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WWS, History Odyssey Ancients Level 2, and CHOLLA - Too much?


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I have Writing with Skill, History Odyssey Ancients Level 2, and CHOLLA Ancients for Logic Stage for my 5th grade DD. I like what each program has to offer. I like being able to tie in literature with history. What concerns me is all the writing, so I'm trying to decide what to exclude from one or more of the programs, and hope that others can share what you've done.

 

For WWS, I'm considering that as DD's main text for writing, outlining and summaries. That leaves me wondering how much outlining and summary writing I should have DD complete in the other two programs.

 

Rather than use TSOM, I've purchased the K12 Human Odyssey. I'm going to match up the Human Odyssey with SOTW in the CHOLLA lessons, and see where they would match up with History Odyssey. I'm not going to have DD do the History Pockets. I did purchase the History Odyssey timeline and stickers, as DD is interested in doing those, and she will also do the mapwork.

 

For CHOLLA I like that there are vocabulary words so I want to figure out how to incorporate those into our schedule. I don't think we'll do the dictation, and I'm thinking about having her do some of the book summary questions, but not write book summaries.

 

I'd love to hear how others have used these programs together. Thank you!

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I have Writing with Skill, History Odyssey Ancients Level 2, and CHOLLA Ancients for Logic Stage for my 5th grade DD. I like what each program has to offer. I like being able to tie in literature with history. What concerns me is all the writing, so I'm trying to decide what to exclude from one or more of the programs, and hope that others can share what you've done.

 

For WWS, I'm considering that as DD's main text for writing, outlining and summaries. That leaves me wondering how much outlining and summary writing I should have DD complete in the other two programs.

 

Rather than use TSOM, I've purchased the K12 Human Odyssey. I'm going to match up the Human Odyssey with SOTW in the CHOLLA lessons, and see where they would match up with History Odyssey. I'm not going to have DD do the History Pockets. I did purchase the History Odyssey timeline and stickers, as DD is interested in doing those, and she will also do the mapwork.

 

For CHOLLA I like that there are vocabulary words so I want to figure out how to incorporate those into our schedule. I don't think we'll do the dictation, and I'm thinking about having her do some of the book summary questions, but not write book summaries.

 

I'd love to hear how others have used these programs together. Thank you!

 

WWS is an excellent writing-skill foundation. If it were me, I would do that four days a week as scheduled. Then I would use the skills from it, as you see fit each week, in her content programs you have listed. But I wouldn't try to plan this out perfectly for a whole year, because you don't know what she might get bogged down in with WWS - it can get pretty intensive (but it's good!), and you might not want to have a WWS-intense day and then assign her another writing assignment that same day in her content studies.

 

As for book summary questions - WWS covers that. You could use her WWS skills to do book summaries.

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We are doing this minus History Odyssey, we are doing Human Odyssey. I thought History Odyssey would add too much work. The literature selections from Classical House of Learning, we will probably just use the vocab and discussion type stuff, analyzing the literary elements. We will spend one day a week on some sort of literature writing assignment. I also have the student pages for Human Odyssey, again to use mostly for discussion and other things, and I will do some sort of history writing one day a week. We may use some of the assessment questions and research paper type things spread out. We will do WWS three days a week, our school year is a bit longer than 36 weeks so I think we will work it out.

 

See my post about how much writing to do, I am still not completely sure how it will all work out.

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My young "6th grade" reluctant writer dd will be doing CW Homer A and Level 2 HO Ancients (with a smattering of CHOLL Logic Ancients mixed in). As I plan out CW Homer & tweak HO (& add in CHOLL), I realize how much writing I'm asking her to do. I'll likely have to cut down on some of the assignments on the fly depending on the week.

 

She'll be doing Elemental Science Biology for the Logic Stage. I *hope* it doesn't have a ton of writing in it or I'll have a mutiny on my hands.

 

I found that at least one of the books overlap between CHOLL & HO and some of the books can be substituted. For example, HO has "the Children's Homer" and CHOLL has "The Odyssey" & "Tales of Troy." You could substitute CHOLL's picks for HO's.

 

HO doesn't expect much in terms of questions or summaries for the books it schedules. I'm not done tweaking yet, but I'm planning to add four or five of CHOLL's books (Wild Orchid, Gilgamesh, Broken Tusk, Eagle of the Ninth, & Bronze Bow) to HO's plans. I might pull Caesar's Gallic War out. I'm not there yet, though.

 

Good luck with whatever your decide. Keep us posted!

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My rising 6th grader will be using HO Modern level 2. When I read through the lessons week by week, they expect the student to get through the literature selections fairly quickly. We are keeping up with IEW (Narnia theme book) for writing instruction and I want to schedule in two other literature books with guides during the year, but I certainly don't think I could fit in a whole literature program without taking up so much of her time, that there would be nothing left for self-selected reading. JMO

 

But, HO Ancients may be lighter than Modern, I haven't seen it.

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CHOLL has 16 books in their Grammar stage Ancients (scheduled over 35 weeks). HO Level 2 Ancients has only six books scheduled (one of which is the same as one of CHOLL's & one of which is a combo of two of CHOLL's selections). So, if you combined them, you'd have 20-21 books over 36 weeks.

 

That wouldn't be too hard for a strong reader. It would be easy to cut out some (more) of CHOLL's (or a couple of HO's) since there is some overlap.

 

HO's Level 2 Modern has 11 books scheduled & from what I saw in the sample, they have several assignments to go with them & (research) papers at the end of some. In Ancients, they really just have you read the books & there isn't really any assignment (even a book summary) with them other than listing some Greek gods or adding to a list (characteristics of Athens vs. Sparta) until you get to the final book (Caesar's Gallic War).

 

With my tweak, I'd end up with around 11 books over the 36 weeks - same as Modern. I think Modern looks *hard.* HO really starts off slow & ramps up through the four time periods with the work they expect in Level 2.

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