MFW Adventures is a wonderful resource and it has been so refreshing to not have to do all the lesson planning!
File folders and workboxes have made our day flow so smoothly and I will continue to use these organizational tools.
Math-U-See continues to work well.
All About Spelling continues to work well.
We have organization, reading, writing, math , spelling, and our content studies under control and moving forward. The only aspect of our plan for Sam that is missing is grammar.
We tried MFW's recommendation of PLL (which would have worked great for the older kids) but Sam found it cumbersome and confusing. This quarter we have tried LLATL ( which worked great for the older kids) and although it was a better resource for Sam than PLL it really hasn't been great. He completed the exercises but there was not enough review and practice for him to feel competent with a skill. He would actually say something along the lines , " I thought I was working on x so why are we doing y today."
This comment forced me to look at the resources that work well for him. MUS is mastery based, WWE is predictable, AAS has lots of review, our workbox system keeps everything organized.
Mastery based, predictable, organized with review until he feels competent.
Sam's criteria for a resource is that it is organized, predictable and there is enough review that he actually learns the material presented.
For skill subjects, Sam does not seem to need or want a lot of variety. He wants the facts and an opportunity to master the facts. I need to work with this.
No wonder Sam found PLL cumbersome and confusing. PLL is a wonderful open ended resource with a lot of variety with a goal of exposure to proper English. Great resource but doesn't meet Sam's criteria. LLATL is a wonderful resource for studying aspects of English in context of a snippet of literature. It is more of a spiral approach to English, has a lot of variety with little review. LLATL doesn't really meet Sam's criteria either.
So the question is......what elementary grammar program does?
I have used First Language Lessons with Sam when he was 6. We dropped it when we found MFW 1st. Honestly I found it a bit dry and boring so I was really just looking for a reason to drop it! However, if it meets Sam's criteria for a skill subject resource I need to get over my prejudice.
This quarter, we will use FLL2 since it is a resource that I already own. Sometime during this quarter, I will go to the local homeschool store and take a good long hard look at FLL 3 and FLL 4 to see if it will meet Sam's criteria.
No comments:
Post a Comment