Teach the child, not the book (French comments)

So far I do like the Mission Monde curriculum we're using this year.  I particularly like it mixed with Usborne Beginners and the L'art de lire materials...that gives us some variety.

The only negative is that there is a lot expected in a short time.  That's partly because we are using Level 3, and students are expected to have picked up some grammar points in earlier levels that Crayons is just learning now.  But seriously, expecting even keen Grade 5 students to be able to handle all this on a written test by the end of the first unit (that is, next week) is a lot:

--present tense of the "to be" and "to have" verbs
--days of the week and months
--present tense of the "-er" verbs (a common regular verb form)
--three prepositions
--words for weather and seasons
--some information about Burundi
--two phonics sounds
--numbers 1 to 69
--two more irregular verbs, "to be able to" and "to want to"
--words for and, but, then, or
--any other vocabulary that has come up, including which gender the nouns are

Put it this way:  even Ponytails' grade 9 French class hasn't covered or reviewed all that yet this year.

We've covered about half of that material:  one phonics sound, the "to have" verb but not the "to be" verb, and so on.  Compared to the way we've slacked off on French in previous years, I think we're making great progress.  So if I want to test Crayons next week, I'm going to write my own test.  And it's going to be mostly oral.

We use the material; it doesn't use us.