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Honest reviews of CC Essentials program?


amyc78
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I am really struggling with making a decision regarding CC Essentials for next year for my rising 4th grader. I keep hearing great things about it from other CCers but I'm just not sold on the program. It seems like a LOT of time and work- it needs to be really effective for me and my DS9 to put that much effort into it. I understand that there are really 3 parts to the program- 1) Essentials of the English Language (grammar); 2) IEW (composition); and 3) Math games and drills. I'm not concerned about the math portion as really I just see that as an extra bonus. But I'd like to hear honest opinions about the EEL and IEW portions of the program.

 

I will add that I grew up a natural writer and never saw much merit in sentence diagramming, charting, etc. I am not sold on that method of instruction but I am not wholly opposed to it either. My goals for my students' language education is to produce writers who can effectively communicate in both written and spoken language, in multiple writing formats and with the ability to perform well in high school and college level classes. I would also like them to enjoy writing. My application leans toward more organic formats- Charlotte Mason really but I worry about retention with purely CM methods.

 

Help! :)

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I am also wondering about the possibility of just participating in the IEW portion. We would of course be in class for all of the instruction but I might only require IEW work at home… I have heard really good things about this program and I like the idea of a the SWI DVDs when I am unable to do something teacher intensive...

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My boys did CC's Essentials class in 5th grade. It was a very positive experience for them. We didn't continue with CC because I knew that the upper levels were not the direction I wanted to go down the road, but that one year of IEW w/ CC was worth it. If I had it to do over, we'd do it again.

 

My sons loved the IEW writing component, primarily because of the group aspect of it. They had an excellent "tutor" and a great group of other students in the class. The support and kindness and positive feedback they gave each other was heartwarming. They loved brainstorming ideas with their friends. The students shared their essays in class, which certainly upped the effort they put into their writing and the quality of their final, submitted work.

 

My sons also loved the math drill component. The class was mostly boys, and boys tend to be competitive. The tutor was very good at creating a comfortable environment in which the students could be competitive in the math games, but also work together toward a goal. For some children, math drills can be much less tedious, and even fun!, when done in a group environment.

 

The grammar component was ok. We had done Rod & Staff for a couple of years and continued it during the year we used Essentials. The EEL work was all review for my sons, which is fortunate because otherwise it would have been pretty time consuming. I think they've revised the grammar component since we did CC 5 or so years ago.

 

I did not have my daughter do Essentials. She would have hated it because she really dislikes any sort of competition in math. She might have liked the group writing aspect of IEW. She wouldn't have liked the grammar component at all, even though it would have been all review for her, too, because she doesn't like having to learn new lingo for concepts she already understands. (CC's grammar lingo is different than R&S's to some extent.)

 

So, bottom line, CC's Essentials program was great for my boys.... it gave them a social environment to work on writing and to participate in some competitive games & activities in a fun, positive way.  They did some of the best writing of their grammar school years the year they spent doing IEW as part of Essentials.  As everyone will tell you, the tutor is key. A good tutor makes for a great year. A not-so-good tutor can make for a verrrry long, not so productive year.

 

 

Edited by yvonne
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My boys did CC's Essentials class in 5th grade. It was a very positive experience for them. We didn't continue with CC because I knew that the upper levels were not the direction I wanted to go down the road, but that one year of IEW w/ CC was worth it. If I had it to do over, we'd do it again.

 

My sons loved the IEW writing component, primarily because of the group aspect of it. They had an excellent "tutor" and a great group of other students in the class. The support and kindness and positive feedback they gave each other was heartwarming. They loved brainstorming ideas with their friends. The students shared their essays in class, which certainly upped the effort they put into their writing and the quality of their final, submitted work.

 

My sons also loved the math drill component. The class was mostly boys, and boys tend to be competitive. The tutor was very good at creating a comfortable environment in which the students could be competitive in the math games, but also work together toward a goal. For some children, math drills can be much less tedious, and even fun!, when done in a group environment.

 

The grammar component was ok. We had done Rod & Staff for a couple of years and continued it during the year we used Essentials. The EEL work was all review for my sons, which is fortunate because otherwise it would have been pretty time consuming. I think they've revised the grammar component since we did CC 5 or so years ago.

 

I did not have my daughter do Essentials. She would have hated it because she really dislikes any sort of competition in math. She might have liked the group writing aspect of IEW. She wouldn't have liked the grammar component at all, even though it would have been all review for her, too, because she doesn't like having to learn new lingo for concepts she already understands. (CC's grammar lingo is different than R&S's to some extent.)

