Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.



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knowloveserve
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Posted: Sept 11 2014 at 2:50pm | IP Logged Quote knowloveserve

John Ciardi's You Read To Me and I'll Read To You has added a renewed, fun interest to our poetry "studies."

On a side note I bought Ciardi Himself used and am eating it up... so so good. He really is a fantastic writer AND teacher!

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Posted: Sept 15 2014 at 5:23pm | IP Logged Quote SeaStar

knowloveserve wrote:
John Ciardi's You Read To Me and I'll Read To You has added a renewed, fun interest to our poetry "studies."

On a side note I bought Ciardi Himself used and am eating it up... so so good. He really is a fantastic writer AND teacher!


Both look very intriguing, Ellie. I love it when I come across a new (to me)
author like this and he comes recommended. How did you discover him?

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Posted: Sept 18 2014 at 2:13pm | IP Logged Quote knowloveserve

SeaStar wrote:


Both look very intriguing, Ellie. I love it when I come across a new (to me)
author like this and he comes recommended. How did you discover him?


I remember reading about the highly recommended Ciardi book "How Does a Poem Mean" on Jen Mackintosh's blog. So when I searched for other titles of his, I found the kid's book... saw that it was illustrated by the quirky (often macabre) Edward Gorey, I knew I wanted it. And the other one I came by for cheap, really good!

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Posted: Sept 18 2014 at 9:08pm | IP Logged Quote MKelly

English Lessons Through Literature is working well for us, also. I plan on swapping out the picture study (Simply Charlotte Mason's picture portfolios - although, cough cough, I haven't started yet...), but I love that it has everything tied together. In an ideal world, I would love to pick out all the copywork etc. myself, but right now with kids ages 7, 4, 2, and 10 month old baby getting into everything, I realized I need to be realistic in this season of our family life. This fits the bill! I am only annoyed that the workbook comes as a pdf....all that printing! I also like that my son really seems to be absorbing the grammar, as it is so naturally taught within the context of the book we're reading. I just wanted him to have a gentle taste of grammar, and I think this is doing just that.
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Posted: Oct 08 2014 at 2:56pm | IP Logged Quote jawgee

Now that we're more than a full month into school:

-English Lessons Through Literature is a big hit. My 9YO and I both really, really like it.

-The Bible Tells Me So has been excellent for religion. The kids and I are all learning together.

-Believe it or not, my 6YO and 5YO love their Explode the Code workbooks. They aren't anything special, but they are working well for them and the girls look forward to doing them.

-VLACS is an online charter school here in NH, and my 12YO decided to take Latin I with them this year. He has really enjoyed it. It is helping him to be more independent, and since his friend signed up for the same class, he and his friend are able to study together.

-Poetry Study; this year, instead of choosing a poet and reading a bio about the poet and several of his poems, I am just choosing a couple of poems to read each week from Favorite Poems Old and New. I choose seasonal ones, silly ones, historical ones, whatever strikes my mood that day. The kids are enjoying the different styles of poems and, since we've never done "silly" poems/poets before, they look forward to those.

-Five in a Row with my two youngest. So simple and so fun!

-IEW; On co-op days the teens stay afterward for a couple of hours to do IEW and a few other higher-level subjects. IEW is just the type of program my oldest needed. He is four weeks into it and I am already seeing vast improvements in his writing. It's an excellent program, especially if you have an excellent teacher like we are lucky enough to have.

Things we still enjoy from last year:

-Teaching Textbooks (we're finishing up TT4 and PreA)

-Classically Catholic Memory in our co-op

Misses:

-RightStart Math, for the two youngest, just because I haven't taken the time to go through it and plan our lessons.

-Mango Language. We did it last year but my who oldest kids and I all started to dislike doing it, so we dropped it for this year.

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Posted: Oct 08 2014 at 6:57pm | IP Logged Quote SeaStar

We finally abandoned "Minn of the Mississippi" last week. It's official. Minn-
we must part ways.

This was one of those books that just did not work as a read aloud for us. It was very slow, there was a lot of strange dialect, and the sentence structure just didn't lend itself well to reading aloud, at least not for me.
Well, we tried.

On another note, we have started using America The Beautiful, Vol 2 for our continued US history studies.

I am finding this to be a *fabulous* text for us. I picked it up used at a local bookstore on the recommendation of the owner, and I am so pleased with it. I wound up ordering the map book and "We the People" from the series to go along with the text.

