Anyone use Wordsmith Apprentice?

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  • 4myboys
    Participant

    I’m still trying to figure out the whole LA thing for my 6th grader, especially.  I’ve been looking at ILL, and then I was looking at Writing Tales, then back at ILL.  I really like the look of Apologia’s Jump In!, but I was looking at it for 7th grade.  My ds was in public school until 4th, but we really didn’t do any formal writing of any kind this past year.  I wanted him to get oral narrations down.  We did Queen’s Language Lessons for the Elementary child, but were not completely satisfied.  He is a reluctant witer who has a lot of difficulty in organizing his thoughts.  I want something with solid instruction that he can do independently, ideally something that can be completed confortablly in one year.

    I know Wordsmith Apprentice is not CM, but I think in this regard the work-book style and would really appeal to him.  I think there are many elements of ILL that hed enjoy, but hed prefer the workbook but cost of that would get up there pretty quick between buying the initial down-load and printing.  I know we`d end up skipping a lot of the lessons as well, even if we extended it to 2 years. 

    Has anyone tried printing ILL from google books?  Can you do that?  It might be worth it to try it for a couple weeks…

    pslively
    Participant

    You can print from any book you download at google books.  Just download the pdf and print the pages you want.  That would be a good way to try it out.  I have done this with several books, and then purchased the ones that we found we were going to continue using.  

    If you are wanting writing instruction, I don’t think ILL does much instructing in that area.  There are several writing assignments as I recall, but not much instructing.  Although it’s sitting on my shelf, I haven’t looked at it in a while so someone can correct me if I’m wrong.  

    My oldest used Wordsmith Apprentice, but it’s been at least 8 years ago and I just don’t remember much about it.  I do remember thinking it was really good and that I would use it with the next round of kids.  As we homeschool mothers tend to do, however, I found something I liked better and so I sold the Wordsmith Apprentice a few years ago.  This is the one that is set up like you are a newspaper reporter, right?  I remember thinking it did a good job and that she was able to work independently through it.

    Bookworm
    Participant

    We tried Wordsmith Apprentice with my oldest.  It was one of the Myriad Panic Writing Curricula we tried.  (There was quite a list.)  I at first thought it sounded appealing, and we started off well enough, but ds got terribly bored, thought it was stupid, and I couldn’t see much improvement.  Once I figured written narrations out, that won hands-down and I got rid of the program and never used it with my youngers.  (Poor oldest guinea pig.) 

    4myboys
    Participant

    Thanks, ladies. 

    I don’t know why I can’t get anything to work for me on google books…

     

    pslively
    Participant

    That is funny, Bookworm.  I would have to concur with your statement about the poor oldest guinea pig.  Oh, if I could go back and do it over again!

    4myboys… what’s wrong with google books?  Do you need some help?

     

    houseofchaos
    Participant

    4myboys – what browser are you using?  I have no download button for ILL in Firefox, but I do in Explorer.

    4myboys
    Participant

    I’m not sure what my problem is — I have explorer on my laptop and firfox on my office computer and I’m not getting anywhere with either.  I can see the front cover of the book, but that’s it — nothing inside, if I click on download near the top of the screen I’m taken back to the search box.  Maybe I need updating?

     

    pslively
    Participant

    If you PM me with your email address, I’ll email you the pdf file of the book that I previously downloaded from google.

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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