WinterPromise Opinions?

[Guest lilysmom]

I just found this board and I have been homeschooling my K5 daughter and we are looking forward to purchasing a first grade curriculum soon. I see WinterPromise and their catalog and product looks amazing. I love their book selection, notebooking, activities; I have had a chance to look at their product samples online.

 

What is everyone's opinion of this curriculum? Looking ahead into the future...what do you think of their jr high/sr high programs; do they have good quality jr/sr high programs? I would love to hear the opinions of anyone who has used this curriculum, hasn't used it (and doesn't want to), or would love to but haven't yet.

 

Thanks:)!

[SnowWhite]

I'm the resident WP groupie. I have loved everything from WP we have tried so far. That includes:

 

I'm Ready to Learn (this year with K4 student, but we're doing a go-with-the-flow non-scheduled approach)

Animals and Their Worlds (last year with 6yo- I've decided I was too hard-nosed about making him listen to every word of info in the program though.)

American Story 1 (this year with 7yo)

Language Arts 1- Yes, it's advanced compared to many programs

Language Arts 2

Chess Elective (our only problem with this is sticking with it, since it's an elective we often elect not to do it).

World Around Me Science

 

I'll be happy to answer specific questions about these programs.

 

What I love about WP in general:

Visually appealing books

Use of multiple learning styles (hands on, notebooking, timeline, DVDs, websites)

Reasonable amounts of work assigned

Easy-to-understand teacher's guide

 

I'm looking forward to American Story 2 next year, and after that I am currently leaning toward the Quest for the Ancient World, though I have considered doing Adventures in the Sea and Sky first.

[Haiku]

I was able to preview WP's American Story 1 for a few weeks in my home. It was very slick-looking. Ultimately, I decided I wasn't interested. It was crazy expensive. Their books are good, but they can certainly be read without buying the curriculum. There are some fun activities, but fun activities can be found free by the boatload online or in books you get from the library. I bought a copy of TWTM for $20. It has everything my kids need from K through high school. I'm not trapped into spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year for a slick curriculum that, in the end, is not as rigorous as TWTM. Add in WP's notoriously terrible customer relations and the deal was sealed for me.

 

Tara

 

ETA: I am currently using a free world history curriculum for 1st-3rd graders that uses Story of the World. It provides a lot of nice activities for the kids and it's free. Did I mention it's free? It's called Moasic and you can find it at bringinguplearners.com. I find that it gives me a nice spine to build the rest of our WTM studies around.

Edited October 22, 2008 by TaraTheLiberator

[Annie Laurie]

You pay for convenience, so if a schedule and all the books on hand are important to you, then you may find it worth the cost. If you are good at planning on your own, then like Tara said, there is a ton of free info and resources out there these days.

 

I am one who will pay for convenience and will take all the help I can get. :001_smile: I have Animal Worlds and it wasn't a great fit for us- we prefer lots of stories at that age. We didn't like the OSS books and have had to adapt the encyclopedia and notebooking pages to our needs and use it our way. That said, I still kept the curriculum because my kids will read through a lot of the books on their own.

 

I haven't seen the other programs for older kids yet. The customer service issues have kept me from ordering a full program from them too. (I ordered most of AW from Amazon). It just concerns me to tie up that much money and not know when I'll get the items. I've been spoiled by SL.

 

I've been considering CAW without the plight resources because I have a child begging for more geography and have already used GtG. I think WP looks like a lot of fun, with all the hands-on stuff, and for a child who prefers non-fiction and likes less reading, (like two of my sons), it might be a good fit.

[Emmy]

I have a warm place in my heart for Winterpromise as they are where I started my homeschool journey, but I am not using them for the bulk of my curriculum currently. They gave me the hand holding and jumping off point that I needed when I started my homeschooling career on the fly with little research or prep into what homeschooling actually involved, but I found I am not one that wants or needs a schedule and I'm a tweaker to the point where it doesn't make sense for me to buy a big curriculum.

 

I can't speak to their junior high and high school programs but here are some thoughts on what I've used.