We had enjoyed using "From Sea to Shining Sea" last year, but we already like this even better- way better! It is so full of interesting details.

For instance, Andrew Carnegie gets a brief mention in from STSS- mostly about his steel company and unions. In our new book, there is a whole chapter about his life- how he worked as a factory worker himself for years- and as a telegraph delivery boy- and worked his way up in the ranks.

When he sold his company in 1901 (for $250 million!!) , he spent the rest of his life giving away his money. By the time he died (1917?) he'd given away 90% to various causes, including libraries. The book has several pictures of libraries he funded, plus a lot of other very interesting details about his life. The chapter ends with a Bible verse on generosity, plus another verse to look up on the same topic.

All the chapters end with a verse that reflects the issues in the chapter.
There are also chapters on famous landmarks, national parks, and historic sites. There are map activities and reading assignments for living books. For the late 1800's, the assigned book is LIttle Town on the Prairie.

Oh- and every president gets mentioned. STSS skipped over almost every one after Lincoln! Granted, the book was winding down at that point, but until we started with the new book I had no idea Rutherford B Hayes was so beloved and held up as the standard of morality for his times. Also his wife, Lemonade Lucy (they were a temperance family), was known for her lively White House parties, where people like General Sherman joined in the gospel sing-a-longs.

Anyway- I wish I had known about this series and could have used volume one last year. Live and learn.



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Posted: Oct 08 2014 at 7:14pm | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

We dropped Plutarch from morning time - I am ok with this.

Also - I am finding my peace with having a "rotating system" and accepting that things do not get done as planned, so I just pick up where we left off.

I REALLY like the planners that I made for the elementary kids - keep us accountable and guided without stress. Also for the first time in years - I have no planning on weekends.

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Posted: Oct 09 2014 at 7:40am | IP Logged Quote SallyT

I've had to make my peace with "just read the next thing," too, rather than keeping to my planned schedule. I'm not sorry I made a detailed schedule, because it was mentally helpful to me, and it did help me to anticipate planned outside activities, but I'm also not sorry that we've deviated from it some.

I'm still really deliriously happy with our move to full-time MEP math. I mean, I look at the day's lesson, and it makes me happy to think about doing it. The kids are not as deliriously happy as I am about it, but I can see them learning, making progress, working their brains . . . so I'm happy for them when they can't be.

Plutarch has actually been a hit for us -- we're following AO's schedule and reading the life of Crassus right now, and my 12yo son, especially, is really into it, mostly because Crassus is a total military screwup who's about to get cut to pieces by the Parthians because of his own stupidity, all of which my very strategy-minded dude finds irresistible.

I'm also making heavy use of Visual Latin's Quizlet page, with free online vocabulary flashcards and quizzes.

My 10yo, uniquely among all my children, LOVES Intermediate Language Lessons. I can't remember whether I mentioned this before, but it's her absolute favorite thing. My older kids loathed it, and I didn't even try it with the 12yo, but it's the best thing about this child's day. She loves writing, and the quaint-old-fashioned-ness that was such a turnoff to the others totally appeals to her.

Being on campus with his dad continues to be a good thing for my 16yo -- he's taking cell bio, which is HARD, and trigonometry, which he surprisingly really loves, and German. AND he just tried out for and was cast in the Abbey's production of King Lear, which has made his whole life, let me tell you! So that's all going well. I need to catch up with him about his reading for me, which is always the part of the puzzle that goes missing . . . but overall, I'm really happy to have him out of the house and busy with good pursuits.

Overall, two months in, I'm feeling good about this school year. The biggest delight, really, is to have the luxury of focusing on my two middle-schoolers, who were the little tag-alongs for so many years but are now really coming into their own. The three of us have been together pretty intensively, since their dad and brother are gone so much, and I'm totally enjoying their company as they mature. They were fun, if manic, as little kids, but it just seems like a gift every day to be with them as they grow into a young man and young lady in their own right, out of the shadows of their older siblings.

So, that's a hit for sure. :)

Sally

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Posted: Oct 09 2014 at 7:48am | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

Sally - you are so blessed to have the Abbey opportunities for your ds.

