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Does the LA portion of Preparing schedule Igniting Your Writing? Also, would it be possible to get an example of the dictation exercises from the guide? I'm interesting in the most difficult level of dictation in Preparing and would love an example of the beginning and end of that level. We'll be using Biggers but I think I'm going to get the Preparing guide to follow the LA schedules in there for my oldest son. He will be a ten year old fifth grader and will be doing R&S 4. He already has a strong grammar background (close to finishing First Language Lessons 3 - he has also done R&S 2 and some of the Queen Homeschool Supplies workbooks in the past), has been doing a fair amount of writing lately (narrations and retellings of fables and tales), and is a good speller. He may possibly place into CTC but I plan to separate the children after Biggers. My youngest would do Preparing and my oldest will do CTC. So, after Biggers, he will go into CTC and I'd rather hold off on anything in CTC for now.

Trying to decide if we could do the LA in Preparing or if we should stick to what he is currently using for writing (Writing Tales, we like it alot but I thought Igniting Your Writing might be a better complement to R&S) and spelling (Spelling Power - he loves it but it lacks sentences for dictation, it's just words. I'd like sentences.) or use Igniting Your Writing and the lists in Preparing. Regardless, he will be using R&S 4.

Thanks for any help!

Hi!

Igniting Your Writing is not scheduled in Preparing. I don't have my guide with me right now, so I can't give you a sample from the highest level of dictation. Maybe someone else will pop in & help out.

Here is the first and last dictation excercise for Level 4 in Preparing (I hope it is ok to post it)

FIRST: "Let us take pride in our school. Children who make it a rule not to scatter papers, and who pick up such things when they find them, are forming good habits."


LAST: "My brother's return home always gives us great happiness. This year he wanted to visit a secret place in the woods where he played as a boy, so we borrowed a big lunch basket and planned a picnic. Then the steady rain came and stopped our fun."

HTH's

Thank you, thank you!
That info. helps me very much.
I saw somewhere that Preparing includes four days of the grammar text and a fifth day of Creative Writing, so I'm trying to find out what is used for the Creative Writing... a certain product that HOD sells or if it's just written into the guide, or what?

Hi,

It is just written into the guide.

Thank you.

So, does that mean that the creative writing assignments/instruction would be specific to the content in Preparing (like directly related to what they are learning in history or science that year) or would the lessons work ok with Bigger Hearts?

I'm just trying to decide if I need the Preparing guide to beef up the LA in Bigger Hearts for my ten year old or would it work just as well to schedule R&S English 4 and something for creative writing myself. Of course, that would mean I wouldn't have Carrie's dictation passages. And, I do want those .

Would the creative writing lessons in the Preparing guide be helpful for my older son, fifth grade, using Bigger Hearts? - I think that is my question .

Donna,

The creative writing lessons are scheduled once weekly to go along with the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson. All directions for prewriting and for the guided writing assignments are given within the Preparing Hearts guide. So, the creative writing isn't tied to the history in Preparing Hearts but it is tied to the poetry. The poetry in Preparing Hearts is also not tied with the history. It is a study of Robert Louis Stevenson's poetry, which is included within the Appendix of Preparing Hearts.

Blessings,
Carrie

Carrie wrote:Donna,

The creative writing lessons are scheduled once weekly to go along with the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson. All directions for prewriting and for the guided writing assignments are given within the Preparing Hearts guide. So, the creative writing isn't tied to the history in Preparing Hearts but it is tied to the poetry. The poetry in Preparing Hearts is also not tied with the history. It is a study of Robert Louis Stevenson's poetry, which is included within the Appendix of Preparing Hearts.

Blessings,
Carrie

Carrie, that sounds wonderful!! I love that idea. Wow, I never would have thought of that. He loves Robert Louis Stevenson already.

OK - so, I guess this is what I need to know:

If my fifth grader does R&S 4 (I think he'll do well with it) with the dictation in Preparing plus the writing assignments with the poetry in Preparing (alongside the Bigger Hearts assignments, including some written narrations) and DITHOR (he has started Level 2/3 with books in the Level 4/5 reading level - I'm going to keep him at that level through most of fifth grade), will he be able to "hang with" the LA/writing in CTC (which I want him to do in 6th grade)?


Thanks so very much to all of you who have helped me to think through this and offered suggestions. Thank you Carrie for your time.

Blessings.

