Anyone use Calvert?

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

I am considering Calvert with ATS support or Kolbe even though I have just about everything I need to homeschool without them seeing as I am a bit of a curriculum junkie:D

 

Anyone use Calvert here? Any opinions? It seems pretty solid but perhaps not as meaty as K12 but I could be very wrong:D

 

I appreciate any thoughts.:) The main reason I am considering it is to give my ds some outside accountability as well;)

[wtrmlnlabs]

I did not like Calvert, it's very writing intensive. DS8 is not a fan of writing at all so it didn't work well for us. I found it dry and he just hated it.

[rosesinsummer]

A good friend of ours, whose children are now heading for college, used Calvert during early elementary years, K-5th. She later stopped homeschooling and put them all in Chicago area Catholic schools. They excelled ahead of their peers, and her daughter was recently accepted into a prestigious Chicago high school.

 

I guess what I'm saying is the program is rigorous and will provide a great education.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

I did not like Calvert, it's very writing intensive. DS8 is not a fan of writing at all so it didn't work well for us. I found it dry and he just hated it.

 

Is it writing intensive in the sense that the students do a lots writing such as essays and papers or do you mean just worksheet type busy work?

 

I like worksheets as long as it is not overkill. I am hoping for a program that fosters strong writers as well. I also hope the ATS provides good feedback on papers as well.

[UmMusa]

I looked into a little. I've homeshooled just one year so far, so I was curious what Calvert was about. In the end I chose to follow TWTM mostly because I didn't think the laid-out lesson plans would work for our schedule.

 

A friend of mine has 5 (or is it 7) children, and they all use Calvert with the ATS. Her oldest is in high school. It works for them, and she's been using it for a few years. I didn't get much positive feedback when I asked about it here, though :D

[AHASRADA]

It really is a good place to start. You might not get great feedback from veterans, because we typically want to put together our own curriculum, but that is very overwhelming.

 

I would not suggest Calvert for a student who has great difficulty reading, who is extremely hands-on and doesn't learn well from books. Calvert is quite traditional, most likely the way we were taught in school (if you went to a good school :)

 

It may be a good fit for you and your child, or you may decide you want to try doing your own thing later on, when you get a better feel for what homeschooling means for your family. Yes, a lot of moms can put together a more fun, more individualized program for their kids. However, if you don't feel ready or capable of that quite yet, I would give Calvert a try. It really is a solid, well-rounded program.

 

We did Grade 7 here, and enjoyed it for the most part.

 

HTH,

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

Is it good for gifted children? DS reads at highschool level or higher and is a science nut and history nut as well:D It is sometimes scary how much he knows like his Dad:D

[Aurelia]

As a general rule, a boxed curriculum will not be good for a gifted child because they progress at a more rapid rate and/or are on different levels for different subjects. I did the Pre-K with Ariel, who is advanced, when she was 3. I kind of wish I hadn't spent the money. We could have read a bunch of books and played with play-doh and gotten about as much out of it.

[...................]

We use Calvert. We have used Pre-K, K, and are now using 2nd and 4th.

 

It looks like your ds will be in 4th grade. Calvert 4th is fantastic, and the writing instruction is excellent. The writing instruction teaches in a very step by step but not overly detailed manner. It makes complete sense to me and my son has turned out 3 compositions so far that he enjoyed and which impressed me. CHOW is used as the history text and many of the writing assignments are tied to CHOW.

 

I am really loving Calvert 4th grade. My ds also reads way above level, and has already read Robinson Crusoe unabridged. However, he is not complaining about reading the abridged version and we have had some good discussions regarding it with the Calvert Manual's discussion prompts.

 

We completely took out the Phonics book because A: It's not phonics, just reading practice and called Phonics, and B: The manual says to skip it if your student is proficient at reading.

 

The Vocab book is OK, though I believe students learn vocab best by reading excellent literature.

 

The Science is a toss-up. My ds is a huge Science buff and has explored all kinds of advanced topics. On the other hand, he never learned what the makeup of a cell is, or how to Classify animals. So therefore, although we considered him "ahead" in Science, he was missing many key topics that are often introduced at this age. It jumps around a LOT. About every 5 pages is a completely new topic. But that's typical of public school type Science so I wasn't surprised. Again, my kids have learned a lot of new information, they are retaining it and they like it. So even though I as a Classical-ish homeschooler, frowned upon it, it's working. shrug.

