All of the Michael Clay Thompson threads running rampant on the WTM boards lately have not tempted me to spend a bunch of money on Michael Clay Thompson materials. But this is only because I bought them all months ago. Instead, the threads convinced me to dig Grammar Island back out and actually finish it. At the beginning of the year, we were trying to do FLL 4 and Grammar Island together, and it was just too much. I've been growing disenchanted with FLL 4 as the year has gone on, though, so I'm thinking very seriously of just switching over to all MCT all the time. We'd need to find something else for next year anyway, after all. Re: FLL. I get that kids learn through repetition and all. Except that they don't learn through repetition when they completely zone out and don't absorb what they're hearing. Also, I've noticed with this year's FLL that the worksheets are often structured in such a way that Ari can complete them correctly without actually completely understanding what he's doing. There's too much hand holding and not enough thinking. I still like FLL 1 for Milo and will probably go through 1 and 2 with him and then perhaps switch to MCT when he's in 3rd grade. Depending. On things.
So we had a week of MCT and we finished up Grammar Island, I think (or maybe we have a few more pages to do; my memory is fuzzy at the moment). We also started going through the poetry and vocab books, and everything was fairly received by Ari. I especially like the idea of doing a formal poetry program with him. I've realized that I sort of view poetry the way Latin Centered Curriculum people view Latin; I think it can do a million different jobs: it teaches grammar, critical thinking, vocabulary, and on and on. The only thing about abandoning FLL is that Ari actually said, "but I like sentence diagramming!" when we talked about how MCT breaks sentences down another way. I might actually find a book of sentence diagramming for him to do. For fun. Because he's like that.
I found this book: Mark Kistler's Imagination Station: Learn How to Drawn in 3-D with Public Television's Favorite Drawing Teacher at the thrift store awhile back, and we did the first couple of lessons from it all together this week. Does anyone else remember Commander Mark? I LOVED Commander Mark when I was a kid. Anyway, everyone really enjoyed this. When I'm feeling more ambitious, I'll scan in the drawings. I was a little worried that Gus and/or Milo would get frustrated or angry that there drawings didn't look so much like the ones in the book, but no--they were pretty proud of themselves. So I like the book because it teaches a lot of useful drawing techniques and concepts, but does it in a really fun, approachable way. We're drawing dinosaurs so far.
Thursday we went on a field trip with some other homeschoolers from the defunct co-op and toured a police station. And then Friday it was nearly 60 degrees! so we went to the park for a long, long time. And those are the highlights for this week!
8 comments:
Mmmm - 60 degrees? nice.
Thanks for sharing about your week.
I agree with you about FLL. I never went past gr.1 & 2. I picked up Shurley English for a while and moved onto Hake. Hake is just straight forward grammar--no frills.
I enjoyed reading your posts besides just this past week. Thanks for writing.
"I think it can do a million different jobs: it teaches grammar, critical thinking, vocabulary, and on and on."
Me, too! Me, too! I could have written this and it is so, so true.
Sounds like a really good week. I need you to come show me how poetry can teach all those things! We are studying poetry right now and I really love poetry. I just know enough to teach all those things from it!!!! Thanks for sharing.
I'm planning to use Grammar Island and The Music of the Hemispheres with Classical Writing. The idea of tailoring grammar instruction to that week's draft is great in concept, but in practice I find that their suggestions are paced more slowly than Will requires. I think introducing new ideas through the MCT materials might encourage him to take additional risks with his writing.
I am contemplating The First Whole Book of Diagrams right now (Mary Daly's secular offering). Lively Latin does do some sentence diagramming, but since Will's learning parts of speech more slowly in Latin than in English, his diagramming is not keeping up with his English grammar knowledge.
What are you thinking of for Logic? The kids have loved Are They Thinking, but Tin Man's other offerings seem more like supplements. I am eying some Prufrock materials.
Saille--I actually bought Logic Liftoff just before xmas, but now I can't find it anywhere. It's driving me crazy. So, umm, Logic Liftoff? When I find it? I have Building Thinking Skills in various levels that we pull out sometimes, too...I just need to remember to actually do it!
Weird. That's the one I was looking at. I love BTS (we use it at the tutoring center) but I always get sticker shock when it actually comes time to order it...
S--they are expensive, but they're also HUGE. I bought BTS 1 years ago for Ari, and there's still plenty left over for Milo to do now.
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