Shanna Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 I'm in the newbie stages of planning curriculum for next year. I lean towards Classical and Waldorf, which sometimes don't play nicely together. Case in point: I'm interested in the RightStart Math curriculum for my energetic son, and borrowed the Level A from a friend to see what I thought. The curriculum looks GREAT, but I was shocked by how deep into mathematics the curriculum goes for a 5-year old. I had in mind that, for Kindergarten, we'd do the Oak Meadows curriculum and just generally get into the rhythms of HSing, getting familiar with letters and numbers. When I saw the RS Level A, it's what I would have pictured for 1st grade. However, being highly-educated and married to a highly-educated man, I'm embarrassed to say that my pride is rebelling at having my 1st grader do "Kindergarten" math. I've gone off on a rabbit trail - my point was to get opinions about the RightStart Level A, especially knowing what my relaxed goals are for that year. My friend who lent me the curriculum said that everything in Level A is covered in Level B, albeit faster. A big part of the reason we have decided to HS was to get away from these ideas of "behind" and "ahead", and I'm allowing myself to get drawn into them anyway..... Comments? Sage advice? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoundAbout Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 I don't know if it plays nicely with Waldorf but I can say that I have son turning 5 in a few weeks and he LOVES RightStart A. He's an extremely active boy-boy and is definitely not the type of kid who begs to do school or anything like that, but we have so much fun with RightStart. I wouldn't get caught up in what level it is or how far it delves - just try it and see what happens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GailV Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 (edited) RightStart was meant to start with Level B -- Level A was written for those who demanded that their younger children have something to do. Frankly, we gave A a bit of a whirl, then skipped it. We just waited a year to start formal math. Okay, bearing in mind that it's been YEARS since I even thought about this, we integrated RightStart and Waldorf. I made a little felted squirrel and told stories about how he gathered acorns for the winter, using the stories to introduce the 4 functions (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing). We drew beautiful pictures to introduce the numbers, then worked on them in a more RightStart manner (fwiw, RightStart is somewhat based on Montessori, and I thought the RightStart books did a TERRIBLE job of explaining how to accomplish certain things like the 3 period lesson, so I went more with the original Montessori). We absolutely ditched that Yellow Is the Sun song -- I remember a discussion of it on a Waldorf homeschool forum -- nice concept, but the lyrics are absolutely inane and have no inherent connection to the meanings you're trying to convey. And so forth. (edited to add: Waldorf has some amazingly cool ways to teach skip counting and all. Really worth adding onto whatever math curriculum you go with.) So, overall, yes, you can use RightStart with Waldorf. Just be prepared to analyze and rewrite to suit what you want to accomplish. Even if I had no interest in Waldorf whatsoever I'd ditch Level A, which I thought was rather pointless, and I'd revamp some of the lessons in B to be more Montessori-like. Edited November 15, 2011 by GailV Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jplain Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Here's my advice: if you have fun stuff to do for math in K, go for it and let Right Start wait. Do Oak Meadow. Maybe add to it using the book Family Math for Young Children. Check out and read all the Math Start books your library has. Or start reading the Living Math list to get more ideas. Then do RightStart B for 1st grade. Your child won't miss out by skipping A. B was the original curriculum, and A was written later for those who wanted to start in K. I personally think B is more carefully designed than A. My 5yo is enjoying A though, so we'll stick with it for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanna Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 Then do RightStart B for 1st grade. Your child won't miss out by skipping A. B was the original curriculum, and A was written later for those who wanted to start in K. I personally think B is more carefully designed than A. My 5yo is enjoying A though, so we'll stick with it for now.This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you. My friend lent me both A and B, so I can compare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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