Things are a little of a struggle with my twin teen ds - just keeping them on schedule. We are not doing any outside classes for them this year (except for Theology taught partly by an awesome priest) - partly the cost (classes in our area are ridiculously pricey and I have twins) and partly because in many cases, the twins prefer to learn at their own pace. Kolbe is a big help for structure. But things seem to be taking so long, and they have to learn to work in a more efficient fashion, so they are not working all the time.

Next year we will probably have the twins do some community college classes - at least for the cost, they will getting dual enrollment credits - eg for precalculus/physics etc

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Posted: Oct 09 2014 at 9:12am | IP Logged Quote SallyT

I know -- I often hesitate to post about what my high-schoolers do, because having the college available is a pretty unique blessing. It has been a very good answer for the needs of my current 11th grader, who also has a hard time staying on track without the structure of a class schedule -- finding classes for him would otherwise be really difficult, logistically and financially. We've already found dual-enrollment credit to be a great advantage when a student goes to college, too, so it's a win-win situation.

Sally

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Posted: Oct 09 2014 at 12:19pm | IP Logged Quote pumpkinmom

Sally,
Can you tell me more about Visual Latin? I know there are some threads about it and we previewed it this spring and liked it. I decided against it because of time, but my youngest has the time. I'm thinking about adding it in for him after Christmas. Waiting just because I think I need to do the lessons and be ahead of him to make it work. I don't want to spend the money to buy it either and if I remember I have the first 7 lessons that were a free sample. I would like to put off a purchase until February. How are you using it? Or link to a thread if you have already done that.

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Posted: Oct 09 2014 at 5:12pm | IP Logged Quote SallyT

We really like it. The teacher is funny and clear. All workbook pages, etc, are free downloadables, and they have a Quizlet page with free flashcards and quizzes.

The speed/difficulty seems just about right for young middle-schoolers -- I have a 10- and 12yo doing it right now. Each lesson introduces a grammatical concept -- right now we're in noun declensions, and adjectives agreeing with nouns -- and includes a couple of exercises plus a translation exercise.

We can typically do a workbook exercise in 5-10 minutes. It's not a huge expenditure of time after watching the lesson. I have the kids do memory work/flashcards when they're doing math-facts drill with XtraMath.

It's really not hard to do. I don't stay ahead of the kids. Everything is laid out very clearly, and if you know anything at all about English grammar, it's pretty intuitive.

To me it really seems like the perfect introductory/middle-school Latin course: just enough organization and "meat," without being overwhelming or too dry.

My kids do not adore Latin every day, but they do it with relatively little fuss. Overall I am very happy with it. And you do get a *lot* for the cost.

Sally

I should add that we're "behind" right now because I took a week off when noun declensions were introduced, just to have my kids copy the ending charts, then decline all the masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns in their vocabulary. I'm glad I did that -- we needed some time to start solidifying endings in our minds. The program moves pretty quickly from one thing to the next, though the concepts do build on each other. My aim is for us to do this through middle school (2 years, anyway), then -- if people want to continue with Latin in high school, go into Henle, which should be pretty easy after this introduction.

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Posted: April 10 2015 at 8:42am | IP Logged Quote CrunchyMom

Doing some planning for the Fall and revisiting some favorites here.

CrunchyMom wrote:
sunny wrote:
SeaStar wrote:

1. Using "The Bible Tells Me So" as a basis for our religious ed this year.
we are loving it!


We are loving this!!! I also enjoy You Can Understand the Bible: A Practical Guide to Each Book in the Bible By Peter Kreeft which I, myself am rereading as we go through The Bible Tells Me So . But I have to admit how much fun The Bible Tells Me So is to read aloud. We are laughing and learning so much! It has terrrific insight and yet is still so accessible. Love it!

Definitley not enough hours in the day, but so far...all curricula is working.


Filing this one away for future use. It looks great!


The description for this book says it is for Sixth graders. Is it the sort of thing I could give my sixth grader for independent reading? Or could I use it for a wider range of kids, including a 9 and 7 year old?

SallyT wrote:
Well, my decision was mostly financially driven. I needed book costs to be pretty much zero going into this fall. But also -- as much as I like Fred -- I felt that my kids weren't learning/retaining as much as they learn and retain putting pencil to paper *more.* Fred was working better for my 12-year-old than for my 10-year-old, for whom the math concepts just kind of blew by in the story, but I also found that with him, *I* was doing a huge amount of work to get him through the "Your Turn to Play," because the concepts were so far beyond where he really was.

