Is MCT worth the money and effort?

[CrunchyGirl]

I figured I'd ask here since I need a "skewed" perspective. LOL

 

I'm working on a plan for next year. I'm super tempted to basically limit us to Math (pre-A and CWP), Latin, and writing (IEW, maybe W&R). Then some BFSU (which he loves), some poetry memorization, and tons of quality literature thrown in. Keeping it super simple so we can focus. The goal would be to pick up Spanish and start a history cycle and composer/artist study the following year (technically 3rd grade). I foresee essentially doing logic stage history cycle with LegoMan and grammar stage with ArtsyGirl (who will be 1st grade when he's 3rd grade).

 

So do I plan MCT for next year? I looked at the samples of Island and I'm having a hard time imagining he'll be appropriately challenged. It seems way too simple. Maybe I'm missing something?

 

This year we got to/through:

LOF Decimals

SM4

BA4A

CWP3

AAS5 (1/3 way)

WWE2 (part of the way)

Lots of memorizing, particularly RLS poetry (his favorite)

LLTL3 (about half way)

 

This summer:

A quick run through SM5 and CWP4 (most he already knows); probably BA4B

LL1

W&R Fables 3x week

AAS5 2x week

Lots of reading and playing outside

(trying to limit school to an hour or so a day so he can spend all day outside playing)

 

 

 

 

 

[basketcase]

The beauty of the early MCT levels is that he makes complex things so simple, even adorable. Island level covers subject-action verb-IO-DO, subject-linking verb-subject complement and prepositional phrases. The writing book works in detail on sentences, including subject-verb agreement. Town level adds verbal phrases (gerunds, appositives, etc.), so a pretty significant jump up in grammatical complexity. Town might work better for you, considering what you've done before, but look at the practice pages for Island first. The Grammar Island book looks so sweet, but the Practice Island book shows you what the kids are actually learning.

 

If you're considering doing all the books, the major question on placement is Caesar's English I. It's the vocabulary portion of the Town level, and I think it's the most difficult component. Forgive me if you've already researched all this!

 

Personally, I adore MCT's work. I love that he teaches principles rather than tricks - a paragraph should be organized in some way, not a paragraph should have a thesis sentence followed by three supporting points. An adjective modifies a noun rather than describing it. A preposition shows a relationship between two items.

 

He teaches solid, grown up language arts, but in a fun way for kids. What more could I ask for? Our MCT time is often my favorite part of the day. That said, the price is definitely a barrier. The teacher manual is often enough, and most of the books are non-consumable, thank goodness.

[Reefgazer]

What she said.  MCT teaches big ideas and major points, in deceptively simple language. 

The beauty of the early MCT levels is that he makes complex things so simple, even adorable. Island level covers subject-action verb-IO-DO, subject-linking verb-subject complement and prepositional phrases. The writing book works in detail on sentences, including subject-verb agreement. Town level adds verbal phrases (gerunds, appositives, etc.), so a pretty significant jump up in grammatical complexity. Town might work better for you, considering what you've done before, but look at the practice pages for Island first. The Grammar Island book looks so sweet, but the Practice Island book shows you what the kids are actually learning.

 

If you're considering doing all the books, the major question on placement is Caesar's English I. It's the vocabulary portion of the Town level, and I think it's the most difficult component. Forgive me if you've already researched all this!

 

Personally, I adore MCT's work. I love that he teaches principles rather than tricks - a paragraph should be organized in some way, not a paragraph should have a thesis sentence followed by three supporting points. An adjective modifies a noun rather than describing it. A preposition shows a relationship between two items.

 

He teaches solid, grown up language arts, but in a fun way for kids. What more could I ask for? Our MCT time is often my favorite part of the day. That said, the price is definitely a barrier. The teacher manual is often enough, and most of the books are non-consumable, thank goodness.

 

[lewelma]

Of the Island level, I like them in this order: from favourite to least favourite.

 

Musical Hemispheres - this is the hardest of the books

Sentence island - big picture ideas here

Grammar island and practice island - pretty easy

Building Language - too simple, not worth it.

 

As for the Town level, I think that they are all very good.

