Any ideas for English for my dd?

[Kfamily]

I'm a little confused as to what to do with my dd (6). I'm trying to consider her English work and what curricula I want to use with her for 2nd grade.

Here is where I am:
We are in Italics C and will be using D next year.
I don't care for the FLL series (I have the first book)and I think it would be too repetitive for her.
She doesn't need WWE. She writes very well for her age. She writes pages and pages in her comp. notebooks. She writes narrations, poetry, and stories on her own free will.
I don't think CW Aesop will work...I do think it will not be enough too soon.
I have considered Intermediate Lang. Lessons with her since she is about 1/2 through Primary Lang. Lessons right now. ( I rewrote the lessons with Startwrite to give it a workbook format.) Living Books Curr. has ILL in workbook format so I could use this with her next year.
She can handle copywork and is starting dictation. I can bring the dictation up next year.
I've considered MCT but don't want to spend the dollars only to find it isn't challenging enough for her (the beginning level I mean...I might could go up a level but figuring that out gets confusing).
She writes well and only makes ocassional punctuation mistakes. Her sentences are well-constructed and varied. What do you suggest? I spend so much time attending to my older dd that my younger one could use some direction and a chance to flourish and be challenged. It has been too easy this year to console myself with the idea she is only in first grade and is doing well already. I want to set 2nd grade up well for her. I always underestimate what she can do but I don't want to push her. I like letting her have a lot of free, interest-driven time, but I do want to stay with her enough to keep bad habits (habits that can form and slip by if you stop paying attention) from getting a hold of her. Does this make sense?:lol:

Just some background info.
(She reads extremely well. I am already planning on most books for next year to fall in the 5th/6th range. I am also putting off Latin until 3rd so that I can just start her right away in something intermediate. She wants to do Elem. Greek 1 and we are already doing L'Art de lire for French with her older sister.)

[Crimson Wife]

I think your DD would probably find the "town" level of MCT to be adequately challenging as long as you get all the components. I can't stress that enough! I had previewed a friend's copies of Sentence Island, Grammar Town, and Grammar Voyage and had been very underwhelmed. However, when I broke down and got the entire set, I discovered that the majority of the grammar instruction is actually in the "writing" book. I don't understand why MCT decided to organize it that way but he did.I would've much preferred all the grammar consolidated into one book organized by topic rather than jumping all around.

Ceasar's English is outstanding and Building Poems is a nice little poetry analysis book. The jury's still out on the grammar & writing.

[Kfamily]

Thank you Crimson Wife. I'll take another look at MCT. I'll look at the town level and see if that might work for us. From all the threads about MCT, I've definitely noticed that the advice is to use all of the materials and to take each level as a whole with all it parts.





Any more advice/ideas... For those of you with dc working several grades above in English what do you use and how do you use it?

[Bird Girl]

My DD is 7, and is considered a second grader this year. We are using Sonlight's Core 2 for history and literature. I substitute SOTW for Sonlight's recommended history spine, A Child's History of the World. Rather than read the Sonlight books on a schedule, I leave them out for DD's use, and simply bring out the history-linked ones when we read that chapter of SOTW.

For the non-literature portion of language arts, I use MCT's Island level. I encourage prospective users to visit the downloads page at Royal Fireworks press: http://www.rfwp.com/downloads.php The top listed slideshow shows how the program is supposed to be implemented. It works like no program I've ever seen or used before--and it truly is a socratic curriculum. I doubt that it could be "too easy" for a second grade child--because if the child immediately grasps the ideas being presented, which is the hope, then the discussion can turn to bringing in additional examples, applying those ideas to literature that's read separately, and creating ever more creative examples for the writing component. As far as that writing module goes, I found that I learned things about sentence structure, and that it was useful across genres.

I hope that helps.

[OhElizabeth]

I guess I'm confused on your latin comment. You wouldn't want to go directly into FF with no latin background, would you? I haven't used it, but I just took it, from the samples and talk, that it might be better to have done a year of something else first, just to get them in the swing of things and lay some foundation of memory work. Lively Latin would work for that. 2nd gr is a fine time to do latin. It's before you're doing long writing assignments, so you have time for it.

Yes the dictation is good. We did a LOT of it when dd was that age, probably 3/4 to a full page a day. Of course we were trying to correct her spelling issues.

As far as writing, I like WT better than CW Aesop. If she'd enjoy it, you could do it this year. My dd did parts of it (and Aesop A) in 2nd and did WT2 as a co-op class in 3rd. I'm not sure that first book is so entirely unskippable, not when you consider how simple the skills are and how naturally they develop with any writing at all. I'd probably put my effort into keeping her in good books.

