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montessorisbev
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| Posted: Oct 23 2007 at 10:16pm | IP Logged
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I am looking to purchase the montessori manuals for 6 -9 age group. This would be for
History
Geography
The five great lessons
Zoology
Chemistry
Possibly Botany
For these I am looking at both namc and Montessori rd.
So my question is javascript:AddSmileyIcon(' ')
For those of you who have gone this way before, did you find the Montessori rd manuals comprehensive or comparable to the namc ones? There is a huge price difference and I genuinely like what I see in the samples that namc has, but I don;t know whether I could justify spending 1000$ just for color manuals if Montessori Rd has similar information just not in color.
Thanks
Bev
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AndreaG
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| Posted: Oct 24 2007 at 5:49pm | IP Logged
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Personally I'm waiting for Karen Tyler (World Wide Montessori) to offer elementary training- or for Montessori Lori to write some albums . NAMC albums are just too $$$ for my budget no matter how much I love montessori.
I do have some of the R&D albums, so I will try to checkout the NAMC samples online and see if I can do a better job actually answering your question about a comparison.
I have seen this discussed before and it seems the consensus is that for the homeschool the R & D are really good enough.
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Andrea
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AndreaG
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| Posted: Oct 24 2007 at 9:45pm | IP Logged
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Ok I just checked out the online samples of NAMC's Botany album since I have the R & D version.
Here's my comparison:
NAMC's is much nicer looking, with great pictures. The content seems to be simpler though, which might not be a bad thing. The R&D seems to have just zillions of terms for types of veins, types of arial roots, shapes of leaves, outlines of leaves, arrangement of leaves etc etc etc. Just a ton of vocab. The NAMC seems to have a more realistic and broader amount of Botany knowledge to teach an early elementary age child. The table of contents lists lessons on parts of the plant, roots, stems, flowers, leaves and seeds (although these do not seem to be covered in nearly as much depth- not as much terminology introduced) such as are found in R &D but also goes on to such topics as Needs of the Plant, and Humans and Plants, with cool sounding presentations like "Exploring staple foods around the world" and "investigating plant-derived fabrics and dyes".
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Andrea
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Angel
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| Posted: Oct 25 2007 at 7:36am | IP Logged
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Unfortunately I don't have time to add links right now (on borrowed time with the baby), but there is indeed a "Montessori R&D vs. NAMC" thread from a while back that you might find useful.
After living with the R&D manuals for a little while, here's my opinion:
For anything you think you really need visuals with, go for NAMC. I think I'm going to end up buying the NAMC elementary math manuals to go with the R&D manuals I already bought, just because I really need those pictures.
Also, R&D is far more detailed and provides work for older kids. But sometimes I'm thinking I would have liked things a bit more, um, condensed.
As far as chemistry goes... I bought the R&D manual, but to be honest, I wish I'd just gotten a few non-Montessori books. Not sure the manual is really necessary here.
I don't have botany or zoology, but after looking at the samples of NAMC it didn't look like those manuals provided enough detail for me... but we're kind of going the "living book" plus Montessori materials route there, too.
--angela
Three Plus Two
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JennGM
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Here's the older thread which had some great discussions.
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Jennifer G. Miller
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montessorisbev
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| Posted: Oct 25 2007 at 10:49am | IP Logged
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Thanks for the replies. They have been helpful. I have been very tempted to get the NAMC, one, because of the pictures - it helps so much to have that and two, because the verbiage is simpler, so its easy to teach a 6 year old :) or make the point appropriately. I also have a 3 year old sitting in on the lessons for the fun of it and thought it would work better from that perspective.
What I really really liked about the NAMC and I could not tell if the R&D had that was, besides the simple explanation, the extensions to the different presentations.
For example, if you look at the sample lesson for Cultural Geography on NAMC website, there is so much more to just presenting the island and the landforms ( which is what I would have done left to my own devices.
Andrea, Since you have the R&D - do the R&D manuals have similar extensions to a presentation.
While I don't mind not having the pictures, I did think that the explanations and extensions in NAMC were extremely nice.
I am also planning to write to R&D and see if they can send me a few pages of the same lesson so I can compare.
Thanks again for all the replies. I appreciate it.
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AndreaG
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| Posted: Oct 25 2007 at 3:17pm | IP Logged
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The R &D does include extensions, I don't have the album with the landforms (mine just covers the puzzle maps)so I can't compare those. There is a list of extensions for each presentation.
I agree with Angela's assessment of the R &D. Angela thank you for mentioning the chemistry album, I have been going back and forth about using that vs non-montessori books.
Bev, it sounds like the NAMC would be more what you are looking for, I think that's what I would go for.
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Andrea
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Angel
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| Posted: Oct 25 2007 at 3:43pm | IP Logged
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Thanks for providing the link, Jenn! 
I also forgot to mention -- Andrea has a great list of Great Lessons resources on her blog. I think there's so much stuff out there on the web about the Great Lessons, I'm not sure you really need to buy an album... and those NAMC albums are pricey. 
I will put in a good word for R&D here, though... I'm happy with the geography, geometry, and fractions manuals, and haven't really broken out the language manuals *too* much yet, because -- with a newborn -- I decided that a few months with a language workbook was not going to kill anybody. I do notice that NAMC now has all their elementary language manuals available, though, which they didn't this summer, and that might be one place, too, where the visuals would be helpful. (All those grammar activities!!)
--Angela
Three Plus Two
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Topic: Montessori manuals namc v/s Rd
