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Can someone talk to me about PACES?


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My twins are having a really rough time with the K12 program. The biggest issue is math, but when combined with the way Texas does Benchmark testing and the STAAR test we are walking into a bit of a perfect with them.

 

The amount of hours they are having to keep is also becoming an issue.

 

So, today was their last soccer game of the season and at their after party I was talking with one of the mom's and she began chatting with me about PACES. I am curious, but I wold really like to know more about it. Thoughts?

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I've known families that used them, and I highly recommend them for SOME families. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all curriculum.

 

The worldview is patriarchal and the stories can be cheesy.

 

It's school at home.

 

It is based on a quality public school scope and sequence for both child development stages and volume of work. This means that the average child moves through the series without problems and stress. Average is what MOST children are. I don't like curricula that assume the student is gifted and wants to put in 3 times the work of a PS student. I'd rather let gifted students move through a curriculum faster, or pursue independents studies, than be bogged down in a large volume of developmentally accelerated curricula, that doesn't give them credit for all their work.

 

Plain and simple, PACES work in situations that other curricula fail, and give students credit for what they accomplished.

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I have had limited experience with the math paces and the creative writing and literature paces.

 

I would not recommend the math paces at all. I used them with dd7 when she had difficulties with CLE grade one math moving so fast. I needed to find something that would get her over her resistance and frustration. I only found them acceptable for this short term purpose because I sat with her and used our math-u-see blocks (with the math-u-see strategies) or a number line. There are a lot of otherwise happy ACE Moms who will not use their math....

 

I do think ACE is stronger in its English curriculum. I have found their upper elementary literature studies to be quite interesting and I like their choices of books in these grades. They are very well laid out and engaging. I'm sure you will get a lot of comments that paces are just "fill in the blanks" workbooks but I haven't found that the case with the creative writing and literature paces. There have been lots of instances where my dd11 has had to make inferences from the passage in order to answer the questions. I believe these paces are newer than the other ACE subjects so maybe that is why they seem to be of a higher quality. Unfortunately the subject changes format after grade 6 so we won't be using them after that.

 

I don't know the ages of your children. I think paces are an acceptable alternative for the elementary years but I would hesitate using them as a complete curriculum for middle school or high school.

 

I agree with the pp that CLE might be a better alternative. There are placement tests which you can download from the website.

All the best!

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CLE and Alpha Omega are based on private school standards, but pack all the extras that into the same number of pages as public school model. If a child is gifted, or the mom can fill in, it CAN work. The problem is that it too often doesn't work, especially as the grades progress. There just isn't enough practice.

 

The CLE and AO workbooks also often EXPECT higher order thinking skills instead of TEACHING it. I abhor curricula that brags it includes things it doesn't TEACH. Yeh, so what!?

 

I used CLE in the past, while my neighbor was using PACES. We were Mennonite at the time and also I couldn't afford the PACES, and was teaching a 2E kid, so I didn't actually use them. At first I thought my workbooks were so much better, but as the years passed and I watched her move back and forth between PACES and AO and other things with multiple children, my appreciation of PACES grew substantially.

 

For school in a box, I prefer American School for high school, but for the earlier years, PACES are a great feeder for American School. Nothing is perfect and nothing is for everyone, but PACES have their place in the homeschooling community. I hope the updates don't make them into CLE/AO clones because that would be a loss of what has made them a better option for some families and small church schools for decades now.

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