I am in the process of looking at the IEW writing products. I have changed my mind (I do this a lot) from the Student Writing Intensive to the Ancient History lessons. I am wondering what the daily time commitment is with this curriculum. I am doing Sonlight so I don't want to add more lengthy curriculum to my day. Your thought on this would be very appreciated.
My concern would be history lessons from IEW plus the history of Sonlight. I am also not sure if the writing procedures are taught in these books.
My oldest just finished the Ancient History set. And I would say that it would not be an issue about the History competing with Sonlight at all...it's not a history lesson, it's a writing lesson using a passage with historical information. My oldest loved the book and the concentration helped cement other things she was learning. Helped her understand it more. I would say the first 5 lessons or so took her about a half hour a day, two or three days in the week. The further into the book she got the longer it took for the lessons. She never, ever spent more than say 30 minutes a day on writing, but we would spread the lesson over longer and longer periods of time - I think the most taxing one took 3 weeks - about a half hour a day (that's an average - she might spend 2 hours one day, and then nothing for 3 days....that's just the way she works! LOL ). If I recall there's 20 or 22 lessons. Hope this helps!!!
Kbabe1968, thanks for clearing up my misunderstanding with IEW. Do those books teach the writing methods or simply use the writing methods? I have been interested in those in the past and so just wondering...
You're welcome! Hope I wasn't harsh! I didn't mean it if I was! Fearful of appearing testy....LOL To some degree the books to "teach" the methods. But, it is helpful to have the teacher book or have watched the Teacher's series on DVD. Knowing the framework of the "units" is very helpful with these books. It is a nice progression, though, and my oldest was able to do it very independently, only occasionally asking me for clarification of the style.
I used IEW Ancient Writing with my sons two years ago. We did the lessons together about once a week for about an hour. During the week they would take our key word outline; our ideas for "dress ups"; our ideas for topic sentences or whatever the goal of the lesson was; and then write their own paragraphs. I would edit and ask for rewrites. We did not do every lesson and we did not do everything in each lesson. This year my 12th grader will do Economics Based Writing Lessons and my 9th grader will do Life Science Based Writing Lessons. I will sit with each of them and DO the lesson with them. They will write, I'll edit, they'll rewrite, I'll grade. It would really help if you could borrow TWSS to understand the whole process of IEW. If you cannot, then Ancient History does walk you through the process. Remember with any writing program and especially with IEW....... The goal is for your child to learn to write. The goal IS NOT to "do" IEW perfectly. If your student's writing improves that is the goal.....NOT to have the right number of "dress ups" in the paper. Pam
Thanks for the input! I am already familiar with the IEW methods. I would love to have writing lessons that teach different form of writing as well as the importance of the process of writing. My son just wants to sit down and chunk it out without any idea where he plans to go with his ideas. Honestly, I really do not like Sonlight's writing- there are way too many assignments and the schedules do not give enough time to really get into the process of writing and complete quality work.
