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Has anyone here used Queen’s Easy Packs?
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I have not tried the easy packs but I have tried everything that goes in the packs. I love all of the materials from queenhomeschool. We have used: Spelling Through Copywork, Language Lessons for Elementary, History Study guide for Ben and Me, Pictures in Cursive,and Nature Study guide for Little House on the Prairie.For this new year we will add a History study guide for Mr. Revere and I, Learning How to Learn, History guide for Stream to River River to Sea, and Increasing in Wisdom which is a Bible Study about Proverbs. If you have any specific questions about any of the above products let me know. I love them all.
How are the study guides? I was interested in maybe trying them out. My biggest question is how do your kids like it? I have the language lessons and my kids love them, but I was wondering about the other things.
I especially want to know about the bible study, Learning how to Learn,history guides, and the nature guide for Little House. How do your kids like them?
I am sorry I haven’t answered these questions yet, I have been out most of the day. I only have one child that I teach and she just turned 10.
Learning How to Learn and Increasing Wisdom Bible Study was just purchased, so we haven’t started these yet, but they look wonderful. Learning How to Learn is broken down into sections: using the dictionary, using the concordance, using a telephone book, and using an encyclopedia. Increasing Wisdom Bible Study is through the book of Proverbs concentrating on: Wisdom, Diligence, Wise Speech, Humility, A Merry Heart, Being Generous, Honesty, Learning, Righteousness, Self Control, Good Leadership, and Discipline.
Study Guides – So far we have worked through two of the study guides. Dd enjoyed both. The study guide that went with Little House is a nature study guide. Each day you read a chapter from the book and do the activities that are listed to be completed with that chapter. For example with chapter 3 you were to “1. Read the chapter, “Camp on the High Prairie”, 2. Add wolves, lynx, and coyote to the list of animals found on the prairie, 3. In a field guide look up owls. Find out what kinds of owls would live on the Kansas prairie and add them to the list of animals in your notebook. Choose one to sketch in your notebook and label it.”
History Guide – Same as the Little House guide. This example is from Mr. Revere and I: “1. Read chapter one, “Pride of the 14t”, 2. Make a copy of the map of Massachusetts and mark Boston, 3. Research England’s King George III and write a brief report on his reign in your notebook. 4. Mark Boston Harbor on the map.
My daughter really likes all of the materials, but probably her favorites are Spelling Through Copywork and Pictures in Cursive. If you have any more questions your are welcome to email me offline. Sorry this seems so long.
My son is quite a bit older than your children (early high school), but I thought I’d respond in case it proves helpful. I started using Queen’s products late Feb. of this year. We’d been floundering a bit through the school year as the curriculum my son had been using was OK, but just didn’t have any life to it. I came across the Queen site, and decided to give LL for the Secondary Child a try with my son. He loved it, so I then added in copywork, and decided to give one of the history guides a try. I bought the guide to “The Scarlett Pimpernel”. The guide is very simple/plain looking, but I was pleasantly surprised with what it contains. It involved map work, defining words, research on different topics ranging from dueling to French nobility to Tudor-style architecture, doing mini-reports on aspects of the French Revolution, and more. The study ended with an assignment to write a minimum 2 page report on the French Revolution (remember, this is a high school level study). I did the book as a read aloud, and as I’m so new to CM I didn’t understand about narration, otherwise I would have had my son narrate each chapter as we went along. I will do that with all future guides, but will have my son read them for himself, and then narrate, as is appropriate for his age.
My son also did the “Pagoo” study this spring. I wasn’t sure how it would go over, ie. if he’d think the book was too “young” for him, but he loved the book. It’s so detailed in both text and drawings. I did have him do some extra work, and he ended up with a great notebook on tidepool life.
I’m very happy I found Queen Homeschool as it led me to CM, and now here to SCM. I’m working on combining aspects of both Queen and SCM for the upcoming school year, as my son has really “taken to” this approach to learning.
Sorry this is so long! Hope it’s helpful. 🙂
Dawn
The guides sound very interesting. I had looked a little at them at convention, but I didn’t need them at the time so I didn’t really look too closely. I have so many of the books already so I think I am going to try a guide or two. We love the Language Lessons. My kids have to finish their handwriting workbooks before I can get Pictures in Cursive. It looks so nice and a great way to add more picture study! 🙂
Spelling through Copywork from Queen Homeschool is an interesting approach. I like the books, and use them with my 9yo dd. She is my youngest and with all the others I used Spell to Write and Read. I am a HUGE phonics fan and the spelling component of Charlotte Masons method is really the only part I was having a hard time with. I love how the English language has ‘rules’ that make sense of it and help us through it and reading a word till she could see it with her eyes closed was just nothing my dd was familiar with. So, Queens has taken rules of phonics, and at the top of the page listed the rule, then there are sentences, usually 5, that incorporate the rule and give practice spelling it and memorizing it, in context. I think it is the best of both ways of learning and I think it will work amazingly well for us.
You can see samples of most of Queens books on their website.
As for Bible, I really prefer Sonyas method over Queen HS. I love Jashubs Journal, my 14 yo will be doing that and starting Discovering Doctrine in the fall.
I also use and like Language Lessons, but there are parts of it we skip. CM encouraged us to spend time with art work and let the kids enjoy it for a week or so, just viewing the picture and forming a relationship with the artist. I don’t like how QHS has amalgamated everything together into one lesson, thus lessening the chance for enjoyment of the art. My kids tend to drag a bit if an art print is part of their lesson, they would rather just look at the picture!
Also, CM reminds us that the children should rarely if ever see a word printed incorrectly, yet QHS has them picking out errors and correcting mistakes. I am not sure how I feel about that yet-it sounds confusing.
I do LOVE the pictures in cursive, but the pictures aren’t part of our picture study-they are like ‘bonus art’. I also love the thematic copywork books, but they are not part of the easy packs.
My good friend has a dd, 11, doing easy pack K? I think it is right now, the one with the Middle ages novel studies. She loves it and her dd thinks she is getting away with hardly any school work;)
Sorry for the novel:)
Heidi S.
Do remember that Sandi Queen wrote these books for her own children to use when they were under severe circumstances. Her son had to undergo three years of chemo for leukemia and she needed some guides both for him and her other children so they could follow the method they loved but still ‘combine’ and get things done quickly. I think that is how she came up with Language Lessons and it has worked well for many families. Sandi herself then was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach so she again used the guides she had written and I think by then she realized that lots of folks needed the ease of finding everything in one place. So while it may not work for all, it certainly fills the needs of many who would like to teach in a CM style but life keeps getting in the way!
Heidi S
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