Ruth Nicholas
- Reviewed on Sunday, May 23, 2010
- Grades Used: Kindergarten - 12th
- Dates used: 1985-1991; 2004-2006
My personal experiance. I was FAILING in a public school! Upon switching to ACE I did well and caught up to grade level. I felt a great sense of accomplishment & thrill watching my star charts in the 'first' ACE school I was in. Due to a military move we continued my education in a 'different' ACE school. This one the staff was not as quick to help when I came to areas I didn't understand. They did not push or encourage me to finish on time and as a result I loss all the ground I had gained in the first school & became very discouraged. I didn't understand the high school english. My parents couldn't help & the staff was 'too busy'. Geometry was much the same way. Due to a second Military move I finished school out in a different type of school and 'somehow' graduated on time.
My husband only attended ACE his Sr. yr of high school. His memory is the school was a joke. He hardly studied & pulled extremely high grades. I hear he drove the teachers crazy. He is totally against the curriculum.
I did 'try' ACE Kindergarten with our oldest who was struggling severely in a public school. She loved it as have my younger children. However, we have 'yet' to finish it. The curriculum is very time comsuming. Great if you have 1 child.
I also tried when we first pulled her completely out of public school placing her in 1st grade & then 2nd grade. She did great in first! She HATED second grade & was worse in 3rd. I finally switched all her subjects & she began to do better.
I've found she still struggles & probably always will. But 4 pages a day in every subject was too overwelming for her.
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momlove7
- Reviewed on Wednesday, May 05, 2010
- Grades Used: 1st-2nd, 5th-8th, portion of 9th
- Dates used: 2003-7, 2010
Just as with any curriculum, you have to pick according to the learning styles of your children. There are pros and cons to most curriculum on the market but to reap the full benefits of ACE, one must properly educated himself/herself on how to implement it in a homeschool setting. ACE Ministries does provide information and useful tools regarding how to use ACE which I believe are highly important such as the Homeschool Parent kit.
My children used ACE in private school before coming home to homeschool. After learning about some negative ACE reviews, I quickly abandoned ACE. This caused gaps in my oldest child's education in the long run and I wished that I had stayed with ACE. My younger children are now using ACE once more and we couldn't be happier. There are some "fill in the blank" type questions in addition to matching at the end of sections along with some questions to stir up thinking but I do not allow my children to look back for the answers which is what is taught in the parenting kit. I don't let my children score their work also. That's my job ACE encourages independence requiring a child to set goals, meet those goals and be more involved with the learning process altogether. However, the parent supervises this. You just can't hand a child ANY curriculum and expect it to work or teach itself.
ACE English is awesome in addition the the Word Building (spelling). Most of the subjects start slowly, especially the Math, in comparison to most other curriculum, but they balance out by the middle school years. We love the updated Math. ACE has been in the process of revising subjects. ACE is a gentle mastery program which really lays a great foundation in the early years. Most people comprehend that as "weak" and prefer more rigorous content during those years. I prefer my children to actually understand concepts and master such before moving onto new concepts. You can build a great education on a firm foundation. Please note, if your child is advanced, he may be bored with ACE. I have an advanced child also. He uses CLE (Christian Light Education) while his brothers, more average learners, use ACE. Again, you have to use what works according to the learning styles of your children and your goals.
Also, the characters or "religious" content do not bother us. We are unashamedly Christians. After viewing so much negative content via the media and the world in general, I think it's nice and refreshing to have a curriculum with positive images for children to view. However, my children don't get so caught up in the characters that it directs them from the content but they do like them. We are very pleased with ACE. I Homeschool all four of my five children using ACE. My oldest is a college student. ACE is very double teaching multiple children and affordable. I purchase three paces per subject at a time. ACE meets our needs in many ways.
You can also check out
http://www.homegrownmommy.com/
She has some wonderful articles about using ACE.
NOTE: PLEASE READ REVIEWS CAREFULLY. THERE ARE MANY POSITIVE ACE REVIEWS HERE BUT I'VE ALSO NOTED JUST A FEW REVIEWS WHICH ARE NEGATIVE COMMENTS CONCERNING ACE. HOWEVER, THEY ARE MAINLY DUE A BAD EXPERIENCE FROM AN "ACE" SCHOOL ATTENDED AS A CHILD OR JUST DUE TO THE LEARNING STYLE OF THE CHILD. Just as every child is different, every school is different also. There are several ACE schools in my area, my children had attended one also, and unfortunately, there are some schools that do not properly teach ACE and some that do.
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MamaMcCorn
- Reviewed on Wednesday, May 05, 2010
- Grades Used: 4th, 5th, 9th
- Dates used: 2009-2010
Next year will be my 3rd year homeschooling. We tried the ACE program this year in all subjects for each of the posted grade levels (4th, 5th, and 9th), except for 9th grade Algebra (used Teaching Textbooks for that).
For 2010-2011, we will be using ACE again, BUT with some modifications.
I will only be using English, Social Studies, Science and Word Building for my 5th and 6th grader, and only Physical Science and English for my 10th grader.
