Thought I'd start a separate thread specifically about the stuff from Mott. Anybody used it? What do you think?

Yes,
I have both , the readers and Ray's arithmetic. Mott Media now sells the workbooks to accompany both programs. Nice, old fashioned back to basics.

Cindy

Love it! Love it! Love it!

The first reader is so good. I don't know why it isn't used more.

You can read the McGuffey readers online. (not a sample, the whole thing is online and available for downloading for free) After I saw it online, I got a few book versions. Christianbook.com sells them.

Check out the first reader.

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14640

I don't have time to get into detail what I like about them and how I use them. I've got to go cook! I'll come back later. I'd love to hear about Mott Media's math.

Ray's arithmetic is definitely back to basics. It is terrific in developing mental math. The word problems are terrific. It is not this fancy schmancy new math you see today. It is kind of funny actually reading the word problems as "6 cents for a bushel of beans" LOL........................

Cindy

There are 7 readers. (correct me if I am wrong) McGuffey's Eclectic Primer is the easiest. McGuffey's First Ecectic Reader introduces vocab. a little faster than the primer. Both go up to about a second grade reading level. They each have about 50 stories in them. New words are introduced in a list before the story. The stories are usually about children playing outside with toys and animals. My son and I enjoy the stories. There is one drawing for each story. The drawings are detailed and not cartoonish. The drawings are really nice. There are a few sentances and stories in cursive for the child to copy. My son isn't ready for that yet, so we skip that part.

The second reader is around third-fourth grade reading level. The sixth reader is high school level. McGuffey was a one-room schoolhouse teacher. The readers were not meant to be grade level readers. Whenever you master reading a story you may go to the next one.

This is how I use the readers. I read and sound out each word in the list. Then my son reads the list and the story. Then I may reread it or comment or ask a question. That is it. It is easy for me, simple cheap, my son likes it, and it works!

Green Eggs and Ham, and other such readers are so long and they are too difficult for a beginner. McGuffey stories are short and the difficulty slowly increases. I looked at the Pathway readers and I want those also. I think we would like Pathway readers. I looked at Bob Books and I didn't like the drawings at all. They look like *I drew them. The words are too easy for my son to memorize instead of read. Like if it has a picture of mat on a hat and I tell him it say "Mat on a hat." He can remember that and won't need to even look at the words.

If your child needs easy things to read, I recommend the primer and first McGuffey Readers. Once your child can read well (arguably) you don't need readers anymore. You might still like to use these readers because the stories and pictures are interesting.

Thanks! What a great review!