Question:
ds11 is in 7th grade. What book should we begin with to supplement his b&m school? And do we need both the student and the parent books?
For grammar, I'd start with either Grammar Voyage or Magic Lens 1. If he's had some grammar already, then probably go with The Magic Lens. Be sure to get the corresponding practice book as this is where much of the learning takes place. Note that the practice books contain vocabulary from the vocabulary book at the same level, so the practice book for ML1 has vocabulary from The Word Within the Word 1.
For writing, Essay Voyage is where he explains how to write an essay. Advanced Academic Writing 1 is about research papers.
I prefer Caesar's English to The Word Within the Word series. So I'd start with CE 1 rather than WWW1.
And I don't have an opinion on the poetry books as I haven't used them.
All that said, the whimsical, narrative quality of the MCT LA materials is confined to the Island and Town levels. My son was disappointed with Grammar Voyage because it is boring in comparison. In fact, he was so disenchanted with the Voyage materials that I rewrote Essay Voyage omitting all of the references to the voyage and adding different examples of good writing and essays. My son loved that, but it was a whole lot of work.
For the Voyage level you can get away with just the teacher books (for the practice book, you need both student and teacher books, as the teacher book has the answers in it), but for the Magic Lens level you need both the student and teacher books if you want to have answers.
