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lamamaloca
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| Posted: Jan 14 2007 at 2:22pm | IP Logged
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Has anyone here been enrolled with St. Thomas Aquinas Academy? I like what I see on their site, but I'm looking for more information about how you liked their program, how helpful their service was, etc. I'm especially interested in the elementary level programs. Thanks in advance for any information!
Becky
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ALmom
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| Posted: Jan 14 2007 at 4:22pm | IP Logged
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We enjoyed them for a 5th and 8th grader. I found the people helpful - but I did not have to do any paperwork for them as I had my own cover here. It might have seemed overwhelming if I had to turn in paperwork.
I just got their ideas and an informal testing of where to place some of my children. One of mine had vision problems and we had a wonderful difficulty after therapy - suddenly I knew what we were doing (picking up where we left off) was way too easy but really didn't want to bobble around a lot trying to find out what I should do with her. I also wasn't interested in a bunch of fill in the bubble assessments. Their's was a wonderfully informal one with lots of feedback on different options that might work with the child. I found this worth the price for me that year.
That being said, we really disliked it for 9th grade.
Janet
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lamamaloca
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| Posted: Jan 16 2007 at 11:30am | IP Logged
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Thank you for the information! May I ask what the difficulty was with 9th grade? Of course, it will be 10 years before we need to worry about that!
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ALmom
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| Posted: Jan 23 2007 at 8:07pm | IP Logged
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In 9th grade it just didn't fit. I think they got a bit more like they wanted to see specific things and the recommendations that year included a grammar text talking about naming words (nouns). They didn't have as much variety of resource recommendations. They also recommended that we do Physics in 9th grade and the history was way too classical based for us. Alternative suggestions were MODG syllabus which was not enough of a guide for us. My dd was very bright and some of the materials rocommended were so easy that they were just insulting. Other things just didn't fit us and doing Physics in 9th grade without any science background was crazy. Overall, she wasn't challenged enough at this point. We went from there to Seton (didn't work either), to Kolbe for high school (she had some really good years with our modified version of Kolbe).
Janet
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Kristie 4
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| Posted: May 16 2009 at 3:01pm | IP Logged
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Resurrecting this old thread...
Janet, how did you find the history compared to Kolbe's 9th history plans?
Did you do the comp. plans for grade 9 with STAA?
What do you actually recieve with enrollment? (I know with Kolbe you recieve x number of course plans etc.)
Is it possible with them to just recieve the lit and history plans? (I liked the books they used and the plans didn't look so overwhelming as the Kolbe ones (although I know I could rewrite those ones to my own liking I am sure!)
Thanks,
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Kristie in Canada
Mom to 3 boys and one spunky princess!!
A Walk in the Woods
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ALmom
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| Posted: May 16 2009 at 8:28pm | IP Logged
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My experience with STAA high school was so long ago, I am sure that much has changed and improved since then. I've noticed huge differences in Kolbe's plans in support for my 2nd highschooler as opposed to my oldest.
With that being said, I remember at the time that it was a lot like MODG - very vague list of pages to read with a day in the plans to discuss (but no particular things to discuss, or suggestions of what you might want to discuss. Now I am opinionated, my children don't naturally just talk about their deepest thoughts and without some guidance, discussions at our house degenerated and went more like:
OK, so what did you think about xyz. Silence. What was your favorite part about .... Answer: I finished it. Then I would ask about something and maybe get a word or two comment followed by me getting excited and slipping into a monologue. It took so long to discuss with so little positive results that specific discussions on school sort of slipped by the wayside. With STAA, there was a note to write a paper, but again no paper topic suggestions and my children became so stressed about what to write about and what was expected that it became pulling teeth. With Kolbe, we didn't do formal discussions either, but with the paper topics being specific, my children could write and express themselves fine and then we had more informal, and successful discussions because I had more of a clue about where they were coming from through their paper.
As far as the composition stuff with STAA - the books were fine - kind of recipe like with step by step through the process in a workbook type format. I think we used them in 8th grade and they were very step by step but worked fine and helped us over the hump in terms of the mechanics and how to. No stress there, though it wasn't terribly creative, it was certainly fine.
Just keep in mind that my oldest is 21 now and this was a long, long time ago. We only did high school with them for about half a year - using Seton literature courses until we switched to Seton full time. I don't have much experience with their high school history because we didn't want to do ancients at the time and so ended up trying to follow MODG American History.
All of the high school curriculum providers that we used with our oldest (Seton, Kolbe and STAA for some portion of high school) have changed considerably over time. I am familiar with changes to some extent in Seton and Kolbe because I have used them since my oldest first did. I have not gone back to STAA.
My favorite things from them were the diagramming lesson plans using the Complete Book of Diagramming and their instructions on how to make Writing Road to Reading doable in a real home without all the stress. I still have those plans and so I don't need to go back to them for them.
Because my experience is so old, I'd really advise talking to them directly or at least to someone who has used them in the last few years. I am sure they've changed and improved over the years. All of these people in all of these places are more than happy to spend some time explaining exactly what they do provide and don't provide - often sending samples, etc. so you can make a better decision. The founders of these places are all very, very generous with their time.
Janet
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lamamaloca
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| Posted: May 19 2009 at 10:07am | IP Logged
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Funny that you resurrected this, because after doing my own thing for two years we're going with STAA this year. I can't really say how things are going yet, as we've only just completed the assessments.
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Becky
Mom to Pauly, Roger and Rosemarie
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Kristie 4
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| Posted: May 19 2009 at 9:19pm | IP Logged
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Thank you Janet and Becky. To me they just looked less 'busy', the plans that is! (I think it is a visual thing).
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Kristie in Canada
Mom to 3 boys and one spunky princess!!
A Walk in the Woods
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: St Thomas Aquinas Academy
