How to put AAS vs Phon Zoo together with WWE and FLL?

[amyrobynne]

Thinking ahead to fall and 2nd grade language arts...

 

My 1st grader currently does AAS and will likely get through level 3 by the end of the year (finishing level 2 now). We like it, although he gets whiny about the dictations. My oldest is doing Phonetic Zoo and the 1st grader has asked if he can do it too because he'd rather listen to the CD than me. Right now, he's doing copywork and narrations that I'm putting together myself and we talk a little about grammar as part of the AAS dictations.

 

Next year, I was planning to use WWE2 and FLL2 with him, along with a spelling program. It would either be AAS level(s) 4/5 or Phonetic Zoo A. It's my understanding that AAS starts incorporating a writing station in addition to longer dictations. Getting Leo to write is the only daily struggle we have -- he does it, but grudgingly. I haven't used WWE or FLL before, but I've looked at the samples. Is there some writing overlap between WWE and AAS? AAS doesn't have any narrating, but I think FLL includes some. I sort of think WWE, FLL, and AAS might be overkill for a less-writing-is-better kid.

 

So, my possible plans:

a) AAS4/5 and FLL2

B) PZ A, WWE2, and FLL2

 

Am I missing something? I would also be making sure he's reading plenty of literature regardless of what else we're doing.

 

Meanwhile, I'm tentatively planning on doing FLL3/4 (we are starting 3 this semester and will finish it in a year) and IEW/Beautiful Feet's Geography+writing lessons for my then-4th-grader and some spelling/vocab TBD. He's doing PZ B and IEW TWSS lessons-put-together-by-me this year.

[mom2att]

Well I can't help you with PZ, but both of my boys have done AAS, WWE, and FLL concurrently. Those three programs seem to compliment each other nicely, IMO. WWE and FLL don't have a great deal of writing, and we don't do the writing station in AAS. We also spread the dictation sentences in AAS over several days--my younger one does 2 -3 sentences per day, my older one 3 - 5. FLL does have occasional dictation and narration, which would be a repeat of AAS with the dictation and WWE with the narration, but it's easy to skip those exercises if you think it's too much. We don't, because it doesn't happen all that often.

[amyrobynne]

Anyone else use a combination of AAS/PZ, WWE, and FLL and willing to give advise about what parts they use or ignore?

[OrganicMom]

In the past we have done WWE, FLL, and AAS together and I am contemplating switching to PZA next year.

 

It worked well. But AAS got tiresome for me b/c both my kids require everything to be hands on and my son was beginning AAR (more letter tiles) and it was just all too much.

 

this is what it looked like: lesson day 1 for AAs and then throughout the week we would do dictation or spelling words along with whatever lessons we were on for WWE or FLL, we were sometimes doing FLL daily. we did this until we were almost done with WWE1 and at step 11 in AAS3.

 

NOW I am debating on whether i finish AAS3 or just wait for daughter to be ready for PZA... don't know if that helped at all and considering you asked this 4 months ago :)

[amyrobynne]

I've pretty much decided to have my rising 2nd grader do PZA, FLL2, and WWE2 in the fall. He'll have a few steps of AAS3 left so we'll probably finish those. The silly part is that he's been asking now to continue AAS even though it's like pulling teeth to get him to do it. He does like the writing station - he's trying to tie them all into one story. I'm ready to send him to the CD for spelling.

[ByGrace3]

We have used AAS with WWE and FLL and really there was no overlap. I felt the writing required between all three was very age appropriate and drastically less pencil to paper work than most public schools require. The dictation sentences and writing station of AAS were my favorite parts of AAS.