 

So, bottom line, CC's Essentials program was great for my boys.... it gave them a social environment to work on writing and to participate in some competitive games & activities in a fun, positive way.  They did some of the best writing of their grammar school years the year they spent doing IEW as part of Essentials.  As everyone will tell you, the tutor is key. A good tutor makes for a great year. A not-so-good tutor can make for a verrrry long, not so productive year.

This was very helpful, thank you. I do not know yet who our tutor will be but I do know it will be a 1st year tutor (at least first year tutoring Essentials) because the current Essentials tutor is leaving. I do feel that the group aspect will be a great motivator for my son! He is very social and loves to share his ideas with others, and he absolutely thrives on verbal encouragement and affirmation. 

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This was very helpful, thank you. I do not know yet who our tutor will be but I do know it will be a 1st year tutor (at least first year tutoring Essentials) because the current Essentials tutor is leaving. I do feel that the group aspect will be a great motivator for my son! He is very social and loves to share his ideas with others, and he absolutely thrives on verbal encouragement and affirmation. 

 

Sounds like Essentials is potentially a great fit for your son!  One of mine is more social and one is very introverted, but they both loved the math & IEW of Essentials.

We had a first year tutor. She was a first year CC parent, in fact, so she had no prior experience at all with CC. She was very good, though.  But! really, the tutor is key. Having done CC & Essentials, I never talk about CC with anyone without mentioning that each student's experience is going to be almost totally dependent on the quality of the tutor.

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First off, I'd like to say the Essentials program is worth the acclaim it receives.  My middle son had a year of R&S before starting EEL and continually commented that first year how thankful he was for his time with R&S so he wasn't lost in EEL.  He did get a second year in and found it much easier to manage the 2nd year.   I did not feel my youngest was ready in 4th grade for the volume of the assignments, so I spent 4th going through Our Mother Tongue and one of the simpler IEW books at home.  We called it mini-Essentials. :-) We saved a lot of $$ and tears.  The following year he started EEL and was able to jump in at the year 2 level right from the start.  Some observations along the way....  

 

1. Remember that the goal of Foundations/Essentials is to prepare students for the Challenge levels. This happens both in learning more about time management and in Latin preparation.  Many formerly care-free hours will now be devoted to learning details of the English language and it will build time-management skills and work ethic in a student taking the class seriously. Also, the Challenge levels pursue Latin rigorously. Essentials is truly a pre-Latin course (though it is not taught is such a way that one would guess this).  It is unbelievable how much of the grammar of the English language derives from Latin.  By studying English grammar thoroughly, the framework for Latin language structure is being simultaneously learned. 

 

2.  EEL is a steep learning curve if formal grammar has not been taught before.  Also, the copying of the charts ad nauseum is a steep curve in motivation.  As the parent, you can tell your kids it is ok to ease up a bit, but I have a strict rule follower.  If the tutor says copy each chart 3 times, he's going to do it so that he can honestly say he did *all* off his homework.  When our tutor starting saying, "3x or however many your mom says you have to do," he felt permission to accept the offer of a lighter load (sometimes ;-) ).  I would really recommend some level of relaxed formal grammar before entering the high pressure dynamic of EEL. 

 

3.  Like most programs, EEL has gaps. Mechanics, punctuation, and capitalization are given a single, one-sided page with weekly suggestions on specific skills to highlight for that week. These skills are addressed in the parent guide each week, but I just couldn't keep up with that (nor could the other moms in our class).  Presumably, this is all review at this point, but we found it did not take long to discover these gaps.  Some can be addressed in weekly writing assignments, but we found that after completing the assigned work, we really just did not have energy left to specifically practice problem areas. There was minimal instruction in these areas in class (because the tutor had so many other things to do). Many of the moms purchased grammar supplement workbooks or software to use over the summer to try to fill in some of these gaps.  

 

4. Personally, we found the EEL workload to be very cumbersome.  For us, 24 weeks of going like a freight train burned us out. We were done  at the end of the 24 weeks. (Writing was still happening in other subjects and life events. i.e. Thank you cards, letters to friends, ... ).  Honestly, my high schooler in a b&m school was not assigned as much in his full year of 10th grade English as my 5th grader did last year in his 24 weeks of EEL.  True story.   That said, the work ethic gained by pursuing grammar and writing so rigorously has been a delightful by-product of those 24 freight train weeks! 

