Oh Kolbe! How I love thee! :) I was skeptical of enrolling in third grade, but again I needed simplicity. I went onto a Kolbe FB group page and found out that a lot of the people weren't actually using ALL of the books assigned and basically did their own thing. That was great, except that I was looking for pre-packaged at this point. Instead, fighting my urge to re-do everything, I decided to give it a try AS IS, and I'm glad I did. The lesson plans are simple and concise, no recreating the wheel but plenty of "note" space to still make it my own. I feel that with Seton the books are well thought out and developed well, so the need to enrich is almost non-existent (except for science and history). Even though that's a good thing, I still want to foster a love of learning, not just testing or note taking acumen, so enrichments for my 6th grader is something we add on outside of "school time". Kolbe, I feel, allows me to weave in the love of learning seamlessly with actual test taking skills. The flow of Kolbe is a perfect fit for my third grader, she is the better reader and she does better with conversational learning.
The work load does take a lot out of me, mostly because my daughter is easily distracted and can't do things on her own. Also, all testing (at this point) is on paper and parent graded, which is a pain, but for this grade it's ok. I do tweak the work in the lesson plans occassionally, especially if what's called for seems rote and unnecessary. I'm planning of sticking with it for next year with minor adjustments: we aren't too keen on the reading book they use, I'd rather just have her read books out of the library, we might stick with spelling but might do Seton's spelling, we will be doing a different religion book since our parishes CCD already uses the same religion book, with those few exceptions I'm excited to keep on our Kolbe voyage.
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