexplain everything over and over. There were also too many weird arguments about things that I thought were silly. I mean really, any LA curriculum that is taught well will do its job, right? We all have different tastes/priorities/styles. It was getting tedious. I am also limiting my forum responding time as well. I was babbling a bit too much, if you know what I mean. We still use it, still love it... but we are getting to the real meat of the matter (end of voyage level, going into level 4) and my kids are needing to be separated more. My younger one needs more time with it. We used to do it together, now that is just not possible. It takes up a bit more of my time than before. Middle school/logic stage is kicking my butt! I am a block scheduler, meaning I schedule for the month... so I am of no help there! ;) I just break it into units. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuovonne Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 I think that by default the search engine doesn't search very old posts. I've had trouble finding old posts. Sometimes I can find them if I use the advanced search options and know exactly what to search for. I'm sure the posts are still there, they are just hard to find. Probably not what you want, but here's an old MCT love-fest thread. http://welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142955 As for using MCT with a younger child, you might have been reading some of my posts. I started Island Level with DD when she was about your DD's age. (Language Arts is my DD's strong subject, but not as strong as your DD.) Here's what worked for us. We started with Grammar Island. On thing I did establish in Grammar Island was reading and discussing the pages slowly. DD wanted to get on with the book and at first I had to really slow her down and prevent her from turning the page until we were done discussing the page. Some days, especially on the little stories, we did only one or two pages because there is so much that you can discuss. My DD had no prior grammar and it took her a long time to get through Grammar Island. So, once we got through the parts of speech, we started Practice Island, about one sentence per day, doing only the first level of analysis. After we finished Grammar Island we went back and did the other levels of analysis. If you DD flies through Grammar Island, there is no point in starting Practice Island early. We did 2-5 sentences in Practice Island until we finished the book. After we did Grammar Island we did Music of the Hemispheres. I got this recommendation from one of the other moms on this list. I recommend doing at least least the following chapters in MotH before starting Sentence Island: 1, 2, 3, and 6. These poetic techniques are used throughout Sentence Island and you will be able to better appreciate them in SI if you learn about them first. Sentence Island concentrates on what makes a sentence. It is not an in-depth writing program, but it gives the student (and teacher) the vocabulary to discuss sentence level writing. Be sure to check out the teacher's section in the back of the book. I had DD pick out and do one writing activity per chapter. I recommend doing *all* of MotH before doing Building Language. MCT wrote many poems for BL and I found reading and analyzing those poems to be a wonderful followup/reinforcement of the concepts in MotH. BL will not get your child memorizing a lot of vocabulary, but it will teach your child that words are made of different morphemes (stems) and that words have a history. If you expect BL to grow your child's vocabulary, you will probably be disappointed. If you treat it as simply an introduction to vocabulary study and thinking about words, BL can be a delight. Many people skip the assignments in BL (mostly writing poems). However, if you've done MotH already, these assignments are worth tackling. Don't expect your child to write great poetry every time, but you will probably be pleasantly suprised by some neat phrases and ideas here and there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satori Posted June 5, 2011 Author Share Posted June 5, 2011 This is extremely helpful, thanks so much Kuovonne! I've been using google to search the forums on old mct threads, but I didn't read some of the good ones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.