Will Classic work for me in this case?

[woolybear]

I have year 2 redesigned, but I have never seen Classic. I am planning to start year 4 soon, but basically what I need is the scheduling of books and teacher's notes. Would the Classic plan work for me? I find the redesigned quite easy to navigate, so I'm concerned that I will find Classic more difficult. However, since I just want it for those things, I'm thinking it may be fine. I've found a reasonably price Classic and am looking to save a few bucks. I don't want to go that route if I will only end up wanting the redesigned anyway. Does anyone have any thoughts on any of this?

Thank you.
Kim

[Renaissance Mom]

Well, it all depends. I've used both. I greatly prefer the redesigned version not necessarily because of the ease of finding things, but because of three things.
1. Dialectic discussion guides -- if you have or will have a student at this level, use redesigned
2. They've pretty much assured that D and R students will be able to answer the accountability and thinking questions if they use the recommended primary resources. When I used classic, even with grammar students, I was never sure I could assign questions or projects and know that my kids could complete them with the resources we had. Although you can work with by being flexible, having your kids do outside research as necessary, etc., I decided I liked not having to think about adapting or supplementing.
3. They did balance the reading work load reasonably well with redesigned. The amount of reading assigned in a given week within a given level is doable for a strong student at that level. With classic, I had to make more decisions and winnow reading assignments each week.

I didn't mention the updatable book lists that are a nice feature of redesigned. This is important to many moms -- as there is no assurance that you can find the recommended resources listed in classic at the library or to buy. I didn't list this as one of my three reasons for preferring redesigned because I think if you are willing to handle points 2 and 3 above, finding alternate resources won't bother you. The years I used classic, I had no problems finding alterrnate resources at the library that covered the weekly topics in history. Sometimes it was hard to find something at the appropriate level, but we worked with that. For lit, I really tried to find the recommended books so I could use the lit worksheets. As my oldest approached dialectic level, I switched to redesign and have never, ever regretted it!

Monica

[woolybear]

monica--Thank you for taking the time to respond. It gives me some new things to ponder. I have been leaning in the redesigned direction at this point anyway.