Ok so I can see already that we will not stick with what I chose for us for LA. It is tooooooooo long. There have been worksheet after worksheet today with it, and it will be like that pretty much every single day I need to find something that isn't going to bore me to tears sitting there and that isn't going to make the kids hate school.
If you're using the free ScottForesman grammar/composition, I don't get where there's "page after page" to do daily. Why not just do a page or two at a time and leave it at that?
I'm not I went with the free McGraw Hill Treasures, all 3 workbooks to cover all aspects along with the reading books (I bought these). I'm going to look and see where I can trim things
Can you turn some things into a game? That's what I tried to do when our children became bored. For example, 1) For English grammar, have them visit news websites to spot typos and grammatical errors. It may seem odd, but my children felt very pleased with themselves when they realized they could correct the writing of some of the famous news companies. Also, how many large words are composed of smaller words? e.g., rationale - rat+ion+ale. 2) For history, we gave them books to read from the 'Horrible Histories' series. They are hardly methodical, but they are fun. 3) For science, we had them collect data of all types (even including how animals behave) to find ways to predict the weather. Also, making mashed potatoes from granules is so instructive; in an instant, the liquid phase turns into the solid phase. What other substances can do that? By how much can you reduce the freezing point of water by adding salt? 4) Then I would come out with questions about science in general: Can you see the sky is darker between the first and second rainbows? Have you ever heard of the Whispering Gallery in St. Paul's Cathedral in London? What is Old Faithful? How many of your friends have green eyes? And so on. In some cases, the answer would be accompanied by 'Why?', and a new lesson started right there. I strayed from English language, sorry, but you get the point.
Are you doing all the worksheets in one day? I mean I realize Spelling is daily, but my kids used the treasures books in school and they read like one story and worked through the pages over a weeks time. So they didn't have all the pages daily and read the story more than once during the week. Grammar wasn't done every day either. I do think the Treasures program has a lot more worksheets to it than Scott Foresman or Houghton Mifflin (what our school switched from to Treasures). Do you have the teacher's books for the series as it will tell you which worksheets are for on level students and which are for struggling students. I don't think you are meant to do all the worksheets. You should try googling for a teacher's classroom site that is using the program and see what their assignments are for a week. Ours was set up on our school site so we could see weekly what the kids' were supposed to be working on alongside the stories.
Spelling and Grammar are 1 sheet a day, the "on level" book is 1-2 pages per day if you do them all. I do not have the teacher book, there are some pages we won't be doing.. like the fluency checks, and I'm going to have to look at other thigs we might be able to skip too... in both the on level workbook and the grammar. There are 2 yahoo groups for teachers that use them in the classroom, they are reccomended to have 2 hours of language arts a day in their classrooms!! That is just toooooo much for me!
Oh... and we won't be reading the story more than once a week.. it will probably scan 2 days, and the "intro" story and the "ending" story in each "theme", I think I will read them to the kids, the reading was much harder in the intro stories we read today than in the week's story.
I sent and looked at your link, and I think you can easily eliminate some of the worksheets. I have had kids come to me after starting a school year, and they brought their workbooks from public with them. Not every page was done there, either. Some of the pages were story-specific, but some were just good "working with vocabulary" pages, others had a short story with comprehension questions on the same page, so I've been able to use them as supplementary activities.
I chose the Treasures because I LOVE the vocabulary in it. We tried Wordly Wise and it brought tears to Rylee's eyes... Reagan would have a melt down over it for sure! 1 or 2 pages a week of vocab that is interstrewn into their reading is PERFECT.. and I don't have to come up with my own vocab words from regular books. I also like that the vocab words are highlighted in the reading.. it seemed today to keep them thinking of the word. Both of them would stop at the vocab words and tell me what they meant.. without me asking! I just need to eliminate some of the pages and make some of them oral.. oh and things like "find the mistake, circle it then write the sentence correctly" I need to eliminate the "write the sentence correctly" much of the time... that really made things drag.
Check out Words on the Vine. Is has 36 units based on Latin/Greek roots. There's lots of different activities, not like Wordly Wise, which is the same each time. http://www.amazon.com/Words-Vine-Grades-Vocabulary-Series/dp/1568226616 My kids liked it MUCH better than Wordly Wise!
Jackie, is that available for younger kids? I'm thinking of looking around, but want to give this a few weeks before I decide to abandon ship. I do think I can make this work for us, I just need to get creative a bit I think.
I had to laugh, because 2 hours a day of LA would take up most of our school day. There would be a mutiny on our school ship. I am doing Easy Grammar 3 and really hate it, but we are going to push through it and make it to the end because I have it. I do 90% of it orally with the kids reading the sentence and telling me what to do.
The 2 hours was a classroom block... but honestly it took us over an hour for each kid Today, day 2, was no less painful to any of us... and we didn't even finish anything!!! I'm abandoning ship! Going to go back to Scott Foresman Grammar and Writing, Zaner Bloser Spelling and reading real books with testing on BookAdventure. I am thinking of looking at Spectrum for Vocabulary.
Sorry it didn't work out. It sounds like moving on to something else is the right choice for your family.
Meh.. at least we are early in our year, and I didn't decide to try to ride it out a while and decide a few weeks from now after we are all completely miserable from it and then have to try to make something else work after we are already burned out. They each did their first page of the new spelling today, and Rylee even wrote her words in cursive... we have not done any cursive yet, I printed them for her to copy but she said she wanted to do the cursive... and she did it well! Neither groaned at all... yay!
Esp on the 2nd day..lol We'll see how they react tomorrow when we do the new grammar stuff, but I think it will be better recieved than the Treasures.
We LOVE LLATL (Learning Language Arts Through Literature). There is about one "worksheet" a day. The curriculum includes: spelling, reading, writing, grammar, punctuation, and book reports. They have a list of books that you can (but don't have to) read with the lessons. We also got the School House Rock DVD: http://www.amazon.com/Schoolhouse-R...=1375839189&sr=8-1&keywords=school+house+rock And we listen to/sing the songs about grammar
