I'm especially interested in english. What do you think? Is there somewhere that sells it in-person so I can physically look at the books?
After listening to Deena go on and on about R&S English, I broke down last year and tried it. AND LOVED IT!!! We're doing it again this year, and I do think it does an excellent job with the grammar. Phillip fusses about it, but I think he'd fuss about any grammar. (He did get 100% on his test last week, though!) I've made him re-do his language because he's careless...forgets upper case letters, and ending punctuation, mispells words he's copying from the book, etc. Thing he should be aware of, but he's in too big of a hurry to get done and do the "fun" stuff!
I'd planned on going with Spectrum next year, but I found several reviews tonight that all say Spectrum is a nice summer review, but not comprehensive enough for a year-long course. They recommended R&S. That's why I'm asking. The reviews I saw also said that a lot of it could be done orally. Is that true? Ds learns best by hearing.
Probably some of the earlier grades can be done orally... but not all stuff. 3rd grade....I need to think - but I believe some could be done like that, but not much as it starts in with diagraming (which my daughter thinks is fun)
I am currently doing the 4th and 6th grade book. Last year I did 3rd and 5th. Remember this was written for a classroom, not for hs'ers. So the book is designed with a lesson (that I simply read through with them, but there have been times when we're rushed that I tell them to read it on their own and ask if they have questions!), then a section for the teacher to do "in class". This section is often done orally. Then there's a section for the kids to do independently, often followed by a short "Review" section. All this is to say that you could easily do a good bit of it orally. They also emphasize diagraming sentences, so it can't ALL be done orally. But you could easily pick and chose what you want him to do.
(Looking over my shoulders to make sure Deena's not reading this....) I never had to diagram, and what I saw of it made no sense at all. But Faythe has really taken to it, and Phillip can do it, even though he doesn't like it. And I really think it DOES make grammar easier to follow!
www.milestoneministries.com has English samples of R&S. We're on English 2 and half way through doing all of it orally. English 3 starts diagramming, so of course that has to be done on paper.
Diagramming! Urgh. Without meaning to boast, I'm a decent writer who has published a substantial number of articles. A while back, I used to teach courses on business communication. Personally, I find sentence diagramming a big waste of time. When our children came to those chapters in their English book, I suggested they just skip over them. Honestly, I just don't see the point. Purely personal opinion, of course.
Thanks for the link. The pages aren't colorful or anything like that, but I don't think he'll mind at all. Actually, I think some workbooks way over do the images, and it becomes a distraction to him. ("Ok, so what's the next line say?" "Oooh... Mom! Look! That giraffe is eating the leaves!" ... how annoying!)
We're using English 2 this year, and sometimes we can do three lessons a day because there is so much we can do orally, and only a few exercises that I want to see written because the student needs the practice with writing in cursive, especially capitals on the beginning and punctuation at the end! It's going really well! I'm using 4 with another student, and it's going well too -- and I LOVE the extra practice worksheets! Sometimes we do those for "extra" and sometimes instead of the exercises in the book. I've used parts of 5 last year, too. I agree about how sometimes color is too distracting. The old-fashioned texts like McGuffey's and Ray's and the Blue-backed Speller never had color! I love R&S and CLE and Pathways, none of which use a lot of color (although CLE is putting more color - that's not to say a lot of color - into science and history lately). I never learned diagramming either until I started to homeschool my ds, and now I love it! It's SO much easier to SEE the relationships between parts of the sentence than just "underline this, circle that, parentheses here, label these, draw an arrow to...".
I haven't read everyone else's responses (we've been on vacation in DC all week and am WAY behind on posts). We use R & S for English. We've used or are using Grades 2,3,4,5,6 (and 7 is on the shelf). My younger 2 (using 2nd and 4th this yr) do the majority of it orally or on the white board. I do have my 4th grader to the reviews on paper. They are taking the chapter tests too. My oldest does 99% of hers on paper. She's about 3/4 of the way thru Grade 6. I saw a few folks mentioning diagramming. My 4th grader has a processing deficit. Diagramming have been WONDERFUL for her. She does better identifying part of each sentence if she has to put them on a diagram. My 2nd grader hasn't had to start diagramming yet. The oldest grumbles sometimes on diagramming too but I know that she "gets" it if she can separate it out in a diagram. I'll often have my oldest just do the evens or odds though. It is setup for classroom use so doing both the oral and written practice is often overkill. How we're using it works well for our family and my 3 children all have different learning styles, etc.
This is our second year using it and we love it. My DS hated English until we started using this! It does have a lot of diagramming and seems to be thorough from my experience. Good Luck.
Just a quick comment on diagramming - Alexis LOVES it!! She thinks it's "drawing with words" (her description not mine)..... Jacob has no love of diagramming at all - but does like to underline the different parts and such if needed - just doesn't see the need to rewrite the sentence in a "goofy way"....
R&S English is what turned my ds, now 16, around! He just didn't get ANYthing we tried---until R&S! I am forever grateful to them for that! Because we didn't find it until he was in the 7th grade, we did the level 5 book in 7th, level 6 in 8th, and level 7 in 9th. R&S is considered advanced, so many that come into it late, having struggled with grammar, start in the lower level books and advance at their own rate. Some people do levels 1-6 through 8th grade, then do levels 7 & 8 in highschool! Really, it's that thorough. So, for anyone just starting to try it out, don't get discouraged if your child doesn't get it. If they're frustrated, don't drop R&S for some other program, go to a lower level! We have always called things "levels" instead of graades. My kids always knew that it never mattered what level they were on, because where they were working was where they were going to get the best help for what they needed! It's no use to use "grade level" work if the kid just doesn't get it! The other question you had was about doing it orally. We actually did diagramming orally sometimes. It was kind of fun! We used words like "slash mark", etc. to represent the different parts of the diagramming. We did that just to change things up sometimes, and it was fun! Mostly, however, we did the diagramming on the white board. Somehow the whiteboard is WAY better to diagram on than paper! We did everything else orally. So, YES, do it orally. It's more fun that way, and, especially for my ds, hearing it and reading it gels it in the mind better!