 

While some of that may come across as negative, I have to say that I am so thankful for the time we did spend in Essentials. We had wonderful tutors and my kids thrived on the encouragement and praise they received publicly each week. I hope that instead of seeming negative, it is seen as intended... just some honest feedback about a program we loved, but that had served it's purpose for us.  

 

We are not doing year three of EEL this year for several reasons.  One is because IEW is not a good fit.  Ds needs to see the big picture (the whole story in full context), then break it apart to write about it (LTW is wonderful for this!).  IEW has them look at lots of words without much context (essays), break them into smaller words with less context, then rebuild from those little words. This model just doesn't fit ds's learning style. (It was fabulous for my older kids, though)!  The other reason is so ds can pursue his passions.  Now that he has time, he has a new love for science.  He spends 30+ minutes/day practicing his instrument. And he is doing more free reading than he previously had time for.  We don't want to lose what we gained in EEL, so we are doing R&S this year as review, and for filling in some of the mechanics and punctuation gaps. It takes a couple hours a week rather than 1.5 hrs/day. 

 

Sorry for rambling!  Hope there are some nuggets here you can draw out to help you in deciding about Essentials. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by jetzmama
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Guest MammaBear77

First off, I'd like to say the Essentials program is worth the acclaim it receives.  My middle son had a year of R&S before starting EEL and continually commented that first year how thankful he was for his time with R&S so he wasn't lost in EEL.  He did get a second year in and found it much easier to manage the 2nd year.   I did not feel my youngest was ready in 4th grade for the volume of the assignments, so I spent 4th going through Our Mother Tongue and one of the simpler IEW books at home.  We called it mini-Essentials. :-) We saved a lot of $$ and tears.  The following year he started EEL and was able to jump in at the year 2 level right from the start.  Some observations along the way....  

 

1. Remember that the goal of Foundations/Essentials is to prepare students for the Challenge levels. This happens both in learning more about time management and in Latin preparation.  Many formerly care-free hours will now be devoted to learning details of the English language and it will build time-management skills and work ethic in a student taking the class seriously. Also, the Challenge levels pursue Latin rigorously. Essentials is truly a pre-Latin course (though it is not taught is such a way that one would guess this).  It is unbelievable how much of the grammar of the English language derives from Latin.  By studying English grammar thoroughly, the framework for Latin language structure is being simultaneously learned. 

 

2.  EEL is a steep learning curve if formal grammar has not been taught before.  Also, the copying of the charts ad nauseum is a steep curve in motivation.  As the parent, you can tell your kids it is ok to ease up a bit, but I have a strict rule follower.  If the tutor says copy each chart 3 times, he's going to do it so that he can honestly say he did *all* off his homework.  When our tutor starting saying, "3x or however many your mom says you have to do," he felt permission to accept the offer of a lighter load (sometimes ;-) ).  I would really recommend some level of relaxed formal grammar before entering the high pressure dynamic of EEL. 

 

3.  Like most programs, EEL has gaps. Mechanics, punctuation, and capitalization are given a single, one-sided page with weekly suggestions on specific skills to highlight for that week. These skills are addressed in the parent guide each week, but I just couldn't keep up with that (nor could the other moms in our class).  Presumably, this is all review at this point, but we found it did not take long to discover these gaps.  Some can be addressed in weekly writing assignments, but we found that after completing the assigned work, we really just did not have energy left to specifically practice problem areas. There was minimal instruction in these areas in class (because the tutor had so many other things to do). Many of the moms purchased grammar supplement workbooks or software to use over the summer to try to fill in some of these gaps.  

 

4. Personally, we found the EEL workload to be very cumbersome.  For us, 24 weeks of going like a freight train burned us out. We were done  at the end of the 24 weeks. (Writing was still happening in other subjects and life events. i.e. Thank you cards, letters to friends, ... ).  Honestly, my high schooler in a b&m school was not assigned as much in his full year of 10th grade English as my 5th grader did last year in his 24 weeks of EEL.  True story.   That said, the work ethic gained by pursuing grammar and writing so rigorously has been a delightful by-product of those 24 freight train weeks! 

 

While some of that may come across as negative, I have to say that I am so thankful for the time we did spend in Essentials. We had wonderful tutors and my kids thrived on the encouragement and praise they received publicly each week. I hope that instead of seeming negative, it is seen as intended... just some honest feedback about a program we loved, but that had served it's purpose for us.  

