If I order just parts of MCT...

[Marie131]

...will I really be missing out? The parts I'm considering are grammar island, practice island and sentence island.

 

Do I really need it all? Will I regret it if I don't get the whole package?

[kiwik]

Big ear

[Dana]

At the Island level, I do think Sentence Island is useful for discussion of the terms. My son also really liked the story.

I don't think Building Language added all that much. You can easily wait for Caesar's English (which has been really great here).

The poetry is well done, but we kept on not getting to it.

 

From Level 2, we didn't use poetry or much of Paragraph Town (although again, my son enjoys the story).

And in Level 3, we haven't touched poetry or Essay Voyage.

 

I do really like CE 1 and 2, so I would have missed out if we didn't use it.

For level 1, I think we would have missed not having Sentence Island (again, story & reinforcement).

We've mainly used WWE and now WWS for our writing, but CE for vocab & MCT Practice (Grammar and practice books) for grammar.

[cmac]

Warning, I am loving MCT currently. I bought them used as I needed them and have been fortunate to find them when I needed them. We went through Grammar Island and Practice Island. We have done half of Sentence Island. Those three definitely go together. I have Building Language and Music of the Hemispheres and have glanced at them. I am hoping to get through them. They seem promising though they don't seem so critical to the program. Maybe buy the three in the beginning of the year and buy the other two later on in the year? Or buy them used?

[Five More Minutes]

You'll get the main deal with the three books you mentioned (Grammar Island, Practice Island, and Sentence Island).

 

Building Language was adored by my dd, but I found it average. I wouldn't think you'd need it, but could wait for Caesar's English next level.

 

Now Music of the Hemispheres is a tough call. My daughter loves it; I love it; my English-teacher DH loves it. It's a beautiful introduction to poetry and literary devices. It's definitely not essential, but it has been a wonderful addition to our library.

[FairProspects]

They do tie together and review each other beautifully. We are finishing up Sentence Island this week and it just swung back around to incorporate parts of Music of the Hemispheres. Since ds is a big-picture thinker, that really cemented the connection for him in a way that I'm not sure he would have observed otherwise. I was going to drop poetry at the Town level next year until this week, but now I may not after this experience. The sum of the whole is definitely greater than its parts.

[Momof3littles]

I really thought MoH and BL built off of one another beautifully. We used them in a very small co-op setting. When the kids wrote poems using the stems, they often pulled in a lot of what they were learning in MoH. They played with rhyme schemes, near rhyme, alliteration, simile, metaphor, etc. while writing the little poems for BL.

[Crimson Wife]

At the "island" level, I skipped the poetry book because I knew it would be WAAAAAAAY over my DS' head and would all just get repeated in the "town" level. I did use BL because a very generous fellow HSer gave it to me, but I don't think it's worth the cost if your budget is tight.

 

At the "town" level, I do really like all the books.

 

I haven't used "voyage" yet with the exception of CE2, but I'm considering skipping Grammar Voyage entirely and subbing Poetry & Humanity for A World of Poetry. I'm not planning on using the rest of MCT's middle school books and P&H looks like it has more new information than AWoP.

[Marie131]

This is helpful! Thanks for the feedback :)

[nrself]

Continuing this discussion, which levels can I substitute just the teachers manual and not spring for the student as well. I know this works in the first level, but what about the others?

 

Thanks!

Nicole