Need A Beka Language reviews please.

[marypoppins]

I'm specifically contemplating 3rd grade. Would love to hear about your experiences and what you love/hate about it. Also, anybody here use it with the CLP teacher guide instead of the Abeka TM?

Thanks!

[LisaK in VA]

We liked the workbook format. My oldest did very well with Abeka.

I also like that it has a lot of review -- not just one concept and then moves onto the next. It is very thorough, easy to use without a teacher's guide (at that level) -- overall a very good program.

We took this year "off" from Abeka, and I have missed it horribly. My son's grammar this year just didn't compare.

Abeka has a lot of busy work too - as long as you can get past doing every problem, that shouldn't be a problem.

[LilyK]

3rd grade is one of Abeka's really good language years. My only beef with it is that nouns and adjectives are not introduced until the very end of the year. I think 3rd graders should be working on and off with nouns and adjectives all year long, so I introduced the concepts at the beginning of the year and worked on those separately throughout the year.

DS is done with Abeka language 3 in 4 days!!! Yay!

[forwardbyfaith]

We used to use Abeka for our language arts. LA 3 was our last year with A Beka. The grammar portion I found to be adequate. Writing instruction was abysmal. Dd hated them and so did I and we normally ended up skipping them.

[Suzannah]

We've used Abeka's grammar for the last three years and I'm very happy with it. As someone else said, you don't have to do every exercise. In fact, every few weeks I go through the book and circle the ones I think are most useful or interesting. Then when I assign pages DS knows to just do the ones I circled. If at some point it becomes clear that we need a little more work in one area or another we can always do a few more.

I personally like a couple of workbook subjects. These are easy for DS to take along in the car or to doctor's appointments and work independently. We'll finish Language B in about two weeks and I'm planning on using Language C next year.

[TraceyS/FL]

I used it for 2nd & 3rd, DD had used it in school for k-1.

I switched to BJUP at 4th and haven't looked back (sorta! LOL!!). I like BJUP so much better that I'll have the younger 2 in it. We are doing BJUP 1st right now, younger starts K4 next fall.

I didn't think there was any grammar at all when we needed it. DD couldn't write a sentence and didn't know what i was talking about in the parts. Part of that i blame on her dismal 2nd grade year that i paid all that money for.

Anyway, we used the Abeka Homeschool Guides, and wouldn't attempt without it because of the extras in there (except a lot of grammar). It just wasn't a good fit for us.

[TracyR]

I really like it . But first your child has to like working in workbooks . I have 3rd and 4th grade grammar and it does a very good job teaching it . I don't use the guide at all because really mostly everything you need is in the workbook itself . Its not hard to teach at all anyways .

[sweetbaby]

We have 2nd and 3rd grade. I didn't think it had adequate writing if any at all. The grammar in my opinion was just a regurgitation of rules and lacking enough application of practicing those rules. My children didn't learn how to write a decent sentence or sentence structure until switching to Rod and Staff. Just MO.