curricula busts: 2018 edition

[prairiewindmomma]

Did you get lured in by a bright and shiny curricula item? 

Did something just not work out for you?  Has it been relegated to a stack somewhere in your school area?

Are you and your student fundamentally different in what works for each of you?

As we are all likely nearing the end of a semester or school year, let's chat about your curricula budget regrets this year.....and please share WHY something didn't work out for you. If you moved on to something you DID love, share that too!

 

[HomeAgain]

Half and half: the Time Travelers pack (Revolutionary War) I bought.
-good: The activity part is well done.  I've used several to aid the lessons I make up on my own.  The time line is also fantastic.
-bad: not only are some parts of their lessons historically inaccurate, but certain parts are written to be racist providential sludge.  Had I seen that in the previews, I wouldn't have bought it.  But they certainly come from a standpoint that the settlers were brought by God and the natives were dim.

Writing Strands - I had hopes.  Turns out, my son really likes Charlotte Mason style and it wasn't a good fit.  It expected him to be more creative than he was ready for. We're using Treasured Conversations instead and it is a fantastic fill-in for this year before we go back to ELTL next year.

[knitgrl]

1 hour ago, OKBud said:

Story of The World AG. Audiobooks are still fine, but holy cow I am done trying lol. I don't know why I thought I'd try each level with each kid, like that would make such a difference 🤣

We loved SOTW AG for the Ancients. We did lots of things from it. But as we went through the series, we ended up doing fewer and fewer projects. Somehow they didn't grab me like they did for Vol. 1. Or maybe we did all those activities because it was our first real year of homeschooling and I was all gung-ho. I'm not quite sure at this point. I will probably have a better idea a few years from now with the next go round.

[HomeAgain]

1 hour ago, knitgrl said:

We loved SOTW AG for the Ancients. We did lots of things from it. But as we went through the series, we ended up doing fewer and fewer projects. Somehow they didn't grab me like they did for Vol. 1. Or maybe we did all those activities because it was our first real year of homeschooling and I was all gung-ho. I'm not quite sure at this point. I will probably have a better idea a few years from now with the next go round.

I've gone through the activity guides 4 times now.
1 - always a favorite.  The age (6-8yo) is just right, and the activities are fantastic, with a good variety.
2 - we do the games, maps, a few recipes.  The paper crafts aren't too bad, but the plague doctor's mask doesn't work well (we found a fabulous one online instead), and I've never had kids big on coloring.
3 - except for maps, we tend to ditch.  We put more emphasis on American history projects instead.  It's a hard year, trying to cover U.S. history well while doing world history. SOTW gets shuttled a little to the side to make room.
4 - no projects.  Maps, and learning to outline.  It's a heavy year for history so we turn toward literature instead and keep that light.

[KrissiK]

We had been doing science with Apologia for several years now and very successfully, I might add. However, this year we switched to a charter and if they were going to pay for the curriculum it needed to be secular. So, I switched to REAL Science 4 Kids. What a disaster. Science never gets done. The kids are all on different levels, so that makes it hard. My older kids just don’t understand it. The experiments rarely work well and ..... ugh! Just ugh!! 

[hollyhock2]

7Sister's Speech & Public Speaking - I think it would be great but my son took one look at it and refused to do it. The idea of reading a children's lit book to an audience (as an introductory exercise) was reprehensible to him. 🙄 He understands it gets better when it gets to the actual speech-writing, but he would much rather do programming or something.

SCM Learning About Birds - A week in, my son asked me when he would get to the "real science". It was too young for him. He is much happier with God's Design books.

ETC - I have always loved this and used it with all my kids but for whatever reason, my dd doesn't like it. She likes Adventures in Phonics just fine. ETA: Tried it again a few months later and she did like it. She is now finished book 1 and on to book 2.

Easy Grammar 9 - again, nothing wrong with it. It was just a waste of time, really. Now we just correct his grammar in the context of writing.

Apologia Biology - we are actually sticking with it and I do really like the book but it is just so. darn. technical for kids who don't give a rip about science. I wish there was something just like it, only slightly easier.

Language Lessons for Today - Nothing wrong with this either; my son just prefers R&S.

Logic Countdown - I've had all my kids do this and usually it's a hit, but it was actually too hard for this son. Saving for next year. He's doing Primarily Logic instead which is the same type of thing, but easier.

Progressive Phonics - this was a hit with a different kid but my current K'er needed way more repetition and a slower pace. She's doing awesome with The Reading Lesson now. PP might work better after we've done TRL so we might go back to it later.

I didn't think I had that many busts but that looks like a long list. 

Edited March 22, 2019 by hollyhock2

[Soror]

List subject to change (as always)....

Guest Hollow Language Arts- Love Beowulf's Grammar but there are too many components to the LA, too many books, and uneven composition work (and some stuff I just don't care to cover- like WAY too much time spent on letters)

Science in the Beginning- Maybe- WE've only used part of it, hoped it would be the curriculum that got done but these simple experiments still had stuff I didn't always have and I'm not in love with how things are presented. I keep thinking I might go back to it for some sections after we finish what we're currently doing but I'm kind of doubting it

IEW Medieval Writing- Looks like I've now scrapped this for good. I thought it was ok but dd1 like it less and less as we went. I thought the formulaic approach would be good for her personality and maybe had it been more palatable if we were writing about a different subject but we're moving on and I don't know that I'll use IEW again expect perhaps their book on essays and literary writing.

ETA

I think I can now add Torchlight on there as well, although that isn't entirely on the curriculum, my dd6th came home and turned everything upside down. My dd's did love Curiosity Chronicles (we did the 3 chapter sample together) but SoTW was easier to continue w/ because I already had it and the activity guide. I'm using some of the books from the booklist and that's about it, oh and dd2 has been using the Bard Writing project. We already had spelling and I don't care for the make your own spelling and vocabulary lists. But part is personality, I ended up doing mostly the same with BYL7 the year I used it, I totally rewrote the schedule.

Edited December 16, 2018 by soror

[Momto6inIN]

We started with MOH Ancients for my 5th and 1st grader which worked really well our last time through the history cycle when I had a bigger age range. But for some reason this year it just felt too easy? So we switched to SotW 1 and are liking that much better.

DS struggled with Destinos for Spanish III at first and I considered jumping ship and going to something else, but he seems to have pulled out of that and is doing better now.

I'm very relieved that so far this year these are the only problems!

[....]

On 12/15/2018 at 1:25 PM, HomeAgain said:

Half and half: the Time Travelers pack (Revolutionary War) I bought.
-bad: not only are some parts of their lessons historically inaccurate, but certain parts are written to be racist providential sludge.  Had I seen that in the previews, I wouldn't have bought it.  But they certainly come from a standpoint that the settlers were brought by God and the natives were dim.

 

Well, I'll be crossing *that* off my list.  I was looking at those, too.

[....]

Our biggest curriculum failure here:

Apologia Chemistry...  :(

She hates it and is not retaining anything for some reason.  She doesn't like textbooks anyway, so I should've known.  

[Lori D.]

3 hours ago, Evanthe said:

Our biggest curriculum failure here:
Apologia Chemistry... 😞
She hates it and is not retaining anything for some reason.  She doesn't like textbooks anyway, so I should've known.  

Possible substitutes??
Friendly Chemistry -- video lessons, simplified text, activities, labs
Spectrum Chemistry -- experiment-based; stripped down bare-bones
Thinkwell Chemistry -- video lesson-based