Donna,
We're only on week 3 of Preparing, but one thing I really like about it is the guided written narration. You may not need this if you have used Writing Tales previously or if you yourself are just really comfortable with assigning narrations. My ds (10) could do written narrations of Aesop (just on our own, not within a curriculum), but we hadn't really worked on written narrations in other areas. I thought about backing him up to earlier levels of WWE and taking that route to written narrations, but that didn't work well for us at the time. On my own, I just wasn't sure how big a portion to read as a narration assignment, or what to expect in the narration.

Anyway, on the 4th day of Preparing there are steps for doing a written narration. The first 5 weeks or so, the narration is oral, you record, he copies. But after that, he will omit the intermediary step and write it himself. I'm really pleased with the coaching here and the reminder to ask afterwards if the narration included who? what? how/why? as appropriate. I'm not sure if this is correct, but I am finding I let him get as detailed as he wants on an oral narration, but on the written narration I'm hoping he learns to summarize. If we're shooting for three sentences I ask him to think about the three most important things he wants to say before he starts. (Otherwise he begins with a near quote of the first sentence of the reading and finds himself quickly trying to wrap it up leaving out some of the important information).

So, as you add written narrations in Bigger for your oldest, the Preparing guide might be helpful for that (in addition to the poetry creative writing and the dictation in the Preparing guide).

Blessings,
Lynn

Lynn, thank you so much for sharing with me. I really wish we had had the advantage of Carrie's lesson plans to walk us through learning to do written narrations (and everything else that she included!). I could have used the hand-holding as much as him! Really, as I'm looking at this further, I'm thinking he should be doing Preparing next year. I really, really wish I had known about it for this year. The only problem with that is that we are about 2/3rd the way through A Child's History of the World right now. He has already read Life in the Great Ice Age (he loves it) and we have read most of Hero Tales together. He has also read all of the One Small Square books (he has them all and spends hours of his free time with them, he loves them, too), he is currently completely absorbed in Rey's other star book, The Stars, he has read The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible several times (another one of his favorite books), etc, etc...

So, I'm not feeling good about just having him do Preparing as is plus he needs some American History (I guess) before we go into Creation to Christ. One good thing about all that is that Carrie chooses the same books that I love and already use in our homeschool. If I had only known about HOD for this year . Well, it just would have been great for us.

Anyways, thank you so much for sharing about the narrations. Maybe those lessons would be helpful for us even though he'll be doing Bigger Hearts. We tried backing up and using WWE but that didn't go so well. He was a bit beyond it. Writing Tales is going better. Much better actually, but I really, really want to stick with HOD for next year and just follow whatever Carrie would recommend for us.

If my fifth grader does R&S 4 (I think he'll do well with it) with the dictation in Preparing plus the writing assignments with the poetry in Preparing (alongside the Bigger Hearts assignments, including some written narrations) and DITHOR (he has started Level 2/3 with books in the Level 4/5 reading level - I'm going to keep him at that level through most of fifth grade), will he be able to "hang with" the LA/writing in CTC (which I want him to do in 6th grade)?

Donna,

We're finishing PHFHG in the next month, and I think your above plan will be enough to prepare your ds to do CTC the next year. After reading your initial post, I was going to suggest doing the PHFHG poetry writing lessons, as well as having your ds do 1 written narration each week - we were thinking the same thing . Just reading through the steps Carrie has planned for guiding written narration in PHFHG will help you be able to make a plan of how you could guide it in Bigger Hearts as well. The other things you mentioned doing with your ds will prepare him well for CTC too. I completely understand your situation, and I think you have chosen wisely to combine them in BHFHG this year, and then split them the next year. Your ds should do just fine with CTC following your plan for him this year. How blessed your dc are to have you weigh this decision carefully - it will be wonderful to hear how it's going after you've gotten into the swing of things!

In Christ,
Julie

Thanks for the encouraging words, Julie! I appreciate them very much.
I am just thrilled! This is just what we have needed. I guess I'll go ahead and order Preparing. I can't wait to see it!
Blessings All -

Donna,

I agree that your plan for language arts sounds strong. It will definitely help prepare your son for the more rigorous language arts scheduled within CTC.

On a sidenote, we will be doing some hand-holding with written narrations within CTC for those who haven't had much guidance in that area in the past. So, the first quarter will include assigned passages for written narrations, guided questioning, and a sentence starter (just like Preparing Hearts). The second quarter in CTC will move away from the sentence starter, but will still assign the passage and included guided questioning to aid in the written narration. Students will also be asked to highlight the main idea. The third quarter will include fewer (more general) leading questions, still assign the passage, and require highlighting the main idea. The last quarter will only assign the passage and will no longer include questioning, moving kiddos toward independence in writing written narrations.

Blessings,
Carrie