 

We are not doing year three of EEL this year for several reasons.  One is because IEW is not a good fit.  Ds needs to see the big picture (the whole story in full context), then break it apart to write about it (LTW is wonderful for this!).  IEW has them look at lots of words without much context (essays), break them into smaller words with less context, then rebuild from those little words. This model just doesn't fit ds's learning style. (It was fabulous for my older kids, though)!  The other reason is so ds can pursue his passions.  Now that he has time, he has a new love for science.  He spends 30+ minutes/day practicing his instrument. And he is doing more free reading than he previously had time for.  We don't want to lose what we gained in EEL, so we are doing R&S this year as review, and for filling in some of the mechanics and punctuation gaps. It takes a couple hours a week rather than 1.5 hrs/day. 

 

Sorry for rambling!  Hope there are some nuggets here you can draw out to help you in deciding about Essentials. 

quick question, what is LTW? Thank you! :)

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I've been wanting to respond to this thread, but have too much to say to tap it out on my phone. I'll try to be succinct! I did CC Essentials for two years with my daughter when she was 9-10 years of age. Prior to it, we had done FLL 3, WWE 1-3, and AG Junior. She was well-prepared by this background. The grammar of Essentials moves very fast, but was a nice big-picture overview. My DD is a very fast memorizer and she enjoyed it. The math games were a fun chance to race friends, but even as the youngest in the class, she was consistently the fastest; I can see how the set-up would be frustrating for a child who didn't already know all the math facts and/or wasn't fast. It worked for my DD, but ymmv. The writing assignments were the most beneficial for our family. We needed the 'deadlines' to actually complete papers. I don't love the IEW approach, but it worked well for us for a season. We chose not to re-enroll for the 3rd year because I felt my daughter was ready to move on from the memorization-heavy grammar stage to more logic stage work. We had a very good tutor. If I can find a campus with a lovely tutor, I will likely do CC Foundations & Essentials again with my youngest DD when she is 8-10 or 9-11. I could never do it multiple times through with the same child- that's way overkill for our family.

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We did a year of Essentials last year with my then 11 yo and 14 yo. We'd done R & S previously as well. I've taught and vended for IEW for years and my kids have done WWE, WWS, IEW - they get and like to write.  My kids breezed through the writing portion, loved the math games (and it got my deliberate/accurate but painfully slow math thinker to get through math more quickly) and really worked hard at the grammar portion. 

I am a "natural" writer, too and really wondered if learning grammar would make a difference. Totally. I believe my writing has improved dramatically as I am learning grammar. 

We are working through Henle Latin this year (we jumped into Challenge) and getting it. It's work but it's satisfying work- not painful and frustrating work-kwim. My now 16 yo (they both have winter birthdays) totally gets both English and Latin grammar. He is loving the Latin and appreciates English grammar. Was it that year of Essentials? No. He did Essentials and FFL last year as well. But it's just natural to him. His persuasive essays this year take him about 20 minutes. 

 

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I have a degree in linguistics and taught grammatical analysis for years at a college level.  I loved Essentials!  The only part I disagree with is how they classify the indirect object.  Although this is a bit of a tangent, here goes:

 

I gave the book to the girl.

I gave the book to her.

I gave her the book.

 

In which situation is the girl/her the indirect object?  I say that all three sentences have an indirect object, but I think that Essentials class would say that only the 3rd example has an indirect object while the other two are objects of the preposition.  In the dative case of Latin, the word 'dative' comes from 'do dare dedi datus' (to give) and the dative case is the case of the indirect object. 

 

Otherwise, I totally agree with the Essentials method for teaching grammar, at least from what I remember from doing it one year with my 12 dd.  She learned a ton and I wish my son could have done it, too, but we came in too late to CC, so he started off with Challenge A.  Latin was very tough for him because he had not had the Essentials class, but it was very easy for my dd with her Essentials background.

 

Blessings,

 

Brenda

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  • 1 month later...

Just my two cents... We are in our third year of Essentials (our seventh in CC).  I love Essentials.  But, that is probably mostly because 1) our campus is awesome 2) I have a weak grammar background and needed this for my own education - sad, but true.  I am a CPA by trade so to me the math time is just a fun reinforcement and social time/break.  The IEW program is really great, it has given us structure, guidelines to follow, deadlines, and fairly interesting topics to write about.  

