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pumpkinmom
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| Posted: Nov 19 2012 at 8:39pm | IP Logged
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I can't decide if I want to use this series all the way through or use something different next year. Anyone use it to eighth grade (assuming that is where is stops)? How did that turn out?
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
Tending the Pumpkin Patch
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guitarnan
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| Posted: Nov 19 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged
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We used all the workbooks, but finished them early (we just ordered new ones when dd finished each book).
I think things have turned out fine. Dd is good at grammar. She enjoys writing. She notices grammatical errors on signs and in books. Her (few) standardized tests show her above average in grammar and usage. We're not counting on national merit scholarships, so we will use SAT/ACT scores for college admissions only, but I think her scores will be fine, just not off the scale.
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Nancy in MD. Mom of ds (24) & dd (18); 31-year Navy wife, move coordinator and keeper of home fires. Writer and dance mom.
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Syllieann
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| Posted: Nov 26 2012 at 7:25am | IP Logged
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I'm thinking about using these too. It appears to be fairly light in the early years. Does it get more rigorous in the midle grades or would you consider it lighter than average then too? Also, It sounds like they don't allow copying in the family and I'm not sure I can justify purchasing one for each child. Do you have the write separate or do you really buy a new one for each kid? I did find a sample that shows diagramming which is evidently hard to find these days.
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SallyT
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| Posted: Nov 26 2012 at 9:31am | IP Logged
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We haven't used them all the way through yet, but I think I probably will with my two youngest (now 3rd and 4th grades). They are gentle at the lower levels, but I frankly don't think that they're age-inappropriately "too easy." In fact, I think that the gentleness of the early grades is absolutely age-appropriate, providing a solid foundation in basic language concepts without being overwhelming. The CHC program has been about as close as I could find to the Emma Serl books recommended by various CM curricula. I like Emma Serl; my kids despise her. But they like CHC, and it gives us a useful context for talking about issues in their own emergent writing.
The brevity of the CHC lessons means that you *can* combine LOG with things like copywork and dictation (which they also include, though not as regularly as I like), without making your school day cumbersomely long -- not to mention also allowing time for *lots* of literature as the real core of our program. If these workbooks were all we did for "language arts," I might think that they were too lightweight, but as part of a whole which also includes other writing, copywork, and intensive reading, they're perfect, in my view.
FWIW, I did move my fairly linguistically gifted 4th grader, who's also an "old" 4th grader at 10, to their "average 5th grade" level, and he is finding it plenty challenging. I'm almost regretting not getting one level down for him, though I think he'll ultimately do fine in this one. It's not tantrum-every-day hard, just also not at all blow-through-it-easy.
With the two youngers, I am buying each child a new book yearly. We don't buy a huge amount of stuff every year, and to me, especially without a lot of younger children to hand down to, this is worth the expense. I did have my older son, who did one of the upper levels in 7th grade, use a separate notebook, which worked okay for an older child. I think the younger kids would find working on separate paper an added layer of difficulty (and I'm not sure how you would do the "circle the pronoun" type of exercises, unless you did them orally), but then again, I have friends who have always done this, handing down the workbooks to subsequent children, so maybe I'm just being flaky about that!
I do, now, continue grammar through high school, using Jensen's Grammar; kids also have their language learning reinforced through foreign languages (though I don't do formal grammar yet in German with the younger kids). Actually, I did hardly any formal grammar that I can recall with my first child, who began homeschooling at 9. It's hard to remember now what we did do . . . Nevertheless, all her language test scores were very good (probably because she had done a lot of reading and writing and comes from a pretty verbal family!), and she's now a happy college English major, so I'm not sure that the rigor, or lack thereof, of a formal grammar program at any stage necessarily makes *that* much difference. I tend to think of a grammar program not so much as an end in itself as a set of tools for understanding how language works and how better to use it in real-life writing -- to be in control of language use, rather than at the mercy of an arbitrary-seeming and mysterious set of linguistic laws. Whatever makes those tools user-friendly and those laws plain is a winner in my book.
Sally
PS: Also FWIW, I began the year thinking I was *not* going to use Language of God for this year, but wound up going back and buying them. Have not regretted that decision at all.
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pumpkinmom
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| Posted: Nov 26 2012 at 12:13pm | IP Logged
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Sally, I thought the 5th grade book was hard! Well, at least a big jump up. That was our least favorite book with my oldest. But, we may have missed the 4th grade book and maybe what we used that year didn't cover what he needed to be ready for the 5th grade book. I really need to search back and see what we did that year.
Syllieann-you could put a page protector over the page and have your dc use a dry erase marker. Most lesson could be done orally too. The book could be saved for the next that way. I just have two, so this isn't an issue for us.
I am still not certain what to do. Next year we can do the 4th and 7th grade books or I thought about moving into Winton Grammar with the oldest and the youngest too or he could do the 4th grade book (depends on what level oldest needs to start with). I like the CHC, but I'm not over impressed with our results so far. Thus why I'm curious to how others are doing with the program.
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
Tending the Pumpkin Patch
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: CHC Language of God users current or past