Remember, your total time per day still applies. So in 2nd you're talking a max of 3 hours required. If you ax an hour of that for reading, that takes you down to two. Well two hours a day goes by pretty quickly when you're doing 2-3 languages, math, etc. Oh, it's also a good year to get her learning typing. That way her speed is building for 3rd or 4th when she wants to start typing those longer writing projects. Yup, typing is a good thing to do at that age, even daily. And we played zoombinis a lot that year. Has nothing to do with anything (it's a computer game, logic), but it was fun. :)

[Kfamily]

Yeah, the latin comment is probably confusing...I'm still frustrated with what to do with this subject. I would definitely doing something with her latin-wise before First Form (I'll save that for 4th/5th for sure). I just don't know what or when.
I"m still on the fence with MCT, CW, Writing Tales and ILL (the workbook format) with added dictation. Honestly, I know I tend to overthink things...:D:lol: but I also know, when I decide to face truths with myself, that I've taken a very eclectic, unorganized road with her. I think she is so independent because 1.) I've forced her to be since I'm always doing so much direct teaching with older dd and 2.) it is her nature. I can at least fix the part for which I'm responsible.
Thanks Elizabeth for your help...your clear, straightforward thinking is much appreciated!!!:grouphug:

[OhElizabeth]

I think she is so independent because 1.) I've forced her to be since I'm always doing so much direct teaching with older dd and 2.) it is her nature. I can at least fix the part for which I'm responsible.

Word to the wise: you can't fix her. She is who she is. :) You didn't make her that way, and it's who she is. Now TAMING her, that would be helpful. But if I could just toss out, I think what's coming across as independence is probably just a strong gifting in what I call capableness. I'm utterly un-capable with things, getting lost in the details, and my dd is the total opposite. You could see it at that age, and it comes out as this extreme ability just to go in, figure it out, and get it done. You just have to stay one step ahead of her in that sense, throwing her new things to try and do. But don't feel those things have to be academic, kwim? Has she learned to knit? Type? I would find things like that for her to do. Honestly, I think WT1/CW A are about worthless for her. I would skip them, skip MCT, all of it, and just do fun stuff. I mean seriously, whether you do those fancy programs or not, a year from now she'll be about at the same place. Call me synical, but that's my take.

[Kfamily]

Help me understand what you mean when you say that even if we do the fancy programs she will still be in the same place next year...I still haven't figured out how to quote on this forum:confused:! Do you mean that you don't think she will have grown much academically? I would probably disagree here since I can't keep up with the speed at which she keeps growing in her abilities!:001_smile:

What would you recommend for English next year? If we don't do WT1 and CW and MCT (and I agree with you about it being not a good fit for her...that's why I keep trying to figure this out. Maybe there isn't the right fit and I just need to accept that. Sigh.) then what should we do/use? Should we just do dictation, copywork and maybe just let her start writing simple narrations and use them as points to discuss grammar...hmmm??
Thank you so much for taking this on with me...I really appreciate the feedback and advice. I would send cookies or chocolate if I could!:001_smile:

[OhElizabeth]

I meant just the opposite. I meant you could take any of those roads, or carve your own, and still get to about the same place in the next year, BECAUSE the skills are so simple. Of course you're going to have her write narrations. I assumed you were having her do that now. She can rewrite little things, longer things. My dd got to the point, around that age, where she really started bucking me on narrations, asking why she had to do them, why I didn't read the material myself if I so all-fired wanted to know, lol. I kept buying into the line (WTM) that they just need to keep going with these narrations and that CW is going to make them great. Well my dd swelters under it. Her HATE for the process made her take mental leaps into summarizing and condensing that I'm pretty sure aren't covered till Homer B! LOL I'm being funny there, but it's really not funny. I really regret that I've bought into this whole paradigm or progression of what's "best" that I couldn't step back and see what it was doing to my kid.

So anyways, whether you want to do CW Homer or Diogenes or WT2 (which I LOVE btw), you still would be fine skipping WT1/CW Aesop A next year, providing you have her writing narrations or rewrites of something and providing she continues to grow. She'll get there and be ready to go into say WT2 just fine. WT2 is really great and worth the effort.

You know what you really might do? Get out of the box a bit. Have you looked at MBP (Moving Beyond the Page)? Get a couple of their guides for some books that interest you. Make sure you bump them up a range. So if she's going to be 7, do the 8-10 level. The lit book guides include some writing projects, and they're a bit more out of the box and analytical. A few of those would be nice. You could intersperse it. Do three weeks of fable rewrites, then do a lit guide, then do more rewrites. And every week she does a couple subject narrations and a book summary. Dictation daily.

[Kfamily]

Wow! That sounds so exactly right...and thank you for really listening and helping me think this through. This is exactly the conversation I've needed. I'm finding I can't talk about this to anyone right now so this is helpful and healing...so now to send those treats huh!:001_smile:

Thank you!

[OhElizabeth]

Did you say you're coming to Cincy? One day we (and our girls!) need to meet. :)