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We are using Rod and Staff 2 with Beyond this year. Since we are in Beyond and not Bigger, we are just doing 1 lesson a day mostly (occasionally 2 if we skip a day). And we are doing ti almost all orally. Is it okay to not have my daughter do any writing? When something does need to be written (like fixing capitals and end of the sentence punctuation), I have had my daughter tell me exactly what to write (Big G, little o, little d, etc), and I write it on the white board or on paper. Is this okay? Should she be doing more writing? Is it okay to do it all orally if there is is all just fill in the blanks?
We did Lessons 13 and 14 today, and it has been easy/review so far for her. She could do more writing, but it definitely isn't something she enjoys. So, I would like to keep grammar as something she likes to do...

IMHO - the reason HOD probably says to do all but one activity written is so that you can gently and gradually increase the volume of writing with each level. So for me, even though my kids don't necessarily enjoy the act of writing, I do find it important to have them write out one section. Honestly, I always look for the section with the least amount of writing for them to write. But if you don't have them do much writing now, you may have issues as they get older when the writing load increases. The act of writing in general as a child gets older is to help them increase the muscles in their hands and to help them copy correct spelling of words. HTH.

If it were me - I would have her write out one activity a day.

I think what you're doing is fine. I do R&S orally with both of my kids. The only thing we write is the diagramming in the upper levels. Otherwise, I do it just like you said.

Nealewill wrote:IMHO - the reason HOD probably says to do all but one activity written is so that you can gently and gradually increase the volume of writing with each level. So for me, even though my kids don't necessarily enjoy the act of writing, I do find it important to have them write out one section. Honestly, I always look for the section with the least amount of writing for them to write. But if you don't have them do much writing now, you may have issues as they get older when the writing load increases. The act of writing in general as a child gets older is to help them increase the muscles in their hands and to help them copy correct spelling of words. HTH.

If it were me - I would have her write out one activity a day.

So, we are doing all of the writing written for the Beyond guide - copying a part of the poem for 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week (the guide has four days and then copying a part of the grammar on the fifth day, but since we aren't doing that grammar, we just continue the poem). And we do the spelling basically as written, doing the "correct" amount of writing for that. The question is basically because we are adding to Beyond by doing something in Bigger. So, is in necessary in this case to add more writing in Beyond? We will do what is suggested for the amount of writing in Bigger when we get to bigger...

I think what you are doing is fine.

I was having my daughter write a lot more of the R&S exercises and it took a lot longer and she really disliked it. So now we do almost all of it orally, and this is R&S 3 and she is in Preparing. She can do it, but I think finds it more fun to do it orally. I only make her write the diagramming and sometimes her own sentences when she's supposed to come up with those. I figure, she understands the grammar and is doing a lot of other writing in Preparing so I don't think she needs to write more just to write more. I think it helps her focus on the grammar topic rather than worrying about penmanship, spelling, etc.

I typed my original posting weird - sorry. I was trying to say we do everything orally except one activity written.

As for doing what you are doing, you can definitely do it all orally. For me, my dd is actually doing the grammar part from Bigger with her brother in Bigger and I am making her write one section. For me, since I added in an item from Bigger, I personally decided to do it like I would have if she were doing Bigger. And with my dd - she is probably very similar to your 6 year old. We started with HOD last year and she did Beyond when she was 5. So I didn't want to bump her up to Bigger this year because she wasn't in the age range. So I bumped her down to Little Hearts this year but she is still doing the same amount of writing that she would have done in Beyond - actually a little bit more.

We do as much of R&S orally as possible. I think what you are doing is fine.

With my oldest, what I'll do with her a lot of times is go through the majority of the lesson orally and then pick out 3 of the written problems for her to do. If she does them all correctly, we move on. If she gets them wrong, we redo them and then do another. And even with her, some days I'll just have her tell me exactly what to write....

I have mine do most orally as well, but have them do some writing. At first I was having them do almost no writing. But, sometimes I would throw it in and I noticed it added another dimension and things that I thought were simple for them became a little more difficult. There are different skills used in writing it down and just doing it orally. That said, with the young one in R&S 2, I would just do like MomtoJGJGE and have them write a couple of the sentences or whatever it is and not a whole lot. It doesn't even need to necessarily be every day---just slowly increase the writing.