 

Animal Worlds - very fun program that is great for kids that love animals. My second son LOVES this program. It has some great preschool-y/kinder style crafts (paper plate animals and the like) but the reading content is pretty deep. The notebooking pages were not worthwhile IMO - it's basically the same page every week where you have the kids write the same 5 things about a different animal. The book selection is awesome. I would not buy this program from WP directly - I saved about $100 by just buying the Instructors Guide and then ordering all the books new from Amazon.

American Story 1 - I loved this program and loved the books. This was my first program I used with WP in my first year of homeschooling and I learned a lot during that year. I tweaked it a lot though - I found so many more picture books and early readers I wanted to add and found some of the read alouds way too long for my (at the time) 6yo son. I found over time that I prefer to choose and schedule my own activities. AS1 is really heavy on paper crafts the first several weeks and we got tired of them. Many of the crafts in the latter half were really too involved for me (whittle lewis and clark's boat out of wood....) so I did a lot of my own thing. The notebooking pages were not great but without them there doesn't seem to be a narrative thread to the study. Many are just a paragraph of information and a spot for your child to color a picture. Few are interactive (at least in the version I did - 2006). I ended up adding applicable chapters of SOTW 3 and 4 to give us a narrative thread and that is what led me to moving over to SOTW full time.

 

Language Arts - I like their preK and K LA pretty well but prefer teaching kids to read with OPG, happy phonics games, and a selection of readers. I also used 1st grade LA and half of 2nd grade - it wasn't for me though I think because I prefer to do my own thing. I didn't like that it was so workbook-y and I didn't like that they jumped from one set of workbooks to another year to year. I really think my dislike of their LA might be more due to my (at that time) lack of understanding as to what LA should include. For me, I had to really get my head around what all is involved and what all the different facts of LA are, and The Well Trained Mind helped me do that. With WP I really didn't think we were getting anywhere on grammar or writing but that might have been my own lack of understanding. I also prefer to choose my own kids readers that to use a set group. And finally yes, their LA is advanced - in some ways - the readers in the 2nd grade program jump around from being 3 all the way up to 6th grade levels.

Hideaways in History - I bought the IG and exclusives for this program and intended to use them along with SOTW 1 for my younger kids. It's been ok but I haven't integrated it as much as I hoped. As a stand alone program I would find HIH to be really heavy on non-picture book reading for the age range that WP intends this for. I'm pretty regretful on this purchase.

 

World Around Me - great books. I didn't follow the IG at all but we read all the books. This seems to be a theme for me - I like their book lists but don't want / need how they schedule them.

 

I've also bought the chess program (which we started and then waned on) and Ready to Learn (which I intended for my now 4yo but haven't used).

 

I have a feeling this all sounds a lot more negative than I'm intending - I really do think they are a nice company and like I said - they hold a warm place in my heart. And I've met online some lovely people that using and enjoying WP - which I think is great. But I don't plan to continue purchasing their programs - I'm much happier making my own schedule, choosing my own books, and useing TWTM as my guide to school. I am loving using SOTW for history and will probably move to TOG for our second round through history.

[runamuk]

We're using WP American Story I. This is our first year homeschooling and I wanted something convenient and easy to use. I ordered the ASI history set and the coordinating Language Arts program. I love that the entire program is laid out on an easy to follow week-by-week schedule. I know what I'm going to be doing every day and can plan/prepare accordingly. There are also several suggestions on websites, videos and books to further the child's learning. I like that there are several different ways the material is taught - reading, crafts, movies, mapmaking. Looking at the schedule, it looks like there is a great deal of work each day, but the lessons are short and we're usually finished in 2 hours. My daughter loves the literature that comes with the program and finds many of the crafts to be fun and interesting.

 

Having said that, I don't know if I will be ordering any more curriculm from them again. It's very expensive, for one thing. All of the literature can be found at our library. There are several things we're not using because they're either too easy, too complicated, or just too much. I also like the idea of teaching history chronologically, as laid out in TWTM (which I did not read prior to beginning our homeschooling year). The customer service leaves something to be desired. It took 3 months to receive the materials (they arrived sporadically), several books had been changed, and I'm still missing one book and the instruction manual for the cd/rom (I emailed WP and am still waiting for resolution).

