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Underestimating a Curriculum and Later Seeing the Light


Hunter
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This week I'm loving SWR, but read BFSU today and hated chapter 2. I need to read further on. Because...did I say I hated chapter 2? I wrote about it in the BFSU thread. Someone please save me from proselytizing scientists! I'm going to be spending all day tomorrow at a Superbowl party with one, and I can depend on somehow, someway, for her to start her proselytizing. Sigh!

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This week I'm loving SWR, but read BFSU today and hated chapter 2. I need to read further on. Because...did I say I hated chapter 2? I wrote about it in the BFSU thread. Someone please save me from proselytizing scientists! I'm going to be spending all day tomorrow at a Superbowl party with one, and I can depend on somehow, someway, for her to start her proselytizing. Sigh!

Couldn't find it. Link?

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Don't tell you-know-who but I would have to say Miquon. I haven't underestimated any others (that I can think of) even if some of them have been total mismatch for me or my child.

 

I have some suspicion that I might be "you-know-who", but I'll be the first to say that when Miquon arrived at my house I took one look at the Orange book lab-sheets and almost had a panic-attack.

 

It was "weird looking" and I had a crisis of confidence that I would be anywhere near smart enough to teach it.

 

After reading though the teachers materials I had the dawning realization that teaching Miquon was actually quite simple and intuitive (one one gets past the "shock" of the new) but this was far from apparent to me on first glance.

 

I can laugh about it now. But I definitely had a "what have I done?" moment.

 

Bill

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I have some suspicion that I might be "you-know-who", but I'll be the first to say that when Miquon arrived at my house I took one look at the Orange book lab-sheets and almost had a panic-attack.

 

It was "weird looking" and I had a crisis of confidence that I would be anywhere near smart enough to teach it.

 

After reading though the teachers materials I had the dawning realization that teaching Miquon was actually quite simple and intuitive (one one gets past the "shock" of the new) but this was far from apparent to me on first glance.

 

I can laugh about it now. But I definitely had a "what have I done?" moment.

 

Bill

 

You Mean I should get this back out? I bought the entire set, teacher guides, the works, and just thought it was weird. Ds7 might like it, and since I haven't gotten around to selling it we might as well get it out.

 

For me, WWE. the summarizing and dictation are really great even though ds can write his own narrations as well, getting to the summary is still a challenge.

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My two current favs I tried several years ago and passed. My issue was basing my opinion on their entire program based on their books for the earliest learners. I LOVE Saxon math, once you get to 5/4 and R&S English. Years ago I tried grade 1 Saxon and R&S Phonics. Both programs made me want to poke my eyes out. I let that color my perspective on all their programs and it took me a while to give them another try.

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You Mean I should get this back out? I bought the entire set, teacher guides, the works, and just thought it was weird. Ds7 might like it, and since I haven't gotten around to selling it we might as well get it out.

 

Definitely yes!

 

It does look weird, especially at first glance. But a lot of the weirdest looking materials in the beginning of the Orange book are just different ways of showing "sets." Instead of "birds and bunnies" the author chose pictorial representations that were...er, uh..."unconventional." :D

 

The weirdness is really superficial. I won't deny that *I* thought it was weird. I sure did!

 

But once you "get it" it is not weird at all.

 

Trust me.

 

Bill

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ACE math. I avoided it for the longest time because I thought it was subpar. I ordered it mid-year last year out of desperation (having tried so many other maths) and discovered that there isn't anything subpar about it.

 

My dd's attitude about math has completely turned around...she hated math. But she told me yesterday (after a full year of using ACE) that math is now her favorite subject. :) It is mastery and has lots of review, which is just what dd needs. She is learning and retaining! There are no more tears in our school day. I am so very grateful for ACE math.

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  • 1 month later...

Mine are similar to others:

 

Miquon-- this is the math my son *wants* to do. I think he likes it because it's always a challenge, but always interesting. I'm still wondering if I can use this exclusively??

 

WRTR/Spalding-- I seriously convinced myself that I couldn't figure this out, now I see how simple it is (after spending lots of money on other Spalding spin-offs)

 

Ambleside-- I pretty much use all-but-the-history (because I think it's weird), but I love everything else. I've been benefitting from Charlottemasonhelp.com, too. (Maybe some day I'll do the history, too).

 

That's all I can think of for now. :tongue_smilie:

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I haven't been at this long enough to really have a long list. But I think the biggest thing has been C-Rods. I really disliked the idea of using C-Rods for the longest time. Thanks to reading some of Spy Cars posts I decided to finally order some and give them a try. I can say I really, really like them now and I haven't even moved beyond teaching addition and subtraction with them yet. I also really hope to like Miquon, I am still trying to figure it out. And also MM as I just ordered it from HSBC tonight. I have always thought that MM is very visually unappealing but have heard good things about it so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

 

The other one is probably PR. I have level 1 and keep skipping it because it is a bit time consuming to watch the DVDs but every time I go back to the concepts taught I can really tell that my Dd gets a lot out of it.

