HWOT - What would you buy?

[**mom2one**]

I am just getting ready to order HWOT for my dd who will be 5 in Nov. I was all set to just go ahead and buy the Kindergarten Set - but I thought I would ask if anyone has used this before and if so - would you recommend buying the whole set or just a couple of things? I just don't want to spend $80 if I am not going to use most of it

thanks

[Lisa1970]

I skipped the wooden letters and I bought cheap playdough from Target or Walmart for the clay portion. The ONLY thing I would purchase from HWOT is the actual workbooks. You can even get little chalk boards and chalk for cheap from Walmart and Target. The teachers guide is not neccesary. There are some pages that tell the child to write down the letters the teacher says, just say letters. You don't need to pay for a guide to read off D, G, D, B, B, ..get the idea? We are using HWOT ourselves. I have used it for 2 of my children and 2 of my children used something else as they were natural with handwriting and were already writing by the time I started.

I hope this helps!

[pampered_mom]

Originally Posted by Lisa1970

The teachers guide is not neccesary. There are some pages that tell the child to write down the letters the teacher says, just say letters. You don't need to pay for a guide to read off D, G, D, B, B, ..get the idea? We are using HWOT ourselves.

I disagree here. There's quite a bit more to the teacher's guide than specific directions related to the workbook pages - suggestions for multisensory lessons both outside of the workbook and with the workbook, hints and tips for proper pencil grip for righties and lefties, remediation helps for children with grip issues, etc. IMO you're missing out on part of HWOT w/out it. HWOT is more than just the workbook.

I got both the teacher's guide and the workbook. Ds is 5 1/2, but I went with the Pre-K workbook because it didn't seem he was ready for the K workbook. Pre-K starts with just the capital letters which I think is right where he's at. I only bought the teacher's guide and workbook which I figure was somewhere around $15 total through Rainbow Resources which to me seemed cheap when compared to other curriculums.

The teacher's guide has the pattern for the capital letter pieces so I made my own out of thick craft foam - although I can see here as I watch my ds (and 2yo dd who needs to do "kool" too) having wood ones might be nice. We're contemplating making a set of our own out of wood. The mat I made out of a piece of craft foam and a smiley face sticker we already had.

The little chalkboards I already had on hand from thrifting (although as a pp mentioned you can probably get them locally). Golf pencils you can buy at the office supply store and Crayola crayons work just fine in place of the flip crayons. The chalk bits and sponge bits are easily re-creatable locally as is the roll-a-dough. I skipped the capital letter cards which I haven't really regretted at this point - we just open the teacher's guide up to the last page and use that as our reference when we sit and make letters with the pieces..and Mat Man. They *love* Mat Man.

I was able to borrow the CDs from someone, but I would have purchased them otherwise. My kids really love the songs on the CD - I liked the fact that they were decent quality songs. I'm not so keen on the fact that I can't seem to get "Where Do You Start Your Letters?" out of my head, but other than that I think they're well worth it.

[EllieJelly]

I have found the teachers handbook very helpful for teaching concepts of the letters and numbers that were trickier for my dd. I think it's well worth the extra $8. I didn't buy any of the other supplies they sell, but the chalkboard trick helped her a lot so I'd find a small chalkboard for sure!

[Ann-Marita]

I got the workbooks and teacher's manuals, and very much liked them.

I did not get the wooden shapes. I bought thick foam board and cut those same shapes out of it. (The teacher's manual had a pattern.) Worked great!