 

It's a good program and we're enjoying it, but the cost will keep us from continuing.

[Hopewell]

Lots of stuff is right from "Mystery of History"--buy it! If you really like having your whole life planned out then it's as good as any other, but very few activities are unique enough to merit the price in my opinion. I look at all the catalogs, web sites and see what's common among all of them. That helps me make my selections--as do TWTM and AO.

[bigdogs29906]

This is our first year with WP. I have mixed feelings about it. I really, really want to love it, but the jury is still out. We are doing Animal Worlds.

 

We end up skipping a lot/ most of the crafts. We do not use the LA at all, way too workbook-y for my kids. I like the books though. I can't say that we've learned a lot this year (we are sort of an animal family) but I think the kids do enjoy it. Sometimes I just run out of steam by that time of day...

 

I am planning on doing AS1 next year though.

 

I spend some time gathering the needed resources from used bookstores, paperbackswap, and noting what is in the library. I have been able to find the guides used. This all helps cut costs. If I couldn't do it this way, there is no way I would be able to justify the cost.

[MrsMe]

I have used a couple programs and I have a love/hate relationship with them.

 

Everything is laid out which is excellent. The books are great and the projects are full. The programs tend to be for a bit older students than what they say they're for. For instance, 2nd graders could easily do AW.

 

You'll have to not be bothered by doing one of these unit studies with the typos and there are some projects and reading that don't match up. For example in Animal Worlds, you may be studying one area, then finding you are doing a craft or read for a completely different animal and location that in my opinion could have been inserted in the proper unit. That was rather strange. For us organizational gurus, this drives us batty. Many people that bothers them not in the least.

 

Customer service is a hit or miss. Some have excellent service, some are waiting months for their items. IMP, if you're interested, I'd order the TM and WP exclusives and find the books on your own. That way you won't have any backorders and book changes and you could order as you go, or use the library if you wish to keep the cost down. Ordering your own in full may or may not be cost prohibitive, but it would reduce the frustration of not receiving your order in full and in a timely matter. The company is big on backorders and lack of responses at times and this can go on for a while. Which for the price of the program is not acceptable in my opinion.

 

I think the programs are great and they have a great product. They just need to work on their typos, cs and book availability.

[Laura W.]

I have used literature based programs since starting homeschooling 5 years ago. Last year I did WP Adventures in Sea and Sky with my then 4th-grader. I did drop some of the books because I felt the detail was unnecessary for a 4th grader. They would have been excellent for a 6th or even a 7th grader, though. These were the pros and cons I found with WP. Pros 1) Literature based; most of it engaged my dd. 2) Scheduled for you. 3) Only 4 "full" days scheduled. The 5th day is light, allowing you time to "catch up" if life got in the way of schooling that week. 4) Activities, websites, and videos recommended - you don't have to go searching for them yourself. 5) Some unique programs I haven't seen anywhere else (ie - Adventures in Sea and Sky) 6) Many programs are designed to cover multiple ages. For example, with Sea and Sky you have the option of buying a Young Learner's Guide for grades K-3 or an Older Learners Guide for grades 7-9. Those give some recommended books and assignments (some extra and some from the main program) that will help you be able to use the program with a broad age range. Cons 1) I thought a few of the books were "too old" for my dd (again, she was a 4th grader doing a program recommended for 4th-6th graders, and I think they would have been quite appropriate for 6th or 7th graders). 2) The Young Learner's Guide didn't quite fit the needs of my "young learners", who were in K and 1st last year. I switched back to FIAR with them, and used some of the books recommended in the Young Learners Guide with the FIAR lessons, so it wasn't a complete loss for me. Others, though, have found the YLG to be an excellent fit. 3) I chose WP hoping that it would help me include more hands-on activities in our homeschool. We did use some of them, but not as many as I had hoped to. Same with the websites and videos. Hands-on activities just aren't my "thing". For people who enjoy those types of things, having those recommendations included as part of the WP package really helps make their homeschool full and rich. I think WP offers an excellent product. Since you liked the samples you saw, why not try it? If you can't afford the whole package, get the guide and any WP exclusives, then piece together everything else from the library, buying used books, etc. If it turns out to be a good fit, great - their elementary programs are very good, and that's all you need to worry about right now (you may find what fits you and your child changing as your homeschool journey goes on - that's been my experience). I know a lot of homeschoolers like to have a plan for the future, though, so if it gives you confidence - I think they have excellent programs that would take you through jr. high and even early high school. I haven't investigated the programs for sr. high thoroughly enough to have an opinion on whether I would use them for upper high school or not. Some people do find them quite adequate for high school, but others don't - I suspect it may have a lot to do with your and your child's goals. Also, don't forget that WP is still coming out with new programs, including some for high schoolers. Oh, and I received excellent customer service. They are a young company, and have had to iron out some issues with some suppliers. They also moved a couple of years ago. Their customer base has increased rapidly in the last couple of years, because there are quite a few happy WP customers. Those things are probably the main factors why some people haven't recieved good customer service. Hope this helps some. Blessings, Laura

