Does anyone here use any of these curriculums or resources?

We use McGuffey’s Readers, not the Progressive Speller for our spelling work.  We love them.    I haven’t used anything  else on your list.

CC memory work (mainly the math songs and American history songs)

Spelling Power (on and off – when we need to brush up the spelling a bit! The great thing about it is that you buy it once and can use it with all grade levels…basically forever.)

My best friend is the a director for CC…I have been to lots of CC events and seminars, but I never quite ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ if you know what I mean ;0). So, no, I don’t do the CC community.

BUT I know many who do and absolutely love it. We have the memory work CD’s and we use them as they fit in with what we are studying at the time. The skip counting and math songs have been especially helpful. I never could get into the whole ‘grammar, dialectic, reasoning’ thing. But my kids probably do memorize more than the average CM student b/c of the influence of those CC seminars.

Spelling Power – Well, first off, we also do R&S and Spelling Wisdom! So I really only use Spelling Power occasionally. But, if I remember correctly…

1. You find your child’s ‘level’ by pre-testing. When they are missing more than 3-4 words in a pre-test, then you start there.

2. We have a pre-test on day one, write their words on day two (some people do only the words they missed on the pre-test), spell aloud and review on day three, and a final test on day four. Words that are missed on the final test are re-written correctly 3-5 times, and get added to the following week’s list.

That is how we do it – and I mainly use it to challenge my older kids when they feel like they ‘know it all’ in spelling and start to get complacent or sloppy on writing assignments. It isn’t a punishment, but a nice little reality check :).

We use Spelling Power and like it.

I would avoid the Hirsch books. They are part of the great books school of thought, very big on needing to know certain things, not very CM.

Nebby

http://www.lettersfromnebby.wordpress.com

Last year, I was Director/Tutor for a small CC campus with a total of four families (9 children). We no longer have a campus. while we all enjoyed getting together, and the accountability it provided as far as memory work was concerned, we chose to go different ways this year. While I think it’s helpful for my children to have memory work, we are better suited to a CM style education. We still include the memory work that fits with the history/science we are studying. I also utilize some of the fine arts resources I purchased for CC. Our children still study the Veritas Press timeline cards and make their own Book of Centuries.

I spread History Sentences out over 3 terms versus 24 weeks. We are doing SCM’s Module 4 this year, so I chose thd Cycle 2 History sentences as memory work. We memorize one over 2-3 weeks’ time. They are coordinating well with the history and geography we are studying. I’ve also used the CC maps from the Foundations Guide instead of purchasing another map book. They are turning out to be a perfect fit for Module 4. “Use what you have” is working well for us in this situation.

As Nebby commented, the Hirsch books aren’t very CM friendly other than a fact finder reference book. They are at our local library. About every other year, or so, I’ve carted one home to see if maybe I’m missing something. I always turn it in right away and remember, “No, those books are missing something…a life.”. ;0)

Hth,

Becca<><