MTMM for a girl with little previous science?

[MelissaC]

My 13 yr old dd has very little science experience. I was planning to start her with Apologia general science this coming year, but I really like the look of MTMM and the included science. Would she be ok starting here or does she need more science before this? Thanks so much for any help!

Melissa

[LynnH]

She should be fine. It explains things very well and at an easy to understand and interesting level. Has she had any experience with written narrations? Some of the books do require those. I would think it would be much easier for her to jump into the MTMM science than to jump into Apologia General Science.

[MelissaC]

She should be fine. It explains things very well and at an easy to understand and interesting level. Has she had any experience with written narrations? Some of the books do require those. I would think it would be much easier for her to jump into the MTMM science than to jump into Apologia General Science.

She did do some of Apologia's Zoology and notebook, but I'm not sure about written narration. She will be doing IEW next year, hopefully that will teach her how to do written narrations.

[StillJulie]

How is her reading ability?

One book (Atoms in the Family) was a real challenge for my daughter, who I consider an excellent reader and very diligent student.

[MelissaC]

How is her reading ability?

One book (Atoms in the Family) was a real challenge for my daughter, who I consider an excellent reader and very diligent student.

Her reading is pretty good. We've been doing Sonlight, so reading hard books is common. It seems to be too much reading though! She isn't a very diligent student though. She wants to do things as quick as possible and be able to have her free time. Is MTMM advanced or right about on level for an 8th grader? I'm thinking this is the right level for her, but maybe not. She doesn't have much writing or science experience.

[StillJulie]

I like it for eighth grade. It worked very well for my daughter last year. (She has done HOD since 3rd grade/Bigger Hearts.)

You may need to do a little "hand holding" with the written narrations at first... maybe help define a topic sentence before she starts writing. I did that with my son in his guide this past year. I would make him come and show me his topic sentence before he wrote anything more just to reinforce the concept of paragraph construction.

My daughter's written narrations for MTMM usually were two to three paragraphs long. I don't think the guide specifies that. It's just what worked well for her.

I don't know if Carrie would recommend this or not, but the writing from the guide before MTMM was my daughter's all-time favorite year of writing (she loathed the IEW). I think it's about the least expensive year, too. Maybe it would be worth it to use that with the MTMM guide.

[LynnH]

IEW won't teach written narrations, they are totally different. There are guidelines in the back of the guide for written narrations and I would suggest you look at some of the week in review examples to see what they look like. My ds really liked IEW because it did give him a lot of guidance in learning to write. The writing program in Rev to Rev is creative writing so that might not be what she needs. It is better for someone who is more of a natural writer I think. It was actually my son's least favorite writing program. So as you can see it depends on what kind of writer she is. If writing doesn't come naturally then IEW should help quite a bit.

[MelissaC]

IEW won't teach written narrations, they are totally different. There are guidelines in the back of the guide for written narrations and I would suggest you look at some of the week in review examples to see what they look like. My ds really liked IEW because it did give him a lot of guidance in learning to write. The writing program in Rev to Rev is creative writing so that might not be what she needs. It is better for someone who is more of a natural writer I think. It was actually my son's least favorite writing program. So as you can see it depends on what kind of writer she is. If writing doesn't come naturally then IEW should help quite a bit.

She wants to be a writer. She has written a few short stories on fanfiction sites and loves it. The real issue is that she feels like she needs help writing. She isn't ever happy with the way her stories end, so I thought IEW would be good to teach the basics. Creative writing would be great after she learns how to go about writing I imagine.

[MelissaC]

I like it for eighth grade. It worked very well for my daughter last year. (She has done HOD since 3rd grade/Bigger Hearts.)

You may need to do a little "hand holding" with the written narrations at first... maybe help define a topic sentence before she starts writing. I did that with my son in his guide this past year. I would make him come and show me his topic sentence before he wrote anything more just to reinforce the concept of paragraph construction.

My daughter's written narrations for MTMM usually were two to three paragraphs long. I don't think the guide specifies that. It's just what worked well for her.

I don't know if Carrie would recommend this or not, but the writing from the guide before MTMM was my daughter's all-time favorite year of writing (she loathed the IEW). I think it's about the least expensive year, too. Maybe it would be worth it to use that with the MTMM guide.

I will take a look at that. She learned how to write a couple different kinds of paragraphs using Shurley English, so maybe that will be enough to get her started. We haven't started IEW yet. I read a few reviews(after I bought it of course) that said it kills the creative writning part. Too much dress ups and structure. We'll give it a shot but it's good to know HOD covers writing just in case!