[cillakat]

Love WP products/curriculum......the company? maybe not so much. you can search the forum for the controversy.

 

Anyway, we're doing American Crossing 1 (4-7g equiv of AS1)....we have the LA 4 supplement, parts of the LA 3 supplement. I got all of the printed materials (so I wouldn't have to track down the right paper and print the Time Travelers crafts). It's a ton of work for my dysgraphic/dyslexic ADHD kid who does not read independently. Because of that, it's a ton of work for me to keep up with the reading. I'd have been better off going with AS1 for her.

 

Having said that....she loves it as do I. Everyone keeps saying 'you can get the readers anywhere' definitely doesn't need what I need from WP:)

 

I need

1)tons of hands on stuff. My kid loves it. I hate it. I can't plan it, gather it, manage it. It has to be there in a format that is *ready to go*. WP does that for me. She has plenty to do while I'm reading to her. She *loves* this curriculum.

 

2)an IG - Instructor's Guide. I have a strong need for organization and a weakness in terms of putting it together on my own. WP does it for me.

 

Even though I'm piecing together LA based on her individual needs, i get structure from the LA add-on and can plug in resources as needed. Depending on the 'topic' listed in the LA program, I may use the LA 3 books, the LA 4 books (depending on page layout, specific exercise, visual field etc)....and likely I'm using it all with WWE2 and FLLFTWTM3. She just needs more practice, guidance, repetition with reading, writing, grammar than she does with say......science, hx.

 

 

For me, it's so not about the readers......so not about the topic even. It's about the cohesive, comprehensive structure that guides our days and the massive focus on arts/crafts/creating/hands on that WP offers.

 

All the best,

Katherine

[Chris in VA]

I had the guide for WP AS 1 and had collected most of the books, but sent dd to public school instead of homeschooling. I really liked the books, and I thought the guide was done very well. The craft resources were great--some paper crafts, some books with excellent ideas (More Than Moccasins comes to mind).

 

I did not think the high school was rigorous enough. I prefer a Great Books approach, although I do think they cover enough if you aren't classical.

 

I will say I'm indebted forever for the introduction to Adventure in Phonics Level C--it was awesome, and I recommend it to everyone.

[Guest lilysmom]

Thank you so much everyone for responding. I love hearing everyone's opinions of WinterPromise. I still am not sure what I will use next year but I love hearing why people like/dislike a curriculum.

 

Thanks!

[BizyPenguin]

And finally bought the IG for the AC program in August. It was everything I thought it would be and more...Unfortunately, it was not a good fit. The IG schedule drove me nuts and I was constantly feeling behind. I tried hard to make this work, but recently threw in the towel. I wound up tweaking myself right out of the program. I LOVE the Time Traveler's CD-Roms, though and they are now the core of our History program for the year!

Edited October 23, 2008 by BizyPenguin