 

Ruth in NZ

[Crimson Wife]

My oldest did "town" in 2nd semester of 2nd and 1st semester of 3rd. The writing was a stretch but overall it was the correct level for her. After taking my DS through "island", I'm positive that starting with "town" was the correct placement for her.

 

The one thing to be aware of is that there are big jumps in challenge level in the writing from "island" to "town" to "voyage". So if you start MCT on the younger side, you may not be able to continue on to the next book the following year. That's fine by me as I've got other things I want to do in the interim.

[Momof3littles]

For us it has been very worthwhile.  It is probably my favorite curriculum.  DS1 started in Island in 3rd.  I would say the grammar was appropriate, poetry was appropriate but writing it was challenging (he has excellent LA skills but has not enjoyed "creative" writing until recently.  We are finishing 4th grade).  Vocab was maybe a bit easier, but I think it complements the other components so beautifully.  I printed samples years ago and just couldn't grasp it, and even looking at the books it was a bit difficult to see how it would work together.  But once we started using it, the pieces clicked so beautifully for us, and the various components reinforce one another so well. 

 

DS1 did town this past year as a 4th grader, and that worked well for us.  He gets a little worked up writing paragraphs (perfectionism vs. lack of skill), but we are now at the end of fourth and he is finally rocking out a nice paragraph, editing without tears, and telling me they are easy to write.  Phew.  So I think it was an appropriate challenge for him.  Again, my son does incredibly well with grammar, etc but has not enjoyed any of the writing until recently.  Writing poems is probably still not his favorite, but he has gotten soooo much out of the poetry portion of Island and Town.  CE1 has been fantastic, DS1 has retained vocab in a way that I doubt he would have with most other programs.  CE1 includes things like poems MCT has written about Rome, which gives an opportunity to reinforce some of the ideas from the poetry component. 

 

My DD is a first grader and basically begged for MCT.  We are finishing Island up now.  We worked on the writing portion together for things like poetry, but she has grasped the stems, grammar, and the poetic techniques beautifully.   Writing in various meter, etc. is still challenging for her without help, but she gets the general goal and can identify meter.  Writing is just harder :)

 

I did FLL with DS1 and it gave him a good start in first and second, but I much, much prefer the way MCT uses logical, flow-chart -like thinking to walk kids through sentence analysis (ex: Island introduces the idea of identifying a linking verb, then looking for a subject complement.  If there's an action verb, is there a direct object?  if there is a direct object, is there an indirect object?  If we have a pronoun as a direct object, we need an object pronoun vs. a subject pronoun.  I love that it is presented simply, but logically.  My own grammar education relied heavily on very formulaic exercises that did not serve me well).  I certainly did not receive that depth of instruction in elementary school, unfortunately.  So I would say it is deceptively simple vs overly simplistic.

 

We are obviously big fans.  For my kids, it has been worth it without hesitation.  I would cut other places to free up $ for the materials. I also know I will be reusing it with my DD and probably my youngest eventually, so we'll just be replacing consumables.  We are koolaid drinkers I guess ;) , but I just have seen such growth with our MCT materials that I can't imagine using anything else.

 

[Runningmom80]

Even if it's "too simple," your ds will adore it. Mud is talked about daily around here.

[Embassy]

My ds hated it.  We did the Island level.  The writing was too open-ended without instruction and the vocabulary was way too simple.  I liked the Music of the Hemispheres, but some spots bothered me because of a few errors I noticed in phonology (I don't know if this has been changed in the 2nd edition).  My son did not really enjoy much about it.  He is a HG auditory-sequential learner.  I didn't even try it with my VSL after that disappointing attempt.  I also tried WWTW and although it was at a good level vocabulary-wise, it was rather boring for my kid.  I love MCT's philosophy, but the program didn't work for us.

[kbutton]

The writing was too open-ended without instruction...

 

We have this problem too, but we'll use the writing books for supplements because I love them (we're the problem with open-ended, not the books). My son didn't like the vocabulary for CE, but he LOVED building language. The grammar is a huge hit, and he likes the poetry when we get to it. We're settling in at the level we're at, and we're planning to spread each level out for two years while supplementing with something else. My son is 2e and needs more explicit writing instruction, but he's flourishing with the grammar and with the conceptual information.