 

With that said, now looking back over our time, the first year I was a little confused and overwhelmed.  I think this is a natural feeling of first year parents.  There is a lot of information to learn and figure out how to teach.  But, with a good tutor and patience it all comes together.  I will be honest and say that our first year we were pretty much tapped out at week 14-15 on the grammar side.  After that we just reviewed what we had learned and didn't try to squeeze in the rest.  I'm glad we did this, it worked for us because by the second year we hit the ground running and could cement the first part into our brains and then add the weeks at the end that are more difficult.  This year is really all review with fine tuning on some of the more complex ideas, and add some that are in the resource but not necessarily taught in class. 

 

I think two years is enough for some students, those with parents that are strong in grammar or have a strong background themselves.  Before Essentials we reviewed SWB First Language Lessons and knew the info from Foundations cycles.  However, I think most would benefit from three years.

 

I think it has been a valuable part of our school year.

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It totally depends on your tutor and child. Our tutor couldn't keep an adjective and an adverb straight.  We only every played two math games.  The one 9 year old in our program was a behavior problem.  It appeared that he was so overwhelmed that he acted out instead.  

 

I did enjoy IEW for writing. 

 

You can scale the assignments down or up, but another child in our class was quite rude and made an example out of anyone she thought, "took the easy way out."  Her mother saw no issue with her doing this even after I pointed out that it made peers feel self conscious. 

 

A friend calls me often when she doesn't understand what the Essentials guide is saying.  I think it is a self publishing issue.  The answer sometimes assumes you know a nuance and it won't be discussed.  A good tutor would be able to point that out to you but like I said, our tutor was... lacking.  

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I think it's a good program. I haven't felt that it was time consuming at all. In fact we use Analytical Grammar on our weeks off of CC and my girls would rather do analytical task in eel. In the EEL you do one sentence a day. Parse it, classify it, diagram it and then change it to interrogative, declarative etc. Analytical Grammar gives you 10 sentences a day to parse and diagram. On the other hand EEL goes deeper into grammar. It's been a really good combination and I've really been pleasantly suprised at how much my girls have learned. I feel like IEW goes fast since it's a full year program crammed into 24 weeks. My girls hate adding all those dress ups but their paragraphs sound so much better once they add them. Next year I'm going to use WWS on our off weeks. Even with the intensity of IEW we still only spend 30-45 min a day on writing. Grammar is maybe 30min. My girls did R&S and JR AG last year so I think that gave them a good background to start essentials.

Edited by Momto4inSoCal
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  • 4 weeks later...

I've been wanting to respond to this thread, but have too much to say to tap it out on my phone. I'll try to be succinct! I did CC Essentials for two years with my daughter when she was 9-10 years of age. Prior to it, we had done FLL 3, WWE 1-3, and AG Junior. She was well-prepared by this background. The grammar of Essentials moves very fast, but was a nice big-picture overview. My DD is a very fast memorizer and she enjoyed it. The math games were a fun chance to race friends, but even as the youngest in the class, she was consistently the fastest; I can see how the set-up would be frustrating for a child who didn't already know all the math facts and/or wasn't fast. It worked for my DD, but ymmv. The writing assignments were the most beneficial for our family. We needed the 'deadlines' to actually complete papers. I don't love the IEW approach, but it worked well for us for a season. We chose not to re-enroll for the 3rd year because I felt my daughter was ready to move on from the memorization-heavy grammar stage to more logic stage work. We had a very good tutor. If I can find a campus with a lovely tutor, I will likely do CC Foundations & Essentials again with my youngest DD when she is 8-10 or 9-11. I could never do it multiple times through with the same child- that's way overkill for our family.

 

What math facts would you say would prepare a child for the math games? Just what they learned in Foundations or all the Times Tables, addition and subtraction facts and...?

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What math facts would you say would prepare a child for the math games? Just what they learned in Foundations or all the Times Tables, addition and subtraction facts and...?

 

Not OP, but addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through 13, or maybe 15. Ask the Essentials tutor for the best answer for your group.

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I think they do folks a disservice by saying kids don't need grammar before essentials. I think my kids would have been lost with no grammar beforehand; it's fast paced. As it was, we got a lot out of it. Other families chalk the first year up as a blur.

 

So for us, it was great grammar review. We had an awesome teacher who put a lot into the class. IEW was meh. Much prefer the Pudewa videos we did the previous two years, but still learned some good ideas from our tutor, and kids love to read their papers in front of the class. Again, I think it helps to have a background, but I guess that's how they get people to spend three years doing Essentials. My kids loved the math games.

 

We are just doing this one year, and next year we'll do our own thing again. But I still plan to bring out the essentials book to review grammar each week. We'll take a break from Iew and do WWS as well. It was a good year, and I don't regret it. For us, it was good review and cementing of ideas and skills. but I could never picture doing three years of the same thing. Just not my approach.

