My initial thoughts were all fairly positive. They do a really great job laying out how to do things the first week, and then it follows a consistent pattern after that. It is very easy to teach with for sure.
I really love the books they include, and love even more than I thought I would that they aren't all books written for their curriculum (although there are a couple that are). The first couple of readers Elli has read are not only having her work on reading and reading comprehension, but they are stories that are also teaching pieces of history, they use them to have the children practice their handwriting through copy work, and they even include a bit of geography by having you find the location of where the book takes place on a map.
I haven't found that it takes too much time to work through everything. This may or may not change as we get further into the curriculum, we will have to wait and see. I have tweaked how we do spelling, as I have one child that has yet to not know how to spell a single spelling word and one that struggles so hard she fights tears, but the awesome thing is it doesn't make it difficult to tweak.
My only complaint this far is with the pre-k curriculum. The girls have not enjoyed only reading one or two pages, have hated the one book that has long stories, and honestly seem mostly bored when we read little snid bits of this book and that. They love the activity books, and we are continuing to work through everything despite a lack of enthusiasm. My hope is they will enjoy it more as we continue. Again, we will have to wait and see!
