By Eva Lois Johnson McCandless
www.centricurriculum.com
511 Chason Ave.
Ellensburg, WA 98926
800-900-1907
Centrifuge Language Arts Curriculum is a complete, comprehensive language arts program for grades K through 12. It was written by Mrs. McCandless over the course of several years as she wrote daily lessons for a private Christian school. It has been packaged and available for homeschool use for several years. It includes all essential aspects of phonics, reading, grammar, writing, spelling, vocabulary, dictation, penmanship, speech, and poetry. The entire curriculum (K-12) is over 6,000 PDF assignment pages available on CD-ROM, with day-by-day teacher lesson plans for each grade. Each grade includes 170 daily lessons, each containing one to eight assignments. Also included with each purchase is an English Handbook (PDF), specific to this curriculum, which covers all the basic rules and guidelines, as well as an extensive Teacher Helps and Suggestions (PDF) book. The curriculum can be purchased by individual grade ($70 to $140), a primary package (grades 1-3, $280), an advanced package (grades 4-12, $280), or the complete curriculum (K-12, $450) on one CD. It is a one-time, non-consumable purchase that can be used over and over.
I was given the complete curriculum to review. I first printed and read the Welcome letter (5 pages), the English Handbook, and the Teacher Helps and Suggestions. These documents give an overview of the curriculum, suggestions for how to teach it, as well as the knowledge necessary for teaching the lessons. (The instructions are written for classroom teaching methods, but I found the curriculum 100% adaptable for homeschool use.) Next, I printed the daily teacher lesson plans for the entire year for the grades I needed (3rd and 7th). Then, I read over the lesson plans for about two weeks at a time and highlighted the assignments appropriate for the skills of my child. Note: Centrifuge encourages you not to skip assignments or rearrange the lessons. That may be a helpful suggestion for a classroom environment, but with one-on-one homeschooling, I was very comfortable being selective with assignments. I chose only those I felt necessary to the strengths and weaknesses of each of my children, and rearranged the lessons to fit with our other studies. I then reviewed the worksheets onscreen and printed my chosen worksheets-about a two-week supply at a time.
There are three things that delight me most about this curriculum. First, it is adaptable to any curriculum or unit study. Centrifuge has no pre-written sentences or prescribed writing topics (but there are suggestions in the teacher's daily plans). Children write their own sentences for grammar exercises. This was amazingly effective. My children became expert sentence writers in less than ten days, and it was doubly helpful because I had them write their sentences about particular topics we were studying. All the writing assignments were structured around our current Bible, history, and science studies. For example, my son just finished reading the Left Behind for Kids series. For one grammar lesson, he wrote ten sentences about events that will occur during the Tribulation. He then identified parts of speech in his own sentences. He wrote lists of adjectives, common nouns, and proper nouns all related to the book of Revelation. He also wrote a short story using the Tribulation earthquake as the setting.
Secondly, the completeness of the curriculum gives me peace of mind. For years, I have been piecing our language arts together using components from several different companies. I was tired of that. I was looking to find a complete language arts curriculum. I most certainly did! Centrifuge effectively replaced all my separate workbooks. I never have to go shopping again in this area! Now that's peace of mind--and a great value!
Finally, the simplicity of the curriculum is refreshing and delightful. There are no full-color pages (looking like an inkjet printer exploded) with silly pictures, cartoons, and prewritten topics on meaningless subjects. I choose and approve all the subjects. The curriculum stresses a solid understanding of the basics, building from year to year, and "Accuracy, Precision, and Polish." My children began writing more neatly and taking pride in their finished work by the end of the first week. The improvement in their writing skills in just the first seven days of using Centrifuge was exciting! The finished work speaks for itself. The younger children add color to their pages by coloring the pretty black and white pictures that are included on some pages, or even drawing their own illustrations (again, adaptable to your other studies!). The finished paragraphs, stories, and essays were so beautifully done, we often would take a day to complete a beautiful painting or drawing to complement the work.
There are some things to consider before purchasing this curriculum. First of all, you must buy it "sight unseen." There are some sample pages available on the website, but for the most part, there is no way to get an overall glimpse of the incredible amount of material. I know a couple of ladies who were unable to consider this curriculum because they couldn't see a workbook or flip through all the pages to get an overview. In the future, these things may be available at conventions. In the meantime, I suggest you call the company and ask all your questions before purchasing.
Second, unlike other language workbooks that can be self-taught and done independently, Centrifuge requires teacher involvement. For the grammar lessons, it takes about five minutes per student to teach the lesson and show examples. Spelling should be dictated (about five to ten minutes per day). For the writing assignments, the teacher must choose topics and then correct the finished work. The Centrifuge handbook recommends spending two and a half hours per day to teach and do the daily assignments. While that may have been true for the classroom, it is definitely not true for the homeschool. I probably invested about 20 minutes per day per child to teach, guide, and correct assignments. The children spent anywhere from 20 minutes to one hour doing the work, depending on what I assigned.
This curriculum also requires some planning time and resources. You must have a computer and printer. You must print the lesson plans or spend time viewing them onscreen. You must choose the assignments for your children and then print them. You must decide how to file or organize the curriculum as well. I chose to have my children keep a 3-ring binder with tabs labeled Reading, Writing, Grammar, Spelling, Poetry, and Penmanship. For myself, I compiled a large (2") binder with several tabs. I have the daily lesson plans for each grade in the first two sections, the spelling words in the next, and the teacher handbooks at the end.
In summary, I highly recommend this product. Each day I used the curriculum, I became more delighted with its effectiveness. I found myself sending appreciative emails to Mrs. McCandless for her wonderful product. I feel that there is a great need among homeschooling families for a solid, all-inclusive, flexible language arts program that produces results. After looking at countless programs, I've found the one.
Product review by Camilla Anderson, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, LLC, April 2007
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