 

My son struggles with Spelling and has never really had any success with it until now. HE is doing absolutely amazing with Calvert's Online spelling lessons, the 6 Step Spelling Method, and the spellling lists in Everyday Spelling. Calvert 4th uses the Everyday Spelling BOOK as more of just the list, and an enrichment. I skip half the assignments in it, as advised to me by the Ed Counselor. The REAL spelling is the Online spelling program and the 6 step spelling method, and the manual.

 

Overall we are very pleased with Calvert 4th and I consider it to be very worthwhile. I'm not sure I will continue with Calvert next year, but having the daily manual, not having to plan or think about anything, and still having a plan that flows together and meshes well has been great.

 

One thing I have noticed in both my daughter's Calvert Math and my son's entire 4th grade course is that Calvert makes students think. There is almost never a time when filling in a blank in a big hurry will work. There is not a stress on quick easy rote memory. Students have to use what they learned, and think about the answers. Kids that are in a hurry really can benefit from this. My son who is a depth first learner, always thinks carefully, and gets extra practice with Calvert. My daughter who is in a big hurry and breadth first, has REALLY benefited from this aspect of Calvert.

 

PS The 2nd grade is nothing like the 4th grade, and I imagine that the 3rd grade is closer to the 2nd grade. However my dd likes it and she is learning well, and again, it does make her think a bit more than she had to when just doing copywork, or just filling in workbooks and reading.

 

Hope all this info helps. Again, with any gifted learner, school in a box is always a bit risky. But it depends on where he is gifted, and what gaps or goals you would like to cover. :o)

[wtrmlnlabs]

Is it writing intensive in the sense that the students do a lots writing such as essays and papers or do you mean just worksheet type busy work?

 

I like worksheets as long as it is not overkill. I am hoping for a program that fosters strong writers as well. I also hope the ATS provides good feedback on papers as well.

 

 

No, more writing intensive as in essays and such. I was using it through a cyber school and Calvert was trying to add more to it (long story, I had the previous years books) and I was flipping out. Poor DS has trouble writing a sentence let alone the essays they were asking for... this was 2nd grade Calvert by the way. We dropped the cyber school and home school him myself now.

[morgan]

We used Calvert with ATS for 4th-7th and have used Kolbe with their EES for 9th & 10th and plan to continue with Kolbe for the remainder of high school.

 

In our experience, Calvert is very reading/writing intensive, but my daughter learned a lot. She especially enjoyed 4th and 5th grades. However, she found the tests a bit overwhelming and hard to study for. However, Calvert has great customer service and lets you know when they receive your materials, etc. and overall we enjoyed their ATS service and the feedback was very helpful and kept my daughter motivated.

 

We've found that Kolbe is also very reading/writing intensive, and we've heard a lot of people say it's just too much work (but my daughter thinks the workload is actually less than Calvert was), and the tests ask you to recall the information that you've gone over thoroughly, so, there aren't any surprises when it comes to the tests. With Kolbe you can send in any assigments for grading, whereas Calvert requires the tests and particular papers, etc. So the flexibility with Kolbe was a plus for us.

 

The Kolbe forums are helpful, but their customer service and EES aren't up to that of Calvert IMHO. Kolbe is also very Classical and Catholic, whereas Calvert is secular and only so-so classical in content. The lessons manuals are both very helpful and easy to follow. We think they are both good programs, it just depends on what you are looking for.

[pahansen]

Hi. We've used nothing but Calvert so far. My oldest (also gifted) just completed 2nd grade with 3rd grade math. This year we'll be doing our own curriculum, but I wrote a pretty long reply about Calvert that you might want to read here.

 

Yes, I think Calvert is "meaty." I haven't done K12, but I think that the fact that parents are teaching the Calvert material means that you will make it as meaty as you want it. There is certainly plenty that you could gloss over, but one of my favorite things about Calvert is the fact that it has launched some great discussion time. I have a secondary Social Studies teaching degree, and I think that their Social Studies curriculum has been fantastic.

 

Also, I totally agree with the person who said that a child who is not a strong writer may not do well with Calvert. The writing assignments are very intensive, IMO. One of the assignments during the last quarter was to write an extra chapter at the end of a chapter book we'd read. You were supposed to use characters from the previous chapters; devise a new problem and solution; have a beginning, middle, and end; and use lots of dialogue with proper quotation. In my mind, that is not a 2nd grade assignment. In the last month of 2nd grade, the writing assignments were mostly paragraphs, with children writing a different style of paragraph each day. And Calvert's examples of paragraphs aren't chumpy, either. They have high expectations.

