baseballsandbows Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 Hello! I am a new and excited homeschooler! For various reasons, most of them having to do with my daughter's OCD and anxiety issues, I am planning to homeschool next year. My daughter just finished 4th grade and is an excellent student, and she is thrilled to start this new adventure (she's been asking to be homeschooled forever). I am a former teacher, and my planning nature has kicked into overdrive as I look at curriculum choices. I have been reading the WTM forums daily for months, and I am so grateful for all the information that is available here. Thanks to the information shared by all of you, we are planning to start with the following: MCT Town (Grammar Town, Caesar’s English 1, Building Poems, Practice Town, APM) Writing and Rhetoric (we are going to start with Fable because she wants to, but I feel she will move through this quickly) Killgallon Sentence Composing for Elementary (we plan to supplement with this) Sequential Spelling Level 1 (she is very auditory and tends to spell phonetically--she always made 100 on spelling tests at school by memorizing words, but I am hoping this program will help her truly learn to spell and transfer correct spelling into her writing) Elemental Science: Biology for the Logic Stage Story of the World: Ancients Getting Started with Latin Music: Study the orchestra, voice lessons, and participation in a local kids' theater group Art: Study art with our history and art lessons at a local studio PE: weekly homeschool PE class, plus basketball in the winter Here's where I need help: MATH! She is a good math student. Initially, I wanted to start her with MUS Epsilon. I like the in-depth, hand-on approach. My concern, however, is that if we decide homeschooling is not the best fit permanently, she will not have covered the same curriculum for fifth grade as her peers, as Epsilon is almost all fractions--I'm thinking we wouldn't want to tackle Epsilon and Zeta in one school year, right? (I hope that homeschooling will be permanent, but I am taking it year by year for now and don't want to make decisions that could hurt her in the future). With this in mind, I settled on Math Mammoth 5 and hope this will be a good fit. But, I also like the look of Beast Academy, and I wondered about using it as a fun supplement. She performs well in math (98 on this year's 4th grade state Math assessment), but prefers language and writing. I think Beast Academy looks fun, but challenging at the same time. Is this accurate? Also, would I start her with 3A, or could we jump to 4A? Any advice from all of you experienced experts is greatly appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 BA would be hard to use as a supplement because you can't easily pick and choose problems, there is nothing superfluous in there. Whether you use it as a supplement or a spine Orr alone, I would start with 3A. I'm your position, I would get BA 3A and try it out, getting one set is not terribly expensive. You could let her choose between the two, or work BA this summer and put off the decision. With my ds, I have him do BA and MEP and I ruthlessly edit down MEP when it covers topics we've already seen in BA. My dd uses MM and it is a good fit for her. When she gets frustrated with math it is tricky to keep her from shutting down, so BA might not be a good fit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baseballsandbows Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 BA would be hard to use as a supplement because you can't easily pick and choose problems, there is nothing superfluous in there. Whether you use it as a supplement or a spine Orr alone, I would start with 3A. I'm your position, I would get BA 3A and try it out, getting one set is not terribly expensive. You could let her choose between the two, or work BA this summer and put off the decision. With my ds, I have him do BA and MEP and I ruthlessly edit down MEP when it covers topics we've already seen in BA. My dd uses MM and it is a good fit for her. When she gets frustrated with math it is tricky to keep her from shutting down, so BA might not be a good fit. Thank you! What is MEP? I've learned most of the acronyms, but not that one (although I've seen it several times). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoutingmom Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 Google MEP Maths and you will find it. It stands for Mathematics Enhancement Programme. It is a program in the UK for the schools, but a lot of homeschoolers have used it as it is free, and VERY well done. This Blog post has a lot of good information on starting in MEP (and there are other posts on the same blog written later....) http://ohpeacefulday.blogspot.ca/2009/06/mep-101.html and there is a MEP homeschoolers yahoo group. I think the link is on that blog post. a couple of quick notes if you do it.... make sure you print to 'actual size' any pages that have anything to measure on it, or you won't get the right measurements. Note that it is on A4 paper, so the page numbers will get cut off when you do that. Measurement instruction is in metric - which is helpful for science anyway, and for anything to do with money - just use the problems like they are in dollars instead of pounds. ie: 2 pounds + 4 pounds, you would go for $2+$4. hope that helps! http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/ oh, and you have to write a quick email to get the password. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barnwife Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 This Blog post has a lot of good information on starting in MEP (and there are other posts on the same blog written later....) http://ohpeacefulday.blogspot.ca/2009/06/mep-101.html and there is a MEP homeschoolers yahoo group. I think the link is on that blog post. a couple of quick notes if you do it.... make sure you print to 'actual size' any pages that have anything to measure on it, or you won't get the right measurements. Note that it is on A4 paper, so the page numbers will get cut off when you do that. Measurement instruction is in metric - which is helpful for science anyway, and for anything to do with money - just use the problems like they are in dollars instead of pounds. ie: 2 pounds + 4 pounds, you would go for $2+$4. hope that helps! http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/ oh, and you have to write a quick email to get the password. Thank you for the above links! (I have nothing useful to add to this post. Our oldest isn't quite 5. But I am eyeing MEP for future use, and that blog post just helped me make a little more sense of it.) Good luck in your first year HS, OP! