cmarango Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 My dd is working on a 1st grade level in LA and we started FLL1. It's going so-so thus far, but I find that we have skipped a bunch of the first lessons because it's all common vs. proper nouns. The first time we went over that she understood the difference. I was reading through this thread and I am still unsure of what to do. I, personally, do not love grammar, but she seems to enjoy it. Do you think we should plug along with FLL? Do the other levels get better? Or should we switch over to GWG? Also, I haven't heard much about MCT's Aesop series...any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matilda Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 (edited) Also, I haven't heard much about MCT's Aesop series...any thoughts? We love the Aesop series from Royal Firework Press. We use it as a supplement to our other language arts programs. Each lesson has a fable to read, vocabulary, and a picture to color with a place to write a very short narration. Then there are two more pages of writing activities to go with the fable. We have liked it because the activities are different with every story. To give you an idea of the level, I am using it with ds, who is a few lessons away from finishing WWE2 and Grammar Island. Aesop is pretty easy for him, which is probably why he likes it, but I don't think I will start it with my next ones until they can write a minimum or 2-3 sentences without too much effort. ETA: "Activities" makes them sound like the chapter suggestions on MCT's Island or Town. Aesop has things like writing a letter, writing a new ending to the story, doing a puppet show, drawing pictures for the beginning, middle and end, etc. Edited March 4, 2012 by matilda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 (edited) FLL2 is more interesting. My son didn't need so many lessons on common vs proper nouns either. FLL3 has been even better. You can move up a level easily without completing the previous level. Next year in 3rd grade, we'll try MCT Island, but we've added KISS Grammar and really like that. We'll keep KISS around, I think. We're both enjoying it, and it is actually challenging. ETA: I haven't seen a program that is challenging enough at the 1st-2nd grade level for a student who gets grammar easily. The fun stuff typically starts in 3rd grade. I think 1st and.2nd grade level was a waste of time for my oldest. Edited March 4, 2012 by boscopup Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truscifi Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 We did FLL 1 & 2 very early, and still skipped a lot of the repetition. Ds enjoys grammar and is very language oriented. If your dd doesn't need it and can explain the concept to you whenever you ask, why keep doing it? We went from FLL into MCT Island level when ds was 6-almost-7. We spread it out over 2 years and he did fine. He is finishing Building Language now and is enjoying writing poems with words using the Latin stem for each chapter. He will move into Town level next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloggermom Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 Our plans are to blow through First Language Lessons 1-4 then move on to Hake Grammar for 5-8. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmarango Posted March 4, 2012 Author Share Posted March 4, 2012 FLL2 is more interesting. My son didn't need so many lessons on common vs proper nouns either. FLL3 has been even better. You can move up a level easily without completing the previous level. Next year in 3rd grade, we'll try MCT Island, but we've added KISS Grammar and really like that. We'll keep KISS around, I think. We're both enjoying it, and it is actually challenging. ETA: I haven't seen a program that is challenging enough at the 1st-2nd grade level for a student who gets grammar easily. The fun stuff typically starts in 3rd grade. I think 1st and.2nd grade level was a waste of time for my oldest. Did you finish FLL and then move into KISS? Are FLL and WWE correlated at all? I had planned on starting WWE in the summer, but at this rate we will be onto FLL2 by then. Thanks for everyone's responses. The LA portion of my dd's education is just confusing to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 Did you finish FLL and then move into KISS? Are FLL and WWE correlated at all? I had planned on starting WWE in the summer, but at this rate we will be onto FLL2 by then. Thanks for everyone's responses. The LA portion of my dd's education is just confusing to me. They are not correlated and you might find that you can move up more quickly in FLL than WWE. I'm my case we skipped level two of both. FLL 3 is still easy for dd but WWE is about right with the amount of physical writing required. I'm probably going to skip another level or two after this year in grammar but mit stay on level with writing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 Did you finish FLL and then move into KISS? No, we're doing FLL3 and KISS at the same time. We're halfway through FLL3. FLL3 gives him some diagramming practice and good definitions, and KISS gives him practice with real, complex sentences. Are FLL and WWE correlated at all? I had planned on starting WWE in the summer, but at this rate we will be onto FLL2 by then. Technically, the WWE copywork points out grammar being taught in FLL, but it's not a problem to use them at different levels. We started WWE1 in January of last year (halfway through first grade, when we started homeschooling). I started R&S 2 at that point, but dropped it after the first unit. It was way too easy. I then picked up FLL1 and 2 (separate books). FLL1 was more interesting than R&S 2, so we went ahead and did it, but did multiple lessons a day and skimmed through the common vs. proper noun stuff ("You remember that the names of specific places like Alabama, Texas, Boston, London, etc. are proper nouns and need to be capitalized, right? And names of general places like city, town, county, country, state are common nouns and don't need to be capitalized, right? Ok, let's move on."). We could often do 5 lessons in about 10 minutes, and we finished the book in 4 weeks. We then moved into FLL2 (still doing WWE1 at this point) and just did that a few times a week. Got halfway through that, then decided to start R&S3 with the new school year in the summer. We were still finishing up WWE1. We did one unit of R&S3 and found that while it was much better than R&S2, it was still too slow. We then switched over to FLL3, and DS liked it a lot better than R&S or the earlier FLLs. We started WWE2 in August, IIRC, so we'd been doing FLL3 for a few weeks by that point. Since the grammar is ahead of the WWE level, the grammar discussed in WWE is stuff we've already learned and serves as a review. Next year, we'll use WWE3 with MCT and KISS for grammar. We won't be doing FLL at all that year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamajag Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 You could easily hop right into FLL 2. It's not nearly as repetitive as FLL 1. I just did the same with dd1 and then skipped again to FLL 3 about half way through. We're working at FLL 3, and I think she should be challenged. We're not blowing through them quite so quickly any more. She is in WWE 2. The two are not tied at the hip, so if you need to take time with the writing but run through the grammar, that will be fine. My dd1 would be lost if I tried to skip her any further in writing. I did skip her to WWE 2 about half way through when she had mastered copy work and was bored of just that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmarango Posted March 5, 2012 Author Share Posted March 5, 2012 Thanks for the replies. I think that we will finish up FLL1 in a few weeks and then move on to FLL2. After that we will probably move on to MCT and KISS, maybe adding on FLL. I had my dd look at the grade 2 materials for KISS last night and gave her a few sentences from the beginning, just for fun. She easily found the subject for each, but had some difficulty with the verb on a few. she then asked if we could do it next year. :tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 If you are comfortable w/grammar, there really is no need to use a formal curriculum. I didn't know grammar when I first started homeschooling and did use a textbook w/my older ones. However, now I don't. I simply teach grammar from copywork when they are little. This is an example paragraph in which my then 2nd grade dd could identify almost every part of speech: Nikki raced down the narrow streets and shouted insults at pedestrians and cars that got in his way. His own car sputtered and rattled and clanked as if it would fall apart any moment. But it didn’t. (the only words she couldn't identify were as if and that) I explain somewhat how I teach grammar in this post: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2363522&highlight=incremental#post2363522 My techniques have morphed quite a bit b/c I did write it over 5 yrs ago (that dd is now in 7th grade), but it will give you the general gist if you are at all interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmarango Posted March 6, 2012 Author Share Posted March 6, 2012 (edited) If you are comfortable w/grammar, there really is no need to use a formal curriculum. Well, I really wish that I was comfortable with grammar, but sadly I am not. I am a math and science kind of girl, but I am going to go read your post now. Edited March 6, 2012 by cmarango deleted one word Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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