more middle school ?

I don’t try to do a MUS lesson in ANY time.  MUS is mastery based.  We move on only when mastery has been achieved.  About the fastest this has ever happened in my home is 3 days. The longest would be more than three weeks!  If you try to move faster than the child achieves mastery, you will end up making progress difficult because principles will not be internalized.  You can probably spend a little longer at this age, provided that attention does not waver or wane.  

I myself do Spelling Wisdom twice a week, although we prep every day.  I think there is placement info on the website or in the sample? Maybe I’m wrong.  You may not need to start at the first one.  

Grammar–again, I tend to do this about twice a week, but i don’t know the needs of your child.  Are you also in a foreign language?   More often might be good if you do not do any foreign language grammar.

Whether you continue ILL and wordly wise would depend on your goals and how your child was doing and what you wanted.  

We do MUS in a similar manner to Christie.  It takes as little as 3 days up to a couple of weeks in some cases, though those are not the norm.  Typically it’s between 3 – 5 days. I do have the kiddos use a timer, so my youngest worked on her math for 30 minutes this year.  Next year it will be 40 minutes.  My two in high school worked on theirs for 45 minutes/ day.  That time does NOT count the video.  They like it that way, and I’m fine if they want to only count actual computation time.

Our dictation is Spelling Wisdom which is also our method for spelling.  If you choose to come up with your own bits for dictation, that would work as well.  I like to get two for one, so this method works for us.

I don’t know about Grammar Key, but when we used OMT, I took it one page per day – sometimes two because my girls enjoyed it a great deal.  I will use this with my youngest this year, and that is how I plan to use it with her.  The time it took us was around 15 minutes, sometimes a bit longer, but no more than 20 minutes.  That isn’t much time, but then again, this is a finite bit of knowledge, and I’m ok with what might be considered a very short lesson.  I refuse to drill and kill with this; I see far too many people turned off of grammar when it need not happen.  We diagram together, then the girls each took turns with their own sentences using a dry erase board.  I would randomly write a sentence here or there as well, and have them diagram it — I enjoy grammar, and am not intimidated by it.  Don’t feel you have to do that if you are not as comfortable with grammar. As for number of days per week, we do 2 – 3 depending.

As far as the other two programs, for the life of me I can’t remember what ILL is.  However, Wordly Wise is different than the others, but then, though I have used it in the past with my oldest who is now 23 and for a year or two with my oldest dd who is now 21, I’m ambivalent at this point.  I have not decided what I will or won’t do with my youngest as word meanings sometimes escape her.  However, Latin does seem to help with that issue, and my 16 yo and my 18 yo really have a good grasp of roots now which has helped them significantly, so I may wait and see for another year with my youngest.

Pax,

~j.

One should not do a dictation until it has been prepped to the point the child will not make an error.  We look up every word, we work on spelling any we may not know, we discuss pertinent grammar and style points, we study the punctuation.  Once I am very certain the children can do any portion with no error, we dictate.  If t his is not necessary the passage is too easy.

For MUS, my son (12 1/2) just started Epsilon a few weeks ago, so don’t think you’re all that behind.

He’s going through a Lesson a week; about 2 pages a day, then the test on Fri. I must say that fractions are coming easier to him than I expected. If he can do more than 2 pages and know what he’s doing, then I let him.

I want to start him on LOF, too; I just have to decide which one.

My dd, who’s 12, is on Gamma. I require her to work Sun.-Fri. on Math, with few vacations from it (even if she does nothing else, she does math) since she truly is behind and must get where it won’t interfere with HS math requirements. Her brain wasn’t ready for math till just recently and she is moving very quickly now; getting the concept of multiplication. Math is tough for her, but now she’s doing well. If she feels like doing more than 2 pages (she’ll tell me), I only let her do 2, then come back later in teh day and do more; otherwise she’ll zone out and start getting simple things wrong.

For dictation, I have it scheduled for 2x a week. One day study the passage and copy it, then the next dictation. You could use what books you have on hand, but it’s easier to have it all in one spot, like SW. I need to be more consistant with it myself. My son also uses Megawords as spelling is not a strong suit for him and he needs the extra “rules” training. He’ll be doing Megawords 2 for 7th.

Grammar/Comp.: Both of mine (the 6th and 7th) will be doing Rod and Staff 5 daily.

For Foreign Lag. they will also continue in their Hebrew studies and will be beginning Latin for Children A.

Generally, ILL is ended by 7th. If you’re going to start WWTB, then I don’t see a reason to continue ILL; or you could just finish up ILL and start WWTB directly afterwards.

I don’t know anything about WorldyWise, I’m sorry.

I’m going to use LOF as a supplement, so I won’t be switching from MUS but letting them complement each other.

HTH

ok…I’ll try to remember!