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kateingr Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 BA would be hard to use as a supplement because you can't easily pick and choose problems, there is nothing superfluous in there. Whether you use it as a supplement or a spine Orr alone, I would start with 3A. I'm your position, I would get BA 3A and try it out, getting one set is not terribly expensive. You could let her choose between the two, or work BA this summer and put off the decision. With my ds, I have him do BA and MEP and I ruthlessly edit down MEP when it covers topics we've already seen in BA. My dd uses MM and it is a good fit for her. When she gets frustrated with math it is tricky to keep her from shutting down, so BA might not be a good fit. I love this idea of just getting Beast and giving it a try. You could also do this very inexpensively with one of the Math Mammoth Blue series worktexts (which usually run around $5) and see which one your daughter prefers. Fun but challenging is a great description for Beast. Both it and MM are great, solid curricula, so you really can't go wrong with either one. Math Mammoth would be better aligned with what your daughter's peers are doing in school, however, depending on how much of a factor that is for you. (Although since your daughter has been doing so well in math, it likely wouldn't make a terribly big difference if she did end up going back to public school the following year.) (If you do decide to go with Beast, your daughter would likely get a lot out of 3A and 3B, but I think I would start with 3C if I were in your position. 3C and 3D present some very foundational concepts (distributive property and understanding of fractions) so I wouldn't want a child to miss them, but it would be a little closer to your daughter's grade level in terms of the concepts presented.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baseballsandbows Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 Google MEP Maths and you will find it. It stands for Mathematics Enhancement Programme. It is a program in the UK for the schools, but a lot of homeschoolers have used it as it is free, and VERY well done. This Blog post has a lot of good information on starting in MEP (and there are other posts on the same blog written later....) http://ohpeacefulday.blogspot.ca/2009/06/mep-101.html and there is a MEP homeschoolers yahoo group. I think the link is on that blog post. a couple of quick notes if you do it.... make sure you print to 'actual size' any pages that have anything to measure on it, or you won't get the right measurements. Note that it is on A4 paper, so the page numbers will get cut off when you do that. Measurement instruction is in metric - which is helpful for science anyway, and for anything to do with money - just use the problems like they are in dollars instead of pounds. ie: 2 pounds + 4 pounds, you would go for $2+$4. hope that helps! http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/ oh, and you have to write a quick email to get the password. Thanks for this detailed info! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baseballsandbows Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 I love this idea of just getting Beast and giving it a try. You could also do this very inexpensively with one of the Math Mammoth Blue series worktexts (which usually run around $5) and see which one your daughter prefers. Fun but challenging is a great description for Beast. Both it and MM are great, solid curricula, so you really can't go wrong with either one. Math Mammoth would be better aligned with what your daughter's peers are doing in school, however, depending on how much of a factor that is for you. (Although since your daughter has been doing so well in math, it likely wouldn't make a terribly big difference if she did end up going back to public school the following year.) (If you do decide to go with Beast, your daughter would likely get a lot out of 3A and 3B, but I think I would start with 3C if I were in your position. 3C and 3D present some very foundational concepts (distributive property and understanding of fractions) so I wouldn't want a child to miss them, but it would be a little closer to your daughter's grade level in terms of the concepts presented.) I have the Math Mammoth Blue Book for fractions. I was planning to try it out before starting the 5th grade light blue book. I may try that and get a Beast Academy book as well and see which works best. Thanks for the ideas suggestions! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmasc Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 I have nothing to add to the math discussion, but I did want to mention something on spelling. Since you said your daughter is very auditory, you might want to look at Phonetic Zoo from IEW. I haven't used it, but I just wanted to mention it since it's auditory. Your first year sounds like it will be a fun and enriching one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baseballsandbows Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 I have nothing to add to the math discussion, but I did want to mention something on spelling. Since you said your daughter is very auditory, you might want to look at Phonetic Zoo from IEW. I haven't used it, but I just wanted to mention it since it's auditory. Your first year sounds like it will be a fun and enriching one! Thank you! I will look into it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChocolateMomster Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 Seconding MEP and BA. I like MEP as our main, and I supplement with BA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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