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I thought I had researched this enough. I checked with homeschool reviews. I bought Cathy Duffy's book and read her review of it. But apparently, I didn't research it enough. AFTER I've bought it, I've found that LOTS of people have a problem with this curriculum. In my 11 years of homeschooling, I've never...and I do mean, never, had a more confusing curriculum. It is very poorly laid out. The curriculum wants you to read the first 11 steps before you ever even try to teach the curriculum. The curriculum itself reads sort of like, "If your child is already reading skip to step such-in-such, if not you need to complete this step and such-in-such step before you start the Wise Guide." Then when you look up the other step it will say, "You first need to do such-in-such and then complete this step...and you should begin your Learning Log now. See step 12 for more instructions on the learning log." On and on it goes throughout the book telling you complete different lessons. Half the time, I forget whether *I'm* supposed to be completing the step or if my child is supposed to complete the step first. It also seems to be somewhat deceptive (not necessarily on purpose, but I've not ruled that one out yet) in how it is presented. The curriculum claims that 95% (or something like that) of our most common English words can be explained with phonics rules. Yet, it constantly has exceptions. Constantly. And instead of admitting that the English word in question is NOT following the established rule, they simply deny it. I'm on a yahoo list for SWR that is supposed to be a support. They've tried. They really have. When I ask a question, their inevitably seems to be NO answer. Or they will give an answer but it really doesn't apply. For intance, it has been quite confusing that they teach that the letter y says /y/ /i/ /I/...but not /E/. So when we have words like "baby" or "lazily", they are told to THINK ba bi (with long i). Why? Because /y/ does not make the /E/ sound in proper English. The problem with this is.... WE'RE NOT SPEAKING "PROPER ENGLISH"! WE SPEAK AMERICAN ENGLISH! Still there are some things that I like about this curriculum. I like that some of their rules give some explanation for the spelling of certain words. And I think the idea that you should learn to spell in order to learn to read is a good one. I can "see" how this is very beneficial. But is it worth the confusion, frustration and extra time that it's taking to learn how to use this program? I don't think so. I wouldn't buy it again if I had it to do over and I may wind up abandoning it all together.
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