I'm thinking on getting this book at Costco and just wanted to know if any of you use it, your likes, dislikes. Also, how do you have your child do it. Does your child do 1 page from each subject per day? Would be using it for 4th grade w/ T4L and other stuff. TIA
We love these books and ALL the books from American Education Publishing!!! How we used it (we aren't using it for my oldest this year, but do have the preschool ones for my 2 littles) was I went through each "subject" and figured out how many pages/lessons were in each, then I divided that section up to fit our 180 day schedule. This covered Math and Grammar and even some Reading, then I got The Complete Book of Science and The Complete Book of United States History and we worked through those... and I will probably do about the same thing with my littles as they come up through. We take a few years to get through the science and history because we go off on other tracks when we feel like it, and we also like to add things to go with the topics in the books (think adding living books and hands on projects/experiments).
we also love these books and others by that publisher. They are great to have when life is just to busy to break out all the books and such. Now I don't use them as a core, I supplement with them. We work them from page 1 each subject. Now like crazymama stated we take longer with the science and history also, we tend to go off to go more indepth.
my kids were tooold when I foundthese, but they look like a lot of wokr to me, and a good starting place for someone begining maybe?
I have used these and books similar and they are great! I did/do the same thing crazymama does and it works really well!
Just wanted to mention that American Education Publishing is really part of McGraw/Hill that publishes school books. They publish not only the Comprehensive Curriculum series, but the Spectrum series, The Complete Book of... series, and the Total (insert subject here) series, and on their website they often have awesome deals and have lots of posters and manipulatives and fun stuff as well
I believe I used the "complete" book for dd in K, and it didn't have enough practice and repetition for my dd at the time. When they say "Complete" in the title, I think they just mean that all the standards are touched on. It was not a good core curriculum for dd in K. We ended up using Explode the Code for her and she took right off with reading then. We also switched to Math-U-See at the same time. We did use Spectrum for language arts and LOVED it. It had just enough practice for ds in 3rd and 4th grade. The Spectrum series is much more complete than the "Complete" series...go figure? :lol:
I used the 3rd grade one a few years ago for my oldest. It was a fill in day book. Days when I was sick, or we were doing too much running around, etc. She could throw it in her bag and feel good that she did some "school" that day. She'd do 2 to 4 pages of each section. She liked it (she's a "do it and check off the box" kinda kid). I liked knowing the day wasn't a complete waste. In general I like the books, but I think that there's more needed - or more instruction needed. I believe they're written as a way to practice skills that are already taught. HTH
I guess if I used it I would have taken it apart and bindered it becuase there is no way I coudl flip back and forth in it, that was the only thing realy that discouraged me from getting one for ds when I first saw them he still had like a year or two of grade school. But there is a LOT of workin there, for the kids and the teacher/mom/dad both!
Thanks everyone, I think that's a great idea to use it for review and days when we're on the go. We're doing T4L but he needs some constant review on the subjects and I need a book that would cover everything and requires hardly any planning.
We have the complete book of animals (for grades 1-3) and my son loves it! He does one page every day so he can read about different animals. We are using Abeka for the most part so the animal book is just an add-on. It gives him extra reading and reading comprehension skills. We also have the complete book of phonics and the comprehension book for 2nd grade. I personally did not feel confident enough to use these as our core so I have added them all to our extra credit available pile.
