Beth in Central TX, or others who've used Homer B..

[Julie in GA]

I was wondering if your grammar studies have lined up nicely so that you've already studied verbals by the time you get to Homer B. If not, how have you handled it?

With my first ds, we were finishing R&S 5 at the time, and so I took off a couple of months, finished 5, and skipped to 7 (because R&S6 didn't seem to cover verbals, at least per the Table of Contents). Then I began Homer B after he had learned about verbals.

My problem is that my next ds, who is in 6th grade, is only halfway through R&S5. We've fnished Homer A, and have one more week of Poetry A before starting Homer B. I'm wondering if I should just take a long break from CW, and use my CW timeslot to do grammar so that we'll finish sooner, or if I should just explain what's necessary to know about verbals in order to do the CW lesson.

What have you done?

Thanks,

[Beth in Central TX]

Hi Julie,

We'll start CW Homer B next year when my boys are in 7th & 6th grade. Verbals will probably work in nicely with my oldest since he'll be in R&S Grammar 7. However, my middle son will only be in R&S Grammar 6. I plan to introduce the subject to both boys when we get to it in Homer B (I don't think R&S 7 will introduce it first). I'm just going to explain what's necessary to do the CW work, and then let the R&S work reinforce their new knowledge. I think this makes both programs stronger because my boys are looking at the information in two different settings. The grammar concept light comes on many times in CW (and Latin) when they actually apply what they're learning in R&S. Hitting the concept first in CW will be a little backwards, but I think verbals will actually be easier to teach in R&S if they've already had exposure to it in CW.

[Julie in GA]

It looks like I'll be doing the same thing. Otherwise, I'd have to wait too long to start Homer B, and I don't want to do that. ;)

[Susan in SoCal]

Julie-
Verbals in Homer B were the first concept in CW that we hadn't come across in prior grammar studies (either separate grammar or Latin). I debated skipping it, but then I decided to just let CW guide our grammar studies from that point on. So we used the instruction in the Core, and if we didn't understand clearly from the provided instruction, we used Harvey's and R&S 8 to supplement (just pulling out the info on verbals). I'd read ahead and just noted the appropriate Harvey's & R&S pages in the IG for our reference. So far, so good. And just this month, we arrived at participles in our Latin work, and my son wasn't thrown for a loop, as it was already a very familiar concept.

I love it when our curricula overlaps and affirms the knowledge gained. :-)