 

[CrunchyGirl]

Thank everyone! I appreciate the encouragement. I think I find myself constantly questioning whether each thing we do is truly a good use of time and energy (on both our parts) because really, when he's not doing school, he's reading or programming or building elaborate Lego creations. I'm trying to really scrutinize everything right now. I need a crystal ball so I can better know where this roller coaster ride is headed!

[Reefgazer]

We love MCT here, but I agree with you on the writing.  For a kid just learning writing techniques, it's just not enough instruction or practice.  I think the writing books are the weakest link in the series because if this problem.

My ds hated it.  We did the Island level.  The writing was too open-ended without instruction and the vocabulary was way too simple.  I liked the Music of the Hemispheres, but some spots bothered me because of a few errors I noticed in phonology (I don't know if this has been changed in the 2nd edition).  My son did not really enjoy much about it.  He is a HG auditory-sequential learner.  I didn't even try it with my VSL after that disappointing attempt.  I also tried WWTW and although it was at a good level vocabulary-wise, it was rather boring for my kid.  I love MCT's philosophy, but the program didn't work for us.

 

[Embassy]

I chose MCT in the first place because of the writing.  I agree that the writing is the weaker part of the program so I opted to look elsewhere.  We've found a great fit with Classical Writing now.

[PhotoGal]

I tried tried tried MCT because so many people love it, but honestly I think it was a waste of time and money (lots of money!). I had bought the whole set for Island and it was my most expensive mistake to date. I found the books unappealing aesthetically and unnecessarily complicated. I felt like the author was being kind of cutesy with "Mud" and the tone of the books was just weird. And I didn't get why we were learning poetry written by MCT instead of poetry written by poets? 

 

I really couldn't stand Life of Fred for many of the same reasons. Although MCT seemed a little less condescending. If you like LOF, maybe you will like MCT. Just wanted to give you another perspective, since I know many people here love MCT.

[Woodland Mist Academy]

I am getting ready to order level five. I think that speaks volumes about MCT's worth in our home. We adored the first two levels, three was so-so, four was better. Five looks fantastic. I think we'll like it even better than level four.

 

We've never used MCT alone, though. We used a couple years of FLL and WWE, a tiny bit of KISS, a smattering of Voyages in English, a Critical Thinking mechanics book, etc. For middle school we've used WWS and Hake for roots and MCT for wings.

[KarenNC]

We tried the town level and, for us, it was a very expensive mistake. It might have done well for us as a supplement, but, like with Life of Fred for math, it was too expensive in price and time spent for a supplement. I ended up outsourcing writing, which was one of the best decisions I've made in homeschooling (I'm more of a math person, she is more of a language person, and we were not getting very far very productively). I liked the vocabulary book, didn't understand the poetry book. Unfortunately, the grammar was not the panacea I'd hoped it would be. It went the way of *all* grammar programs in this house (so not necessarily the fault of the program!)---she was doing fine then suddenly about 6 months in couldn't seem to remember what a noun was. As I said, this sort of thing has happened with every single grammar program we've ever done---nothing fully "sticks" like I would expect, especially in a verbally gifted child, so I keep finding a variety of things to coat the irritating particle of bad punctuation and inconsistently sloppy grammar in hopes of eventually getting a pearl ;).

[Matryoshka]

We tried the town level and, for us, it was a very expensive mistake. It might have done well for us as a supplement, but, like with Life of Fred for math, it was too expensive in price and time spent for a supplement. I ended up outsourcing writing, which was one of the best decisions I've made in homeschooling (I'm more of a math person, she is more of a language person, and we were not getting very far very productively). I liked the vocabulary book, didn't understand the poetry book. Unfortunately, the grammar was not the panacea I'd hoped it would be. It went the way of *all* grammar programs in this house (so not necessarily the fault of the program!)---she was doing fine then suddenly about 6 months in couldn't seem to remember what a noun was. As I said, this sort of thing has happened with every single grammar program we've ever done---nothing fully "sticks" like I would expect, especially in a verbally gifted child, so I keep finding a variety of things to coat the irritating particle of bad punctuation and inconsistently sloppy grammar in hopes of eventually getting a pearl ;).