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I think they do folks a disservice by saying kids don't need grammar before essentials. I think my kids would have been lost with no grammar beforehand; it's fast paced. As it was, we got a lot out of it. Other families chalk the first year up as a blur.

 

So for us, it was great grammar review. We had an awesome teacher who put a lot into the class. IEW was meh. Much prefer the Pudewa videos we did the previous two years, but still learned some good ideas from our tutor, and kids love to read their papers in front of the class. Again, I think it helps to have a background, but I guess that's how they get people to spend three years doing Essentials.

 

This.

 

I don't understand CC'S anti curriculum stance. They don't want kids in foundations doing anything other than reading/phonics and Math. My kids have gained so much from Essentials but R&S and Analytical Grammar gave them the base they need. We had kids that didn't even know the 8 parts of speech and they aren't really getting much out of it.

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So to piggy back on the OP, do you all who have children that participated in CC Essentials feel that the overall cost of the program (both monetarily and time spent) was worth it over completing a solid grammar program and IEW SWI DVDs at home? Where is the added value?

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So to piggy back on the OP, do you all who have children that participated in CC Essentials feel that the overall cost of the program (both monetarily and time spent) was worth it over completing a solid grammar program and IEW SWI DVDs at home? Where is the added value?

I would say yes. However, we had a good knowledge base going in, having completed FLL 1-3 and AG Jr. For grammar and WWE 1-3 for writing, so there was never any feeling of being overwhelmed with new info. The added value of a class like this was the interaction between the kids (healthy competition would be a good way to characterize it). We wrote more complete papers those years than we EVER would have on our own due to the deadlines/due dates imposed by the tutor. The math games were just fun, but also really put her knowledge to use in a good way. The way the EEL is presented was very different and really helped give my daughter a great big-picture understanding of how it all fits together. My DD is now doing AG with very little effort/struggle. She REALLY knows this stuff by now. Hope that helps.
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This.

 

I don't understand CC'S anti curriculum stance. They don't want kids in foundations doing anything other than reading/phonics and Math. My kids have gained so much from Essentials but R&S and Analytical Grammar gave them the base they need. We had kids that didn't even know the 8 parts of speech and they aren't really getting much out of it.

 

I agree and disagree... on the one hand I appreciate CC's recommendation to keep it simple in the early years, I see so many parents (myself included) burn themselves out trying to add ridiculous amounts of curriculum to CC. And I think if you go into Essentials with the plan to repeat it for 3 years and basically audit/observe the first year, then you don't "need" to do any formal grammar before. And I certainly wouldn't add grammar for kids who are struggling with reading and spelling.

 

HOWEVER, if you want to get your money's worth the first year of Essentials and/or don't intent to repeat, OR if you have a child that will be frustrated at not keeping up with the other kids, then I can certainly see how having some previous years of grammar would be important. 

 

I wish CC would at least recommend an optional prepatory grammar curriculum to help prepare kids (and parents!).

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This.

 

I don't understand CC'S anti curriculum stance. They don't want kids in foundations doing anything other than reading/phonics and Math. My kids have gained so much from Essentials but R&S and Analytical Grammar gave them the base they need. We had kids that didn't even know the 8 parts of speech and they aren't really getting much out of it.

 

I am struggling with this as well.  We are returning to CC next year in part to escape the unschooling dynamic that is prevalent here.  I really, really want a community where it is not seen as child abuse to make a first grader do FLL 1.  I'm hoping that CC is not more of the same, but their Facebook group has me a bit scared.  I'm just tired of coming home from park days and hearing about how none of the other homeschoolers do math.  (And, the kids aren't exaggerating... the parents tell me the same thing.)

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I am struggling with this as well.  We are returning to CC next year in part to escape the unschooling dynamic that is prevalent here.  I really, really want a community where it is not seen as child abuse to make a first grader do FLL 1.  I'm hoping that CC is not more of the same, but their Facebook group has me a bit scared.  I'm just tired of coming home from park days and hearing about how none of the other homeschoolers do math.  (And, the kids aren't exaggerating... the parents tell me the same thing.)

 

We have all kinds in our community- unschoolers, Charlotte Mason, Sonlighters, Abeka Boxed curriculum, interest-led- even some that are in private school and just come for community day! I would say most of our community are eclectic- combining the best of several methods and curriculums that work for their kids, trying to stay mostly on or above grade level with what traditional school kids are doing.

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