leahtalbot96 Posted February 9, 2020 Posted February 9, 2020 Hello I'm new here! Has anyone used MBTP 4-5 level or not? I want to buy this for my two homeschooled pupils but I decided I would ask for advice first since this is my first time homeschooling and I am a nervous novice mom. What subjects are covered with the lowest level? Is the curriculum any good? I have been researching homeschooling curriculum options online and this is the only one that I actually liked the look of as all the other ones were too non secular for me to even consider. Please tell me what you thought of it honestly. Would you recommend it? I plan on using this in combination with unit studies and workbooks from time to time to supplement learning during classes too. Thanks in advance. Quote
Syllieann Posted February 10, 2020 Posted February 10, 2020 We use the LA for grades grades 1/2 through 4/5, but I have not used the lower levels. They are supposed to include everything except phonics. Sorry I can't offer you more info on that. I mainly wanted to point out the core knowledge curriculum to you. The materials are free to download, though I would recommend just using a tablet for most of it. The listening and learning strand is what you would want to cover science and social studies concepts. Add phonics, handwriting, and math and you are done. There are lots of good secular options for those. If you wanted, could also use core knowledge for the skills strand of language arts, but it might get to be a lot of printing. I personally like All About Reading for phonics and IEW printing with letter stories for handwriting. 1 Quote
Paige Posted February 13, 2020 Posted February 13, 2020 I've used a unit in the higher levels (maybe 6/7 or 7/8) and I have mixed feelings. I would consider using them depending on the child. Pros- Very organized and open and go for the teacher and student. You don't want to just hand it to your kid to do alone, but there was little prep for the unit we did. I appreciated that the work was challenging. Some sections were easier than others, but overall I think you'd get a solid education if you used their entire program. I felt it was challenging and engaging in many ways. Cons- Very workbooky and time consuming! I would not try to do this and add other workbooks, and if you tried to do the whole year's plan I don't think there would be much time for outside unit studies. It's expensive. I think a whole year of it would be a lot unless your child really likes seat work. Maybe it's different in the younger years...I wanted to use it as a supplemental lit unit to go along with our regular writing but it was too much for that. I had to drop our regular English/Writing while we did the MBTP unit study. Another thing that holds me back is I never like every unit in a year, but I don't think you would get as much benefit from picking and choosing. I was more impressed with MBTP than most homeschool curricula I've seen but since I already have other things purchased and that I wanted to use, and other subjects we wanted to go over, the all in one aspect of it feels stifling to me. Quote
leahtalbot96 Posted February 14, 2020 Author Posted February 14, 2020 Thanks. I agree this is one of the more time intensive options out there. But I love how easy it is to use and the literature units as well. How many workbooks are there? Tell me more about the unit studies. I think we might start with the lowest level and rethink if my kids are not interested in it. I'm not a big fan of copywork either. I much prefer to limit that to one or two hours per day. Are there any other curriculum packages out there? I prefer to pick and choose units as I see fit though. I'm planning to email on Monday to ask someone at the company a few questions about moving beyond the page as well. I was hoping to supplement with other resources like unit studies and worksheets, as well as educational apps etc. I might still do that and not use MBTP, at least not all of it as it feels too stifling. I was initially impressed by what I saw on their website, however upon second thoughts I think I will not buy it. Quote
Paige Posted February 14, 2020 Posted February 14, 2020 I think MBTP is a unit study program but each unit is supposed to support and work with the others for that level so that all educational goals are covered in a year of units but not in one unit. I'm sure the lower levels are different, so I can't comment on that. We had 1 workbook for the 1 lit unit along with a teacher guide, I think. It wasn't too expensive for just one, and it was actually really well done, but I had bought it thinking it would be a supplement and it was really a piece of a full English/Writing program. Does that make sense? There wasn't any copy work. We had literature questions, some smaller papers, and a long paper they worked on over a few weeks. You could always not do every assignment if you wanted to go faster or didn't need to cover a certain area. I don't think there are many all in one packages out there if you want to be secular. I've never used any other all in ones. I think there's Timberdoodle, but I've never used them. Quote
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