 

While there was some guidance for teaching how to write, I felt that it was too much, too quickly. I can't imagine that the ATS could really be of much help there, but I could be wrong. That said, if your child flourishes doing Calvert's writing program, he will definitely be a good writer.

 

As far as worksheets are concerned, there are a lot of them. It would make primarily hands-on learners cringe. Since almost none of the worksheets are collected after the K level, we did the ones that were beneficial and skipped the ones he already knew well. I did like most of the worksheets. I'm a worksheet girl myself, and so are my kiddos.

 

The other problem you may encounter is that a gifted child will probably not fit into a pat 2nd grade or 4th grade curriculum, and Calvert is not really flexible, except for the ability to do a different grade in math. I go into more detail about that in the other post, and that's the primary reason why we're discontinuing it.

 

I didn't use Calvert's ATS, but we used a cyber school that provides its own Calvert trained teachers. Using the teacher as a "heavy" was sometimes useful -- it especially minimized argument when there was work that was required -- but it can also backfire. You really want the kids to be pleasing you with their work and putting in a good effort on a daily basis, not just putting in a heroic effort on one test and three writing submissions every 20 lessons. Any day to day struggles you have will probably not be fixed by having the outside accountability. In some ways they may intensify.

 

For example, I think that the accountability to the school has done a great deal to harm my son's love of writing. He had some fine motor/pencil grip issues for K and 1st grade, and even though he is a fantastic narrator and a very creative composer, he falls apart when he gets to the physical act of writing things down. His handwriting abilities just couldn't keep up with his mind or Calvert's writing expectations. The fact that the writing assignments were usually quite long/involved just exacerbated the problem. As it was, generally he dictated the story/paragraph to me, I wrote it, and he wrote it as dictation. So in some ways the accountability is good, but there's a flip side as well. If I hadn't had to be accountable to the teacher, we would have done writing much, much differently.

 

In reality, I found that I was the one who was accountable to the teacher, not my child, since I was the one who was responsible for teaching, collecting work samples, sending them in, and (because of their young ages) receiving the feedback. On the other hand, a good note from the teacher always went a long way with the kids.

 

I'm not saying that Calvert isn't good or worthwhile, just that you should know what to expect first, especially considering how expensive it is. It really was a fantastic way to enter into the homeschooling process, because it is all laid out for you and because, once the box arrives, you're ready to go. I don't think you can go wrong with the curriculum -- it is very good. It's just nice to be able to know if it'll be right for your child.

 

If you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me.

 

Good luck,

Pamela

[TracyR]

I've used it for 1,2,3,4, and 5th grades. I don't mind it much for the 1st or 2nd grade , third grade was a big jump.

We never liked the science at all for any of the grades we used Calvert. It is so dry and boring and you jump from one topic to the next, it was just way to choppy for us. It seemed as though we studied about the same topics in each grade but the words were just getting bigger. LOL I had to supplement it A LOT to get us through it. I could see my daughters' eyes just glaze over.

The history was boring and dry. I skipped it altogether for 1st and 2nd grade. Third grade was pure torture and 5th was dry and boring. The only level we cared for was 4th with CHOW.

 

Spelling was okay. It was much better than it was before they added the new spelling books. We just used the spelling books. My girls never played much with the games because they just do the same things over and over.

 

The writing , either you like it or you don't. I tried really hard to like it. But my girls really struggled with it as well as I. If you need some hand holding to teach writing this is NOT the program for you. I will say I liked it for 1st and 2nd as it used dictation ( more for 2nd than 1st , it started towards the end of 1st). After that 3rd was more like pick a from a list of topics and write a paragraph. It doesn't give you anything to show you how to teach them to write a proper sentence or exercises in how to write a thought down on paper. It just dives right into the deep end. Now if you have a natural writer. One that will sit and write novels in their diaries or in notebooks all over the house. Well then this may be a good thing for you.

 

Their grammar is HORRIBLE with a capital H. I am so disappointed in their grammar its not funny. There is some grammar from 1-3rd grade. But its more oral work. If you don't have a child that works well with that. Well forget it. Then they dive in with grammar for 4th and up but there is very little practice. Its written towards the student from about 5th and on but my daughter couldn't stand it. Just not enough practice period. By the end of 5th my daughter still didn't know what the heck a noun was. I had to go to the library and find those story books that taught about grammar and puncuation like " Punctuation takes a Vacation" and " Nouns and Verbs have a Field Day." To finally drive the point.

