Karie Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Okay, granted, I'm only on week 2, but MFW (the history part) is just too easy for him. Very little writing is expected except summaries. There is an assignment this week that is optional for older students I plan on having him do, but reading little excerpts from books and then summarizing is even a little too easy for my other son in 5th grade. I'm NOT switching programs, though-too much invested in it and I don't care to figure out history with another program. So, what did you do, if anything, to pump it up a bit for older kids. I'm planning on having them do a short research paper every week, so that will add on some extra writing. Any thoughts? I'm I doing MFW correctly? What am I missing here? :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melmichigan Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 (edited) I can't help with the MFW part. What about adding the IEW US History Based Writing Lessons? Edited August 16, 2011 by melmichigan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blueridge Posted August 16, 2011 Share Posted August 16, 2011 Are you using the book basket lists in the back of the manual? You might assign more books to read on the subjects covered each week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alyeska Posted August 17, 2011 Share Posted August 17, 2011 I beef up the history using the Book Basket recommendations. It took me some time but I scheduled extra reading for all 34 weeks of school using Excel. It doubled the amount of reading time, but is still lighter than a SL core. So it is a perfect fit for us for right now. And I would also second the IEW history based writing lessons...we did that last year with Creation to the Greeks and the lessons fit fairly well with our history lessons. Another thing you could do would be to add some Progeny Press guides to increase the literature analysis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbollin Posted August 17, 2011 Share Posted August 17, 2011 Any thoughts? I'm I doing MFW correctly? What am I missing here? :) Here are some things you might be missing... I've done EX1850 about five years ago which means I've cycled back to it this year. First time I did it with 5th and 2nd grader. It's 5 years later, I have a 7th grader. Yes, it's only week 2. You could have them outlining from SOTW with each reading if you want. In week 1, you have them writing each day in history at least one paragraph in history notebook summary. I'm not sure why that is considered too easy. You could ask them to do 3 paragraphs if needed? Please realize that in week 1 you are reviewing information from the previous year. so yes, it will be lighter in nature. Sometimes even advanced homeschool children have time off in the summer and easing back into school helps everyone have a better start to the year. But some of us see the pace of writing 6 summaries of explorers that first week to be easy but not super overwhelming. Ok, so I let my 7th grader write a little less by the end of the week. When you start in Building a City on a Hill, enjoy the length of the chapters. Oh my! relearning that it was the Puritans who gave us public schools... Other writing: are they doing a writing program? MFW assumes that other writing is taking place in all other subjects so that it doesn't have to be all related to history. MFW recommends Writing Strands for use during "English" time. Also, MFW recommends that you are doing Progeny Press guides in 7th and 8th grade. Those guides have a lot of writing assignments in them. MFW recommends Witch of Blackbird Pond during 1st semester (it will not take all semester of course) and Johnny Tremain in 2nd semester. The students will be copying the entire book of James over the year. That's done in small chunks of course, so that will be easy but worth it. Are you using book basket at all? what about the Henty book listed in week 2? Are you remembering to have your 7th grader use a jr. high science program such as Apologia General? In that program it is assumed they are writing all of the vocab and taking notes. Also, you mentioned about a research paper every week? I'm not sure what you require on that for research. I do want to point out that the State History report done in the last weeks of the program will be a 4-6 week project with library time for research and writing. most "research" papers (well, when I hear that term anyway) tend to be 5-10 pages and takes some time to research. So that is not left out of the program. oh... with the music composers: you could have your students write a one page biography. are they doing Art history book? Another aspect of "doing mfw" has to do with what to do with your time when school is done. MFW works on a CM approach on that.... productive afternoons with less structure. They are big into service projects as a family and stuff like that. They'll have a full year in history and other subjects and hopefully time to add in all of those well rounded thing (i.e. liberal arts education) with music, foreign language, etc. does that help any to see the big picture of the day and week? If you look at just one subject, I agree that it could look as if it is easy too doable so that it isn't good enough. But, at the same time, I could do that while looking at the food in my dinner salad. If I just pull out the food that is on my fork, I'll see a small bite. But by the time I eat the whole bowl of food, it's a big meal and lots of good stuff. I like MFW years are like that. History is only a fork full of the salad. Step back and see the whole bowl for the whole year. -crystal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sassenach Posted August 17, 2011 Share Posted August 17, 2011 If you wanted to add a WTM flair to the program, you could add: *Outlining *Primary Sources *Summary pages (sounds like these are already scheduled) The year I taught 7th (WP Ancients) I added IEW's themed writing program, which was excellent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karie Posted August 17, 2011 Author