MCT - Can Island be skipped?

[abrightmom]

Just curious....

 

What would we miss by skipping straight to Town for our first exposure to MCT? Caesar's English looks very good and much more level appropriate for my son. I'm not sure about the grammar and sentence analysis. The writing portion is still fuzzy as well.

 

Does Island lay a foundation that we need? It is really hard to tell from the samples....I do NOT want to be underwhelmed OR overwhelmed. :D

[lewelma]

I would definitely not skip Musical Hemispheres. It is an awesome book, even if many of the concepts are repeated at the next level.

 

You should probably do Grammar Island and Practice Island because a child needs lots of practice in grammar. But once again, grammar town repeats all of the info from the previous book but at a higher level.

 

You can definitely skip Sentence Island and Building Language. IMO they are the least informative books out of the 12 books in the island, town, and voyage series.

 

Ruth in NZ

[yellowperch]

I agree with lewelma that music of the hemisphere is not to be missed, and that building language is not the be all and end all.

 

Here's what I wish I did (I'm juggling Island and Town, which is crazy): Grammar Island and Practice Island for both (DS9 and I did not finish Grammar Town before we started sentence analysis in Practice Town. He has Grammar Island under his belt--from listening and chatting while DD and I worked on Grammar Island but is doing the sentences for the town level. We'll go back to Grammar Town when he hits a roadblock with his daily sentences.) MoTH for both and Caesar's English for DS, with DD doing her daily vocabulary word from another program and listening in to CE.

 

FWIW, the writing portion of the program scares me. We haven't touched either level. We are using a few other things for writing.

[....]

FWIW, the writing portion of the program scares me. We haven't touched either level. We are using a few other things for writing.

 

Don't be scared! :D The writing is so weak in that program. We use Classical Comp for writing, because the MCT writing wasn't enough.

 

There have been several threads about skipping the Island level. The only reason I say that you can't skip it is because that's when you learn to do the 4-Level Analysis. Although, I do have Paragraph Town here and it kinda buzzes thru everything again in the first 30 pages. I guess if your kid has already covered the parts of speech, prepositional phrases, direct objects/subject complements and clauses...you could just go into Town level.

 

Can you see samples? Look at the TM for Practice Island and Practice Town - those are the workbooks for the program (with the 4-level analysis).

[LisaKinVA]

We didn't... but we didn't draw it out, either.

 

For my oldest, we zoomed through the reading of Grammar Island, and we did enough Practice Island (4-6 sentences a day, from all of the sections), until I was very comfortable he grasped the concepts. Then, we started Town Grammar, went through that a little more slowly, and are working on Practice Town at least 4 sentences a day.

 

Music of the Hemispheres we went through pretty quickly, but we aren't finished. I just had him read Building Language for the story aspects, but he's taken some Latin already... so I wasn't too worried about it. We just started working on Caesar's English. We are finishing up Sentence Island, and will be focusing on Paragraph Town the rest of the year.

 

He LOVES this grammar program so much more than every other program he has done (there have been 3). My younger children also love it... they also enjoy FLL.

[Carrie12345]

I wouldn't recommend skipping any of Island, even though it can be a relatively big investment for a short amount of time. While Town does a LOT of review, I don't feel it has the same impact of Island, and Sentence reinforces the concepts and adds a few more nuggets like misplaced modifiers and well- chosen phrasing (plus sentence structure diagrams that have been very important for my 8yo.)

[abrightmom]

Alright, so we are going to start with Island but I CAN skip the writing portion, yes?? We are doing "other things" (a la SWB, CC, whatever) for writing. I don't want to "have" to use MCT's writing in order to enjoy the grammar, poetry, and vocab. portions. For some reason I have been under the impression that I'd have to use it all because it is intertwined in some way.

 

Should I piece together what I want from Island or go with the Homeschool Basic Package? The Basic Package does include the writing portion but it may all work out $ wise in the end if I choose the package. I start to go :lol: when trying to figure out what I want or need. The lit is intriguing as well and we may give it a whirl at the same time.

[LisaKinVA]

Alright, so we are going to start with Island but I CAN skip the writing portion, yes?? We are doing "other things" (a la SWB, CC, whatever) for writing. I don't want to "have" to use MCT's writing in order to enjoy the grammar, poetry, and vocab. portions. For some reason I have been under the impression that I'd have to use it all because it is intertwined in some way.

 

Should I piece together what I want from Island or go with the Homeschool Basic Package? The Basic Package does include the writing portion but it may all work out $ wise in the end if I choose the package. I start to go :lol: when trying to figure out what I want or need. The lit is intriguing as well and we may give it a whirl at the same time.

 

No, you don't "have" to use Sentence Island in order to enjoy the other parts. Also, FWIW, other than the Practice books you really *can* just use the Teacher's guides for Grammar Island, Music of the Hemispheres, Building Language/Caesar's English and Sentence Island. I don't feel like the little boxes of "extra information" really get in the way when using these books with my younger two. If you want to just use the TE for Practice Island, you could do that too... but you need to write the sentences down on something else (white board) for your child.

 

After years of "rigorous" composition programs, and no real results (other than longer papers filled with the same mistakes), all of my children are taking a HUGE step back from lots and lots of composition assignments (a-la SWB/WTM), My younger two are doing WWE, and my oldest is doing Sentence Island, Paragraph Town, and then will be doing Sentence Composing for Middle School, before tackling Writing with Skill. I do not assign *any* creative writing (they are all writing books on their own...editing each others... and having a blast). Both MCT and SWB put the emphasis on academic writing, and not even really working on THAT until middle school (like one, one-page paper a week or every other week in science or history...and adding lit in 8th or 9th, while increasing the number of 1-2 page papers as they get older).

[Spy Car]

Personally all I would not skip reading Sentence Island. Even if one did not do all the writing exercises the reading of this strange tale really cements ideas on grammar that are in Grammar Island, and adds perspectives on ways to think about writing, and the effect of language and sounds on the reader.

 

Without Sentence Island I think we'd have had a "big hole" in our Island level experience.

 

Bill