Chris,BeyondTheSea wrote: ↑Tue Apr 03, 2007 1:44 pmHi everyone! My daughter is currently in 3rd grade in public school. I was pretty much convinced that if we DID homeschool next fall, I knew my curriculum choice. To my dismay, it just didn't feel "right". I mean, it was better than the "classroom in a box" approach (for us anyway--I'm sure it's a wonderful curriculum!), but something was missing.
I really wanted our Bible study to line up better with history, and I knew that my daughter needed some hands on craftsy type stuff to reinforce her learning. She gets excellent grades in PS, so I know she can survive in the rote learning, textbook approach, but she's not thriving. I want her to be excited about learning, not just memorizing something and forgetting it as soon as she's not required to study it any more.
So I got back home, and I found some references to MFW and decided to check it out.
I heard mention that MFW was too "light" and I wondered what they meant. Is it just that some of the responsibility falls on the parent to add books from the book basket list? Or do they really feel like the main textbooks are inferior? Quite honestly, when I was at the conference and looking at the ahem...competitors' materials, ;-) I wasn't terribly impressed with the main history texts. I'm sure they are fine, but they just didn't look like they would be attractive to my daughter. She's a really visual kid.
You know what? I think I'm finally understanding my daughter's learning style enough to be willing to trade an extra reader for a craft project! She's a strong reader, but she needs some hands on time to be creative as well. And quite honestly, now that my radar is on, I'm finding so many extra things that we could use along with MFW when and IF we ever feel like she needs it.
Tell me what you think. And thanks so much for just being here...I've learned so much from reading all your posts!
-Chris
Light is so subjective, who knows what that means. A lot of the books that are mandatory in other programs are also on the MFW recommended books --- so it can't really be about other subjective terms "superior" or "inferior". It's just that MFW uses the books so differently. And maybe the amounts of day to day reading are different or something. But MFW is doing other things on the same day.
I never have understood what anyone means by the books or reading is too light. There is a lot of reading in MFW. Look for the reading lists in ECC at the beginning of each continent. I just grabbed my ECC teacher's manual and randomly opened to Asia (week 21 -30). I counted 116 books in the book basket list. I don't think that is light, but light and heavy are relative terms that mean different things to different families.
I checked out 33 books last week for 2 kids just for one week. I had a rolling crate to carry them out --- didn't seem light to me. (I should mention that they don't have to read all 33 books, I just got carried away at checkout. :)
The nice thing is that you don't have to use each of those books to teach your lessons. You are not dependent on the exact titles to be able to use MFW. Those books are for enriching the unit study. The titles that you need are part of the basic/deluxe packages.
I guess it's like getting a meal sized tossed salad with MFW. Sometimes any particular bite on your fork looks light on the carrots, or on the lettuce or protein --- but when it is mixed all together it is a complete meal. Anyway.... it must be near supper time if I'm thinking of too many food analogies.
--crystal