Share Posted August 17, 2011 Thanks for all your thoughts. I already have a writing program. I am doing the book basket reading as well. I think adding in the extra research papers will probably add what I need, now that I think about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbollin Posted August 17, 2011 Share Posted August 17, 2011 Thanks for all your thoughts. I already have a writing program. I am doing the book basket reading as well. I think adding in the extra research papers will probably add what I need, now that I think about it. I like easy to manage solutions like that one. :) -crystal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics4us Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Hi Karie, I will have a 7th grader next year and have the same question. I wanted to ask you after using Exp to 1850 for a year (school year) did you find that the assignments got (for a lack of a better word) harder? I guess I want to know if it challenged your child or did you still need to add to it to beef it up? If you did beef it up what did you decided to do? Thank you for your time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverMoon Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 I'm not Karie, but I did start out with MFW Exploration-1850 last fall. It was too easy for my sixth grader, to the point she was offended by it. My review is in post 17 of this thread. I stopped completely stopped using it for my logic stage kids before we'd finished a quarter of it. My younger, grammar stage kids kept going with the MFW plans for the most part. It didn't once pick up to a level that was too difficult for those two. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics4us Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Thanks Silvermoon, I may pm you in a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
famof5redheads Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 I'm looking at adding to our MFW Rome to the Reformation study next year with Truthquest history for my 6th grader. You can pick up a used guide for $12-15 and there are lots of good resources, thought-provoking questions for students to answer and writing assignments, including a paper that requires more long-term work. You can see samples here for the era you would be interested in. http://truthquesthistory.com/store/products.php?categoryParentName=Books&categoryName=Age+of+Revolution&itemId=34 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamajo Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 (edited) I'm using MFW Ex-1850 with a 5th & 7th grader this year. I'm aiming for retention and coverage. I read aloud to my kids out of SOTW, Exploring Am Hist or GW World but not all 3. I usually end up going with SOTW b/c my kids tend to remember the story format of the reading better than the text language of the other two books. I also eliminate the topics that aren't American history b/c I find my kids get confused when we jump from America, then to France, Russia, China etc. They say "I thought we were talking about the Revolutionary War." Then I explain "well shortly after the War..the French Revolution" ..... :001_huh: so sometimes I eliminate the extra readings. They write 5 chronological summary sentences about what I've read and when there is a IEW writing lesson that matches the topic we are covering we do the writing lesson (which reinforces the content of the lesson and works on composition skills). By accident we've added in movies that cover the time period. My high schooler is doing MFW WHL which scheduled the Tale of Two Cities (about the French Revolution). We looked at it together before the youngers had the French Revolution come up in their studies. Now that we are at this place in history they remember everything b/c they had the movie that helped them understand the war. I don't use the Book Basket that often b/c I don't buy the books and the library is hit or miss. I find that the scheduled Read Alouds are enough with an outside book here and there. For example, my 7th grader just finished Carry On, Mr. Bowditch which I happened to have on my bookshelf (which is rare as my personal library is not very large). Again, a nice reinforcement for the time in history we are studying. I was going to have my 7th grader write a paper on the book but didn't want to slow down my lesson plans so I let it slide but I think this is another great way to add in more. My 7th grader has so much to do in her school day that I'm not looking to beef up history to the max, to me this is sufficient. I do wish there were more age appropriate hands-on activities for the olders. The SOTW Activity books have more activities to choose from perhaps you can add this to your study. For example, in MFW this week we will be covering steam engines and Eli Whitney's cotton gin and the activity was to make cotton with "seeds" glued inside made out of construction paper. Have kids try to remove the seeds to appreciate the invention of the cotton gin. :glare: Nope that's not going to work. My library didn't have any of the book basket books scheduled for the week so I'm thinking of adding books on the Industrial Revolution and a biography on Eli Whitney. Maybe do a 1 pg report with a poster board display on the inventions during Industrial Revolution? So sometimes I have to think outside of the box to beef it up a little. MFW isn't entirely open and go but it is a launching board for me to dig in deeper when I need to. Whew..that was a lot but hopefully it adds to the discussion. Edited April 12, 2012 by jamajo grammatical errors Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics4us Posted April 12, 2012 Share Posted April 12, 2012 Thanks famof5redheads, I will def check out TQ. jamajo, thanks for you post, it was very helpful. Oh and I love your blog! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamajo Posted April 12, 2012 Share Posted April 12, 2012 Thanks! I've neglected that blog b/c I need a new camera. I'm glad somebody's reading it.:tongue_smilie: 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.