 

I am loving this thread! Thanks for sharing everyone!

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I haven't been at this long enough to really have a long list. But I think the biggest thing has been C-Rods. I really disliked the idea of using C-Rods for the longest time. Thanks to reading some of Spy Cars posts I decided to finally order some and give them a try. I can say I really, really like them now and I haven't even moved beyond teaching addition and subtraction with them yet. I also really hope to like Miquon, I am still trying to figure it out. And also MM as I just ordered it from HSBC tonight. I have always thought that MM is very visually unappealing but have heard good things about it so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

 

The other one is probably PR. I have level 1 and keep skipping it because it is a bit time consuming to watch the DVDs but every time I go back to the concepts taught I can really tell that my Dd gets a lot out of it.

 

I am loving this thread! Thanks for sharing everyone!

 

You made my day! :001_smile:

 

Bill

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KISS Grammar. I looked at it in the past and frankly couldn't really understand it. I also thought the first exercise or two looked really boring and easy. Ha! After a post on the logic board explaining how to use the curriculum (start at level 1, regardless of your grade level!), I got the third grade workbook and started working through it myself. Boy is it HARD! And it gets meaty pretty quickly. Once you add complements, it's pretty dicey with those real sentences from literature. I have a lot more appreciation for it now!

 

:iagree:

 

and also the McGuffey boxed reader set.

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I love this thread.

 

And I love MEP. DD threw a tantrum yesterday because she couldn't finish her worksheet because we were running late to go to her swim class. There's something pretty special about a math program where my little fish would rather do a worksheet than go to her very favorite 1/2 hour of the week! She's retaining so much, too.

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Bfsu for sure. I had it, sold it, and the decided t give it another try. My o,der uses the volume 2 and younger uses volume 1 and I am so happy we came back to it. Learning so much! Xtramath.org. It's really not very exciting , and ds was quite resistant to using it, but I insisted and he hknows his math facts well now. Just 5 minutes a day. H

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Math Mammoth-I was very reluctant to switch my son from SM, seeing SM as the "gold standard". I switched because I didn't want to invest all the money into 5th and 6th grade materials when my son knew much of it; MM was the sounder investment, and easier to skip around in. Now that we've been using MM for about a month now, I can safely say that in many ways, it is superior to Singapore: its discussion of the distributive property is excellent, and my son understands its application to unknown variables better than he would have, I think, had we stuck with Singapore.

:iagree:

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The progym and especially Classical Writing. There have been posts that Homer is confusing and that CW makes writing more difficult than it should be. So, I bought another progym curriculum because I wanted to try the progym. Eventually, I bought CW Aesop/Homer-in-a-Month, and decided that we were getting through it simply because I wanted to see if I could do it. After a few weeks, we were rolling and haven't looked back. We're in CW Maxim now and enjoying it.

 

Also, The Lost Tools of Writing has to go on this list for me. I bought it. Couldn't make sense of it. Sent it back. Bought it again. Couldn't make sense of it, and then took a LToW I class with Camille Goldston. Within the first month, I understood it, and we had a wonderful time with literature the year we used it. We will be going back through LToW I again in a few weeks.

Edited by 1Togo
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The progym and especially Classical Writing. There have been posts that Homer is confusing and that CW makes writing more difficult than it should be. So, I bought another progym curriculum because I wanted to try the progym. Eventually, I bought CW Aesop/Homer-in-a-Month, and decided that we were getting through it simply because I wanted to see if I could do it. After a few weeks, we were rolling and haven't looked back. We're in CW Maxim now and enjoying it.

 

That's encouraging to read. Thank-you for sharing!

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Miquon. :blush:

 

I bought it, could not for the life of me understand it or c-rods, donated the whole set to Book Samaritan, and ended up re-buying all of it.

 

And now we love it, but those darn c-rods were not intuitive at all for a non-math person! Despite numerous threads here, Mathematics Made Meaningful was the only thing that helped me understand how c-rods were supposed to be used.

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TOG, definitely!!! I looked at it and dreamed about it for 7 years and stayed away due to the overwhelmingness that I thought was there. I didn't realize at the time that it really isn't overwhelming at all once you know the set-up.

 

WWE!!! We're nearly midway through WWE2, and I find that my ds has an easy time coming up with summaries in his other writing. We are lapbooking with TOG, and I see how WWE carries over into him coming up with summaries for the lapbook. I'm going to implement Writing Aids next year, but WWE will remain our number one writing curriculum!

 

Apologia Elementary Science is by far the best and most retained elementary science we've tried, and we have tried several!! I'm just sad I didn't figure it out when my older kids were young.

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