Likes:
Our year ran MUCH smoother than our first year! I work weekends and was usually up till the wee hours of the morning making lesson plans Sunday nights the first year. This year the kids planned all their work themselves!!! They liked this and I loved it!!! It REALLY helped them become organized and gave them a sense of control of their goals. I simply checked their goal charts (I highly recommend getting their record keeping set) and made any modifications if I had too. Over time, they got very good at knowing what they needed or wanted to do and their plans were made in very little time. They loved being able to do 2 days at once and "take the next day off"!
The "bite-size" format was also GREAT for them. It gave them a sense of accomplishment. And they loved taking the PACE tests (I would slip a dollar in the test when I handed it back if they scored above a 90% - and I only made them do the verses on the test if they wanted extra credit.)
Dislikes:
Even though I'd read the reviews about it being "overly-religious" and out-dated and definitely NOT politically correct... I had decided we could look past that. However, it was even MORE over-the-top than we'd expected.
The boys are only shown playing in shirts and ties, and the girls are always in dresses. A spiritual lesson is made out of literally EVERYTHING and is presented VERY unrealistically. We are devout Christians... but I disliked how it presented Christianity in such a cheesy way.
In this curriculum girls call in life seems to be a housewife and preferably one married to a pastor, missionary, or deacon in the church. Other careers are never mentioned for girls or the women in the stories.
My kids just laughed about a lot of this stuff as we discussed much of this side of the material. Characters names were things like Mrs. Lovejoy or Mr. Alltruth. The one they really laughed at, but was completely NOT politically correct, was one character child named Pudge. He's the overweight boy who is always portrayed as slow and hungry and an overeater. Um... hello???? In today's world.... come on!!!!
The artwork is VERY cheesy and outdated - someone really needs to step up and help this company! I keep telling my artistic daughter that maybe that will be her job someday... to help re-illustrate the PACE curriculum!
I hated the Literature for my younger grades. Very old and difficult. We gave it up after the first 3 months and did our own thing.
I also hated the math for the younger grades. Way too much and way too difficult. We're switching them to Teaching Textbooks next year and both of them tested a full grade level higher with that curriculum as they'd been SO challenged with ACE. My kids both hated math this year and would be in tears dreading it. I didn't care for that at all. We didn't even come close to finishing the full year of Math paces.
I feel like the amount of material they expect you to cover in a year, stifles creativity. Many times I would want to do something fun and enhancing to what they were learning, but my kids would then feel like they couldn't complete what they had to do to meet their weekly, quarterly, or semester goals. Next year I plan to reduce the number of paces I expect them to complete for the quarter, semester, and year in each subject.
Grading (pro and con) - This curriculum has them grade their own work (except for final tests on each pace). My younger 2 did great with this. I noticed this really helped them as they paid more attention to the concepts they were missing rather than just the grade.
However, no matter how you try to monitor it.... cheating is still a temptation... and my older son found a way. We had to go to me grading all of his work - which is working fine for us now... but he's had to spend a lot of time making up for his poor choices. The grading-on-your-own thing has to be considered carefully depending on each individual child.
Overall, we have decided that we WILL continue on with this curriculum in some subjects. We just choose to overlook some of the annoying flaws. We laugh and go on. We do love the way it keeps us organized and the kids enjoy the sense of control over their schedule and plans.
My oldest son did their Biology this year and we got the DVD labs. I purchased a dissecting kit and specimens through Home Science Tools and we could then follow along with the videos while he dissected too. It worked great.
He did prefer the lay-out of BJU's Social Studies better... so we'll be going back with that for his 10th grade World History.
I did find that the public school in our area really falls short in the English department after 5th grade. Even my "gifted" senior daughter (graduating from public school this year) did not do well at the 7th grade level of ACE's English in their online placement tests. I had to put my 9th grade son in 6th grade English. This worked fine for him, but was still challenging to him. My younger 2 did were fine on the grade level they were suppose to be on in English. I do recommend their online placement tests - it is very helpful!
AGAIN, even with my dislikes, I still have LIKED this curriculum! We WILL be using it again! As others have said, NO CURRICULUM is flawless... you just have to figure out what you can overlook and live with.
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LisaM
- Reviewed on Thursday, March 25, 2010
- Grades Used: 9th
- Dates used: 2009-now
I always heard negative about ACE so I never tried it. We always followed the most rigorous curriculum we could put together basically. One of my children was in public school, and in the gifted program. He was in a top high school who even received an award this past year for being the top in the state in its catagory. My other child had followed a WTM style program. The gifted program that my son was in required the student to be above the 96th percentile in all areas tested to get in.
Then, I pulled my oldest out of public school and placed both children in a local private school homeschool program. I had already paid when I found out the school did ACE. I was not happy. They were so nice and kind though. I did not want to walk away from the money I paid so I figured I would leave the children there for one term and then withdraw them.
However, pretty soon, I found that ACE actually was a rather good program. In fact, my child who had been in the gifted program had a hard time at first because, as he said, it really expected him to work and learn a lot. My homeschooled child loves ACE and now is talking about majoring in biology in college because she loved ACE biology so much.
Anyway, I just wanted to share our recent experiences with this curriculum. I think for the subjects and grade level we used it for, it is quite good.
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