 

The math is okay. I have used better. But its not the worst either. The manuals are terribly put together and aren't worth the paper that are written on sad to say. Nothing like their main manual.

 

I will say we loved their literature picks. Don't regret those at all. My daughters attended Catholic school last year and the books my daughter was reading for 7th grade she read back in 4th and 5th grade with Calvert. So I do like their literature selections.

 

I can say though after using Calvert for all those years my girls did not excel in private school in the way everyone talks about. The only thing they got out of it was the fact they read books beyond their peers at a much earlier age , and had we not read CHOW I think they would hate history. I was terribly disappointed with it.

We stuck with it so long because we just couldn't afford to homeschool on our own at the time. We still can't. But I refuse to go back to it. K12 is 1,000% meatier than Calvert. But its also 1,000% more time and teacher intensive if you have more than 1 or 2 children doing the curriculum. I really liked K12 MUCH better than Calvert but using it with a cyberschool really killed a good curriculum.

 

I've heard good things about Kolbe. I haven't used it though so can't comment if it would be better or not.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

I've used it for 1,2,3,4, and 5th grades. I don't mind it much for the 1st or 2nd grade , third grade was a big jump.

We never liked the science at all for any of the grades we used Calvert. It is so dry and boring and you jump from one topic to the next, it was just way to choppy for us. It seemed as though we studied about the same topics in each grade but the words were just getting bigger. LOL I had to supplement it A LOT to get us through it. I could see my daughters' eyes just glaze over.

The history was boring and dry. I skipped it altogether for 1st and 2nd grade. Third grade was pure torture and 5th was dry and boring. The only level we cared for was 4th with CHOW.

 

Spelling was okay. It was much better than it was before they added the new spelling books. We just used the spelling books. My girls never played much with the games because they just do the same things over and over.

 

The writing , either you like it or you don't. I tried really hard to like it. But my girls really struggled with it as well as I. If you need some hand holding to teach writing this is NOT the program for you. I will say I liked it for 1st and 2nd as it used dictation ( more for 2nd than 1st , it started towards the end of 1st). After that 3rd was more like pick a from a list of topics and write a paragraph. It doesn't give you anything to show you how to teach them to write a proper sentence or exercises in how to write a thought down on paper. It just dives right into the deep end. Now if you have a natural writer. One that will sit and write novels in their diaries or in notebooks all over the house. Well then this may be a good thing for you.

 

Their grammar is HORRIBLE with a capital H. I am so disappointed in their grammar its not funny. There is some grammar from 1-3rd grade. But its more oral work. If you don't have a child that works well with that. Well forget it. Then they dive in with grammar for 4th and up but there is very little practice. Its written towards the student from about 5th and on but my daughter couldn't stand it. Just not enough practice period. By the end of 5th my daughter still didn't know what the heck a noun was. I had to go to the library and find those story books that taught about grammar and puncuation like " Punctuation takes a Vacation" and " Nouns and Verbs have a Field Day." To finally drive the point.

 

The math is okay. I have used better. But its not the worst either. The manuals are terribly put together and aren't worth the paper that are written on sad to say. Nothing like their main manual.

 

I will say we loved their literature picks. Don't regret those at all. My daughters attended Catholic school last year and the books my daughter was reading for 7th grade she read back in 4th and 5th grade with Calvert. So I do like their literature selections.

 

I can say though after using Calvert for all those years my girls did not excel in private school in the way everyone talks about. The only thing they got out of it was the fact they read books beyond their peers at a much earlier age , and had we not read CHOW I think they would hate history. I was terribly disappointed with it.

We stuck with it so long because we just couldn't afford to homeschool on our own at the time. We still can't. But I refuse to go back to it. K12 is 1,000% meatier than Calvert. But its also 1,000% more time and teacher intensive if you have more than 1 or 2 children doing the curriculum. I really liked K12 MUCH better than Calvert but using it with a cyberschool really killed a good curriculum.

 

I've heard good things about Kolbe. I haven't used it though so can't comment if it would be better or not.

 

Have you used K12 for 4th grade and up? Is it still meatier than Calvert for 4th grade and up? I appreciate any feedback.

 

I like K12 too except for the lack of textbooks to go along with the online component for history, science, and art. We did enjoy those course though. I have access to a cyber school for K12 but I think I don't want to use it again. Calvert is definitely cheaper for full time enrollment as well.