And frankly, our test scores last spring -- as much as I take these things with lots of salt -- were not what I would have hoped, given how much math we did last year. This was especially true for the 10-year-old, whose visual-processing problems affected her math learning as well as her reading, but it was true for the 12-year-old as well. And even though of course we were, and still are, on a trajectory that is different from the trajectory of the test . . . well, anyway, I was discouraged. And I looked at MEP again and thought, "Why exactly did we put this on the back burner?"

Fred was good in lots of ways -- the first unit in MEP's Year 7 (which is structured very differently from the primary years) is all about logic, sets, and Venn Diagrams, and it picks right up with all the set theory stuff that's in the intermediate Fred books. *I* at least remembered all this, and it's actually come back to him pretty clearly. I dropped the 10-year-old back to Year 3 to remediate, and she's flying along, which is great to see.

So, yes. I will be the first to admit that I'm a math schizophrenic. I do still really like Fred, but not enough to pay money for more books right now, when I have a free resource that's as good and, for us right now, actually better. And it's nice to have *one* program that's both providing enough basic practice AND mind-stretching mathematical-thinking exercise. All in one package, all in one lesson. I am using XtraMath.org for facts drill, 5 minutes at the start of math time for each child, but otherwise, it's all MEP.



So, Sally, do you think that Year 7 was an easy place to pick up and start without having done MEP up until that point? My oldest really likes Fred, but as we approach middle school, I'm just trying to decide if a more traditional program isn't something to consider.

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Posted: April 10 2015 at 8:49am | IP Logged Quote CrunchyMom

SeaStar wrote:
We finally abandoned "Minn of the Mississippi" last week. It's official. Minn-
we must part ways.

This was one of those books that just did not work as a read aloud for us. It was very slow, there was a lot of strange dialect, and the sentence structure just didn't lend itself well to reading aloud, at least not for me.
Well, we tried.

On another note, we have started using America The Beautiful, Vol 2 for our continued US history studies.

I am finding this to be a *fabulous* text for us. I picked it up used at a local bookstore on the recommendation of the owner, and I am so pleased with it. I wound up ordering the map book and "We the People" from the series to go along with the text.

We had enjoyed using "From Sea to Shining Sea" last year, but we already like this even better- way better! It is so full of interesting details.

For instance, Andrew Carnegie gets a brief mention in from STSS- mostly about his steel company and unions. In our new book, there is a whole chapter about his life- how he worked as a factory worker himself for years- and as a telegraph delivery boy- and worked his way up in the ranks.

When he sold his company in 1901 (for $250 million!!) , he spent the rest of his life giving away his money. By the time he died (1917?) he'd given away 90% to various causes, including libraries. The book has several pictures of libraries he funded, plus a lot of other very interesting details about his life. The chapter ends with a Bible verse on generosity, plus another verse to look up on the same topic.

All the chapters end with a verse that reflects the issues in the chapter.
There are also chapters on famous landmarks, national parks, and historic sites. There are map activities and reading assignments for living books. For the late 1800's, the assigned book is LIttle Town on the Prairie.

Oh- and every president gets mentioned. STSS skipped over almost every one after Lincoln! Granted, the book was winding down at that point, but until we started with the new book I had no idea Rutherford B Hayes was so beloved and held up as the standard of morality for his times. Also his wife, Lemonade Lucy (they were a temperance family), was known for her lively White House parties, where people like General Sherman joined in the gospel sing-a-longs.

Anyway- I wish I had known about this series and could have used volume one last year. Live and learn.



I'm intrigued, Melinda. I have been hemming and hawing over From Sea to Shining Sea for my 11 year old next year. Do you miss the Catholic influence in this series? Or can you guess whether you would have missed it had you not gone through FSTSS?

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Posted: April 10 2015 at 11:41am | IP Logged Quote SeaStar

Hmm, Lindsay... that is a tough question.   I don't miss the Catholic influence all that much mostly because America the Beautiful is definitely written from a Christian world view. Every chapter ends with a bible verse, and the author continually points out "God created the Grand Canyon", God provides habitats, etc. There is a lot of God in there

FSTSS has more Catholic references, yes, but if your kids are reading saints books on the sides, you are covering a lot of what is in FSTSS already.
There are also several Catholic political references in FSTSS that you won't get in AB.