 

Did you use the Practice books?  I love MCT but I'm realizing I don't use it much as directed.  I've actually skipped most of the Grammar books after whizzing through the first one we got to (Town for older kids, Island for younger).  All the grammar is repeated and deepened in the Writing books, which I haven't actually used much for writing assignments as much as extra grammar and kind of a writing lecture - application we get elsewhere. I really like what he says about writing, the application just isn't there.  Dd and I are reading through Essay Voyage now - I'm picking and choosing what parts to do; we're not even reading all of it.  I love the Vocab books (after BL, which is a dud) - I think I like WWtW even better than CE.

 

But the Practice books are what makes the knowledge not fall out.  At this point I just have dd do 2-4 practice sentences a week; that's all the grammar we do.  But heck, if you do those Practice sentences, even 2 a week, no way is any kid going to forget what a noun is (or a verbal phrase)...  I wouldn't expect anyone to remember much grammar after going through just the MCT grammar books and dropping it - they are a quick overview/intro - whole to parts.  The Practice books are where all the application and retention come from.

 

[KarenNC]

Did you use the Practice books?  I love MCT but I'm realizing I don't use it much as directed.  I've actually skipped most of the Grammar books after whizzing through the first one we got to (Town for older kids, Island for younger).  All the grammar is repeated and deepened in the Writing books, which I haven't actually used much for writing assignments as much as extra grammar and kind of a writing lecture - application we get elsewhere. I really like what he says about writing, the application just isn't there.  Dd and I are reading through Essay Voyage now - I'm picking and choosing what parts to do; we're not even reading all of it.  I love the Vocab books (after BL, which is a dud) - I think I like WWtW even better than CE.

 

But the Practice books are what makes the knowledge not fall out.  At this point I just have dd do 2-4 practice sentences a week; that's all the grammar we do.  But heck, if you do those Practice sentences, even 2 a week, no way is any kid going to forget what a noun is (or a verbal phrase)...  I wouldn't expect anyone to remember much grammar after going through just the MCT grammar books and dropping it - they are a quick overview/intro - whole to parts.  The Practice books are where all the application and retention come from.

 

 

Don't underestimate my child's apparent superpower to shed formal grammatical knowledge! Yes, we were indeed *in the middle* of using the practice books, and she had been doing fine until suddenly she wasn't, and on basic stuff. We used the whole program as directed. As I said, that issue is not the fault of the program. We've been working on grammar since kindergarten---FLL, Growing with Grammar, Easy Grammar, MCT, Shurley, the program her writing teacher for the past 2 years has used, read "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," diagrammed, parsed, color-coded, etc, and it's *still* by far her weakest area in verbal skills. Slowly, tiny bits seem to accumulate (at least for a while). She is capable of writing beautiful complex fiction and adequate academic papers, but we still regularly run into times when she forgets to capitalize "I" or use an apostrophe, much less identify a verbal phrase---a very sad statement for a child who won state level medals in Duke TIP for her verbal scores on both the ACT and SAT last year!

[TCB]

Just want to agree with others that the practice books really help it to come together. Also, I think you can start with the Town level, that's what we did and it worked fine. I really like the way you get to see the whole picture so quickly with MCT, and then you carry on practicing - works great for us.

[jar7709]

Worth it for DS, who is a language sponge?  Yes!  Even the oft-maligned writing portion, which we don't do exactly as written (DS just doesn't care as much about ancient Roman leaders and suchlike as MCT might suggest) but the loose format is what he needs, and more structured writing programs turn him into a writing-hating kid.  BTDT.  This year he did portions of Island and is nearly done with all of Town.  I think he just might be almost the exact kind of student MCT had in mind when he designed the program.  We will take a break for a little time to let Town sink in, but he will be moving on to Voyage eventually.

 

Worth it for DD, who is fine with language, but just not as language-y as her brother?  Ehh, jury is still out.  She did portions of Island this year and the grammar has stuck, but I'm not sure she wouldn't have gotten to this same point using a different thing, either.  She was not enamored with the program, but didn't hate it, either.  Not sure if she'll be ready for Town next year but we'll probably give it a try when she seems ready since I already have it.