Monday, February 24, 2014

The saga continues

Tori is in 6th grade this year.  I started the year trying Analytical Grammar for her and Brendan.  It has been great for Brendan but it was a bit too far ahead for her.  So I ordered Christian Light for her.  We had used that in the past and there were some things I didn't love about it but overall I thought it was good.   We used it for a couple months and I noticed she was having trouble with some basic skills.  So I got out Winston Grammar and went back to the basics.  We started with nouns and verbs.  Then we added adjectives and then adverbs.  Then we found what they modified.  Now we're finding prepositions and then we'll go back and figure out what all those prepositions are modifying.

I feel like she's really getting it this time and it's making sense to her.  When we've finished these worksheets, we'll go through and diagram them.  Then I want to go through sentences in a book and have her label the parts of speech and diagram those.  I think by 7th grade, definitely 8th grade, she'll be ready to use the Analytical Grammar curriculum.

For math, we were using Math-U-See Epsilon.  It is the fraction book.  Lots and lots of fractions.  She was getting pretty tired of fractions and so was I.  I decided to try Teaching Textbooks.  I had looked at their Geometry book and thought it looked great for Brendan next year and then looked at their 5th and 6th grade books.  Tori has been about a year behind in math but after looking at their programs, I realized she could start the 6th grade book.  There are a couple things she hasn't had yet so I will spend extra time with her on those but for the most part, she'll do fine.  I know it has bothered her to be behind in math and knew she'd be excited to feel like she was "caught" up.  We started that today and it went really well.  She likes doing it on the computer and I love that the program grades it automatically and tells me what she got right and what she missed.  I also love the automatic feedback she gets when she answers a question.

Just when I was thinking I found the curriculum to use for the rest of our school days, I found out that the Teaching Textbooks high school math is a bit lacking if you want to test well on the ACT.  So now I'm wondering what curriculum will prepare them for the ACT and feeling like we're back to square one.  No, that's not entirely true.  I think this math will be great for Tori for the next few years.  Now to figure out what to use next for Brendan.

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