plan to begin 1st year w/TOG in fall. have 12yo ds, 10yo ds, 8yo dd, 5yo ds. this will be our 7th year homeschooling (SL in past). heavily considering IEW for writing & Phonics Zoo for spelling for 3 older kids. in your opinion is taking on ToG & IEW as brand new venues for us, too much or doable? I'm also curious if/how Writing Aids & IEW might compliment, or overlap one another. THANKS!

I have never used IEW, but many customers do use it as a compliment. I believe that IEW especially helps reluctant writers by giving them specific help with forming writing content according to rigid criteria. Such structure is helpful to many stumbling kids! I'd love to see others speak about the program who have used it. All I really wanted to say was that people do frequently use both IEW and Writing Aids: they complement each other.

I've done and am doing that very thing. This would probably be the easiest thing for you to do: get one of the SWI tapes. I would suggest B for the level that you have. It would work for your two oldest and then you can have the 8 year old tag along. You might have to find other paragraphs for her to work on depending on her reading ability. Anyway, just do the IEW at first instead of the writing assignments in TOG. At the beginning of the year, TOG tends to start of VERY slowly with just paragaphs and graphic organizers and such. After you have completed a unit, you can give an extra assignment based on the topic you are studying in TOG. You will probably finish it by Christmas and then pick up where TOG starts. Or.. there are also files in each of the yahoo TOG groups where people have used it and explain how. There are also some files in the IEW group but I didn't find them nearly as helpful. Also, IEW sells some writing assignments around time periods. There are some good ones in their shareware section that are really cheap. I used the ancient history one when I did year 1. I hope that helps.

Christine

Thank you both, Marcia & Christine TX. You've let me know IEW & ToG can work together & are both doable at the same time even for a twice-dipped newbie!
I appreciate your comments.
Best~

Sorry new to all but what does IEW stand for? Sorry but I am trying to comprehend down all these abbreviations.

Hugs,
Melissa

Institute for Excellence in Writing.