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Anyone used Winter Promise lately?


JessinTX
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Specifically Children Around the World or Animals and Their Worlds. I'm considering one or possibly both for my rising 1st grader next year. Most (all?) of the reviews I found were from 2016 or earlier and seemed to use slightly different resources, and the threads that came up when I searched here mostly were discussing the concern that they had switched from just a huge stack of books a la Sonlight, etc to using their own texts. 

I actually find that to be a plus. I can add my own books, and for whatever reason (maybe my brain is defective - ha) I find those schedules with just a list of books to read and not much to tie them together a little disjointed. 

So if anyone has used these in the last year or two I'd love to hear your overall thoughts! 

Jessica

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Not lately, but just the mention of Wp makes me shudder. Never in my life have I used a curriculum that was so disorganized, non-age appropriate and all over the place. I was totally taken in by their beautiful website and their colorful, beautiful descriptions and materials. But then using it in real-life was a whole other story.

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I have not used it in years. I used the animal theme one and we loved the books but the lesson plans were useless.  The reading schedules of the books made little to no sense and the teacher information wasn’t particularly helpful at all. By the end of week 4, I’d ditched the lesson entirely. Looking at the sample plans a couple weeks ago to see if they’d upped their game, I didn’t think much has changed. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/3/2021 at 4:24 PM, JessinTX said:

Ooo?. How so? Any specific examples of disorganized and all over the place. That would be a problem... 

All I can say is that there were so many problems with it, I don't even know where to start. First, the reading for each day was WAY inappropriate for the grade level. I was doing 2nd or 3rd and the books they were supposed to read (or me read) were 20 or so pages with text written at an 8th grade level. I was like...what? I couldn't believe it. Next, the lesson plans were all over the place. One book this day, another book the next day...nothing at all was cohesive. Sometimes the reading on the lesson plan didn't even make sense. It would say "read pgs. 101-141" and 141 was the second page in a new chapter or something-so random stopping point. But the absolute worst thing was that the reading had NOTHING TO DO with the theme of the week! The theme could be slavery in America and the reading was about Lewis and Clarke! I was completely dumbfounded. Not to mention I called customer service a lot to express my concerns, and while the girl was nice enough, all I ever heard was "I'm really sorry" over and over again. The whole experience was bizarre. We do MP now, and I can breathe because it all makes sense and goes together beautifully.

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We tried Sea and Sky a few years back when my kids were at the low end of the age range and it was way too much for them (mainly the reading). So we shelved it a that point. I pulled it out again this year and while they enjoyed it, like others said it was all over the place.

it lacks editing. They would assign a page out of their student workbook and it was incorrect page. The student notebook wasn’t in order of what was assigned either which baffled me as they created both the lesson plan and the student books. The reading levels were all over the place from the different material. 

We did enjoy what we completed but again ended up shelving it for Different reasons. They are great at the idea behind the curriculum but lack in the execution. I think they would have been better off spending more time fine tuning their student books and lesson plans vs rewriting other people books to make it their own exclusive book. 
 

ETA: customer service was good for me and quick in response even years later when I lost a file they resent it. At the same time it was odd that there were some files which had expired with downloads and others which I had unlimited downloads available. 

Edited by My4arrows
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Yeah... after you guys saying that I downloaded the free week for both and went through them page by page like I was teaching it, and found the same thing. The reading didn't line up well with the notebooking pages. It was annoying. 

On 3/21/2021 at 8:41 AM, My4arrows said:

They are great at the idea behind the curriculum but lack in the execution.

My impression as well. 

I do like the idea - maybe I'll take a crack at making my own. 

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6 hours ago, JessinTX said:

Yeah... after you guys saying that I downloaded the free week for both and went through them page by page like I was teaching it, and found the same thing. The reading didn't line up well with the notebooking pages. It was annoying. 

My impression as well. 

I do like the idea - maybe I'll take a crack at making my own. 

I actually ended up doing that for the most part. I liked it much better.

For Around the World I’d suggest checking out Guest Hollow. Im pretty sure she has a curriculum either free or paid (and it’s super affordable) It’s more of a loose plan with books from the library, video suggestions hands on and such. 

Also I used Beautiful Feet’s Around the World with Picture Books to plan our Around the world study the past two years. It was a good beginning for us and then I made my own notebooking pages, grabbed extra resources, hands on, etc. I’ve found for me personally there is no perfect open and go for our family. 

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