Do you use Oak Meadow with your kids?

[iloveaidan&finley]

Can you tell me about it, please? What do you like? What don't you like? Do you supplement with other resources? Do you use the syllabus? I want to know as much as possible! I am considering it for my 6 year old (who by the way attended a public Montessori kindergarten for 6 weeks and was just withdrawn 2 weeks ago). Do you think the kindergarten curriculum would be below his level? Help!

[iloveaidan&finley]

Anyone?

[CariOfOz]

I used OM grade1 with my 6yo and I definitely think K is below the lvl of an avg 6yo. It is a *very* Grade 1 introduces a couple of letters a week via story for the first half of the yr or so, then moves into word families (ip, op, at, etc) after that for language arts/phonics. The math didn't interest my kids at all... they wondered what on earth gnomes had to do with math? So we swapped that out. We DID love the nature based science and the social studies (until the latter became way too Ameri-centric to work well here)

I loved how the syllabus was set out by the week, but gave you the choice of what bits to do on what days etc. My kids didn't care for a lot of the fairy tales (most of them weren't ones I'd heard of) either. We're not incredibly waldorfy I guess

[onyxravnos]

I havent yet used it but i do have the k program... from what i've read and looked through it's.... good... not great.... can be with some suplementing.
a search on mothering will bring up a few good threads about oak meadows.

You might also look into Enki and into Christopherus homeschool curiculum.

[iloveaidan&finley]

Thanks! I'd love to consider Enki, but it's way too expensive. I think we may go with LiveEd. Between the typos, dry material, overkill on Beatrix Potter, etc. I'm getting scared away from OM. I'll keep looking.

[dandelionmom]

I use the Oak Meadow program with my 6 year old and my 13 year old, grades 2 and 8 respectively. We are a Waldorf family, and my oldest daughter attended a Waldorf school for 3 years when she was younger, so using Oak Meadow works well for us. We do supplement with Live-Education, though, because it is more "traditional" Waldorf.

I like how Oak Meadow schedules the day...very similar to the Waldorf school. Circle time, verses, songs, recorder, stories throughout the lessons, using arts and crafts and fantasy to help teach the core subjects, and incorporating main lesson books, natural supplies, and handiwork into the curriculum. I love it!

[karika]

Originally Posted by dandelionmom

I use the Oak Meadow program with my 6 year old and my 13 year old, grades 2 and 8 respectively. We are a Waldorf family, and my oldest daughter attended a Waldorf school for 3 years when she was younger, so using Oak Meadow works well for us. We do supplement with Live-Education, though, because it is more "traditional" Waldorf.

I like how Oak Meadow schedules the day...very similar to the Waldorf school. Circle time, verses, songs, recorder, stories throughout the lessons, using arts and crafts and fantasy to help teach the core subjects, and incorporating main lesson books, natural supplies, and handiwork into the curriculum. I love it!

this is good to hear. I am not the OP, but I am using Columbia Virtual Academy to get my homeschool supplies for free. this year we had to get Calvert but next year, I get to select curriculum. Right now my 6yo says she is bored. I always wanted to just unschool, but she insisted that she wanted structured school. she does seem to do better with some structure in other areas, so we got the calvert curriculum. Now she wants to just do anything besides sit down and have school (or stand up and have it, or lie down and have it, i have tried diff approaches). I found Oak Meadow in a quick search of Waldorf type schools, because I had always liked the waldorf philosophies... I will keep listening as well as trying a search as a PP mentioned. thanks for bringing this up OP.

[chrissy]

BUT, and this might not be important to you, but Oak Meadow does NOT use main lesson blocks. That bugged me, but it might not bug you.

[dandelionmom]

Originally Posted by chrissy

BUT, and this might not be important to you, but Oak Meadow does NOT use main lesson blocks. That bugged me, but it might not bug you.

This is very true....I like to combine Oak Meadow with Live Education for this reason. Live Education really fills in the gaps.