Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Please push me off the fence with EPGY and MCT!

Hi everyone,

DS6's charter homeschool is starting again in 2 weeks, and I'm making some last minute curriculum changes to my order. The charter is great about ordering what I ask, but they haven't led me to gifted-specific curriculum, and I've discovered lots of great things this summer through YS. I'm on the fence with lots of choices, though, so would love it if any of you could just give me that push by telling me something is great or that it's terrible!!

Math: We're 100% sure that we're going to continue RightStart D for fun, along with an online math program. I'm nearly sold on EPGY OE, but keep getting bogged down with all those other options. Tell me to just do it, please!

Language arts: Please tell me if I should order MCT materials, and if so, which ones. DS has mastered the 2nd grade level (99% proficiency on standardized testing), so we're on 3-4th grade level for grammar, 5th for spelling, and probably 3rd for writing. I have a great 3rd grade poetry comprehension book and we're starting Word Roots. I also have a comprehensive (though dry) Vocab Workshop book by Sadlier-Oxford. I was going to order Critical Thinking's LanguageSmarts D, but I'm really intrigued by MCT after looking at his comments on a webinar. Is that the best for gifted kids? In all the examples I'm finding online, I see no actual writing exercises. Is Grammar Island/Sentence Island read-only? I don't really feel like I need the teacher's manuals (never use them), so what should I really order if I go his route?

Thanks for your help!

MCT has been a fabulous curriculum for us. I'm sure your 6 year old would have no problem doing the island level. The only thing to consider is that is designed for 3rd grade gifted. So ideally, you'd probably want a 4th to 5th grade writing level. We had a great year last year with my 3rd grader who reads at a high school level and can now type, so was probably writing at a jr. high level. We just added in MORE writing. It's easily modified. At the first level, quite a bit can be done orally. But there are big leaps between every level of MCT. I had a jr. high english teacher take a look at it, and she really said that first level is what she was teaching 7th & 8th graders. It's packaged to be engaging and fun to younger kids.

MCT teachers manuals are just the regular books, with hints, teachers notes, and exercises written into the back. I think those are definitely the ones to order. However, to me, for a 6 year old it sounds like you have plenty to work on maybe? You know your 6 old best. My kid is definitely verbally gifted, but doesn't exactly clamor for more grammar! He did very little grammar before we started MCT at 3rd grade. If you are going to do MCT, I'd highly recommend the whole package. The pieces fit together really well and aren't nearly as appealing stand alone. We love it. It really is for whole picture learners who like everything thrown at them at once and who don't need repetition. My kindergartner enjoyed it and followed along last year. But I'm definitely coming back to it for her when she's writing at a higher level and can really cement the concepts. People seem to love it or hate it.

Grateful,
Re EPGY --
-- Is it a long-term commitment so you can stop thinking about this for a while? Yes.
-- Is it reasonably priced? Yes.
-- Is it self-paced? Yes.
-- Will you be tied down forever and ever if it's not working out? No.
-- Bottom line: Is it good enough? Yes.
-- Put in your credit card info, hit send. Breath.

What Clay said. We're not 100% satisfied with all aspects of EPGY math, but I suspect that would be the case with any curriculum, and I don't for a moment regret having chosen it.

Plus it's got a 21-day money back guarantee. So if you have buyer's remorse 2 weeks in, all you've lost is a short period of time.

Haha! This is exactly why I need all of you! The rest of our "real world" friends would think I'm nuts for being so strung out about this stuff. Even my husband tried to convince me that I'd have more hours in the day if I "only gave 90%." How does one go about doing that, I really would like to know!

Kimck, your advice on MCT is really insightful, too. Now I'm leaning more towards doing LanguageSmarts with our poetry/latin/vocab/lit this semester, then moving to Grammar Island next semester. Gifted 3rd will still likely be a good fit then, esp. since it sounds like MCT changes it up quite a bit from regular LA curriculum. DS is on track to get through a year of curriculum per semester, anyhow, and since LanguageSmarts stops after D, it'll give us something new to look forward to afterwards.

Thanks again!

gratefulmom, would you please check out my LanguageSmarts post? I didn't want to highjack yours:) Thanks in advance!!!