My dd will be finising K in the next couple months so I thought I would look at what is out there for 1st. OH!! did I start something, many light night and early morning on the computer. I have found 2 I really like, CLE and R & S. I like them so much I am thinking about switching my 10 yr old next yr.

I would love hear the good and the bad on both.

HELP!!!!! I need some sleep. HA HA
Moe

Well, they are both very good, so you cannot go wrong with either. =o)

It's going to boil down to a matter of preferece.

hardbacks vs worktexts
spiral vs mastery
integrated Lang Arts subjects vs. seperate components

Good luck choosing...and get some sleep. ;-)

I have only heard positive about both. The only thing that has ever been a negative is that the style of teaching/approach or materials just didn't "fit" that family. I have not heard anything negative about what the student learned from anyone. LUG has covered the basic differences for you, which is it in a nutshell.

You can't go wrong w/ either one. Now, you could always use a mix of both, too, for a couple of reasons. 1) To give you a chance to try both and see what would work for you and your dc. and 2) To keep things a bit more diverse for your dc (some texts, some workbooks).

HTH
K

We switched to CLE this year after using Switched On Schoolhouse with my oldest two for 3 years. We are also using some Rod and Staff. I love them both! I like the style of cle and the ease of use. My K is doing the Learning To Read and Math 100 from CLE and also Rod and Staff Bible Nurture Reading and Phonics Unit 1. He is doing wonderfully with both. The Math assumes no prior knowledge in 101 so it starts at the beginning with the number 1 (how to write it, value) and starts covering ordinal numbers, left and right, addition facts, story problems, and money. It moves at a pretty quick pace . My K already knows his numbers and such but I think the review is good and is building a solid foundation.
My 2nd is doing CLE Language Arts 100 and Math 104 and up. He just started the I Wonder Reader and easily read the first story (which he was not even close to doing in August, so yay for progress!) The Math he is doing is getting into time (like 1:05, 1:55, etc) He is doing money, lots of addition, story problems, has learned congruent, half, a dozen, counting by 2, 5, 10's. number lines.
The language arts is great! They revised it this year and we love the lay out of it.
The only thing I'm not crazy about with cle is the 1st grade reader. They really emphasize the schwa and it threw ME off guard, but we went ahead with it and my sons has had no problem with it. I do like R&S better though because it doens't emphasize it as much and it is combines Bible so we can do both subjects at once.
This would be my suggestion for a first grader:
CLE Math 100
Language Arts 100
R&S Bible Nurture Reader Series and Phonics (may could start with unit 2,3 as unit 1 is all the vowel and consonant sounds. unit 2,3 starts with the phonograms such as long a can be spelled a_e, ai, ay)
optional: (We won't start this till 3rd.)
CLE Science
CLE S. Studies.

just my two cents...hth.

I agree with what pp said. CLE is easy to use, and advances the child very quickly. The Learning to Read is supposed to used for the first half of first grade, then the I Wonder reader starts. Language Arts 100 correlates with Learning to Read and starts halfway thru the LTR program. If they can read fairly well you can skip the LTR or start in the middle, etc.