However, I was happy to see that AB had a really nice chapter on Boys Town in it. There is also a chapter about Billy Graham, which is fine with me- I admire him and his life's work.

AB combines geography and historical sites along with history, which is a nice feature. We are using volume 2, though, so I can't give you any concrete details about vol 1, other than it is set up in a similar way.

I have found AB very interesting to read in that there is a lot detail about places and culture: what toys were popular in each decade, Route 66, life in the White House with the Kennedy's, etc. It feels the most "living" of any history text we've used. It covers a lot of information, but not all of it in great detail.

My problem with FSTSS was that it ends after the Civil War, and then the series cycles back to ancient times, leaving modern history until high school. Every time I pick up All Ye Lands and try to read it, my eyes start to to glaze over. I just can't see it holding our attention.

We've used several history sources now: Simply CM, STSS, History Pockets and AB. I have figured out that there is no prefect text, and everybody leaves out something or doesn't cover it well or in enough detail. But that is OK for us, since we supplement heavily with living book.

Notgrass just announced their latest new book: From Adam to US which covers world history in a year. I have been looking at the samples... love the pictures.

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Posted: April 10 2015 at 5:46pm | IP Logged Quote sunny

CrunchyMom wrote:
Doing some planning for the Fall and revisiting some favorites here.

CrunchyMom wrote:
sunny wrote:
SeaStar wrote:

1. Using "The Bible Tells Me So" as a basis for our religious ed this year.
we are loving it!


We are loving this!!! I also enjoy You Can Understand the Bible: A Practical Guide to Each Book in the Bible By Peter Kreeft which I, myself am rereading as we go through The Bible Tells Me So . But I have to admit how much fun The Bible Tells Me So is to read aloud. We are laughing and learning so much! It has terrrific insight and yet is still so accessible. Love it!

Definitley not enough hours in the day, but so far...all curricula is working.


Filing this one away for future use. It looks great!


The description for this book says it is for Sixth graders. Is it the sort of thing I could give my sixth grader for independent reading? Or could I use it for a wider range of kids, including a 9 and 7 year old?



You could give to a sixth grader to read independently, but we used it as a read aloud with my 3rd and 5th grader and really enjoyed it together!
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Posted: April 10 2015 at 6:40pm | IP Logged Quote SeaStar

I agree with Sunny... you could give it to a six grader to read, although it's written in a kind of stream of consciousness way... but this book just begs to be read aloud and discussed.

I can't tell you how many interesting conversations this has spurred at my house. Sometimes the author touches on subjects that are best discussed with an adult or filtered through an adult, if that makes sense. Sometimes the author even says "ask your parents about this!".

Also, the author poses a lot of questions in the book (to spur thinking or test retention), and it would be no fun to sit there alone and ask yourself the questions (plus you would see the answers right there).

This really is a unique book, I think. It is meant to be shared.

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Posted: April 10 2015 at 8:08pm | IP Logged Quote jawgee

We still really love The Bible Tells Me So. I think I could give it to my 7th grader to read, but we would all miss so much as a family. We only use it 2x/week (and are spreading it over two years), but even my 6YO and 5YO are engaged in the stories.

Today, for example, we were talking about Zechariah and Elizabeth being "old and sad". My little ones instantly said, "Because they didn't have any babies?" At the same time my 9YO was interested in the stained-glass window of the Jesse Tree, and my 13YO was talking with me about Isaiah's prophecies. It's just a fantastic book.

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Posted: April 10 2015 at 8:43pm | IP Logged Quote CrunchyMom

Great! That sounds really wonderful. I just wasn't sure if it would be good to use with younger ones, but it sounds like it really works well that way.

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MarilynW
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Posted: April 10 2015 at 9:17pm | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

jawgee wrote:
We still really love The Bible Tells Me So. I think I could give it to my 7th grader to read, but we would all miss so much as a family. We only use it 2x/week (and are spreading it over two years), but even my 6YO and 5YO are engaged in the stories.

Today, for example, we were talking about Zechariah and Elizabeth being "old and sad". My little ones instantly said, "Because they didn't have any babies?" At the same time my 9YO was interested in the stained-glass window of the Jesse Tree, and my 13YO was talking with me about Isaiah's prophecies. It's just a fantastic book.


You have me convinced! It looks great.

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