By Amanda Andrews
(Liberty hill, TX)
Visitor Review:
I am a first year homeschooling mom. My daughter had excelled in public school for both Kinder and 1st grade, we choose the full A Beka 2nd grade curriculum. She is a hard worker, eager to learn and a great reader.
We started with the DVD method, verses traditional. About 6-8 weeks into it, she began to literally dread her time spent in front of the screen. And the methods of what seatwork to do and when and how were difficult to follow and she never really got with the grove. At that point, I switched to traditionally teaching her, verses using the DVD’s provided. It probably wasn’t reasonable to think a 7 year old could spend a few hours watching TV to learn anyhow.
This being said, I am still extremely disappointed in this curriculum.
I think the phonics work is ridiculous and very overboard. It’s a large workload and in my opinion a waste of time for a child who can read. I think it would be a different story if you had a child with trouble reading, but if they can hear words and spell them then its not necessary to butcher and dissect them daily.
The arithmetic is a classic case of quantity over quality. I don’t agree with the order in which the concepts are introduced or the fact that new concepts are never given a chance to really sink in. The daily seatwork just keeps adding new concepts a few at a time and the wheel keeps spinning without ever really reinforcing anything. At the end of the year a lot of things have been introduced- but not instilled.
The health, history and science are weak and not a full year’s worth of work by any means.
I have spent many hours finding good, quality, supplemental work to make sure my daughter is actually learning. I don’t think I should have had to do that having invested in a full curriculum. Surely, when something new is introduced- you’d think you need more then 2-4 problems worth of practice for that day?
I realize this is typically a highly acclaimed curriculum but I highly disagree and have almost never left a negative review for anything, I am not your typical “complainer”.