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Rising 6th Grader... Literature Aspect?


shburks
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Finishing up our first year homeschooling and feeling good about some things and questioning others!

 

Looking forward to next year, here's what I'm looking at:

 

World History (Notgrass)

continue Algebra I (Jacobs)

continue World Geography (Geo Matters)

Easy Grammar

First Form Latin

 

We are ending spelling, and I'm still working out the science part.  This year I've done both Apologia and Elemental Science and neither are winners in my house!  We're looking for something else.

 

My question is more toward Writing and Literature.  I have a huge list of writing curriculum that I'm trying to figure out.  Notgrass history has a literature aspect that goes along with it--we used it this year for America the Beautiful--but is it enough?

 

We tried Total Language Plus and Veritas Press literature "analysis" workbooks and neither of those was a winner.

 

DS is a huge reader.  Reads anything all the time--non-fiction, novels, etc.

 

Do I need to add a separate literature aspect?  And if so, where do I start?

 

Thanks!

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My 6th grader is also a voracious reader, and he loves history, classics and philosophy as well.  He needs a reading-centered curriculum that ties all of those together.  We use his history textbooks as a spine (for the past two years he's read one volume of Susan Wise Bauer's adult history series per semester) and then for the most part choose literature that was either written during that time period or is set in that time period.  I also assign some classics that he just should be reading - for example, this semester he's reading David Copperfield, even though it's outside of the Renaissance time period, because it's time he was introduced to Dickens.  He reads one novel a week, and usually is working on another, more challenging fiction text at the same time - for example, last year he read the Odyssey, Illiad, and Aeneid, last semester he closed he read Beowulf, La Morte d'Arthur and Don Quixote, and this semester he read The Inferno, Arabian Nights, Utopia and the Dickens - and we usually take more time with those.  We've found the Shmoop.com website great as a supplement. (Shmoop has sophisticated but age-appropriate overviews of the themes, historical context, "why does this matter," etc in classic books, written by grad students. It's a nice support to a reading-heavy curriculum.)

 

We always have a philosophy spine for him to be working on.  This semester he's also read the first volume of The History of Britain, which has a great BBC series to back it up.  He also enjoys narrative history - this semester, he's devoured three books about the Renaissance by Ross King, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, and 1215: the Year of Magna Carta.  

 

This all works out to about 500 pages of reading a week, but it's where his heart is, and I find that he needs a great deal of volume in his areas of strength to keep him centered. Otherwise he gets what we call the "border collie syndrome" we saw when he was in public school (you know how a perfectly normal border collie, when deprived of work and kept inside, will be crazy/anxious, tear up the house and chew its paws?  But when you give it a flock of sheep (or geese, or an agility course) and a lot of work, it's a happy, well-adjusted dog?  Like that.)

 

I admit to mooching off various curriculum lists to get ideas for his bibliography, since he just needs so much quantity.  The Ambleside Online site is great for books lists. Sonlight is a literature-based program that is organized by time period, and I've gotten ideas from there as well.  When in doubt, I choose Newberry books that get great reviews on Amazon.  

 

For writing, we've had a good experience with Writing With Ease and Writing with Skill, by Susan Wise Bauer.  In addition to being a good program with just enough work every day, it's also super organized and very easy for him to work through on his own.  

 

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My 6th grader is also a voracious reader, and he loves history, classics and philosophy as well.  He needs a reading-centered curriculum that ties all of those together.  We use his history textbooks as a spine (for the past two years he's read one volume of Susan Wise Bauer's adult history series per semester) and then for the most part choose literature that was either written during that time period or is set in that time period.  I also assign some classics that he just should be reading - for example, this semester he's reading David Copperfield, even though it's outside of the Renaissance time period, because it's time he was introduced to Dickens.  He reads one novel a week, and usually is working on another, more challenging fiction text at the same time - for example, last year he read the Odyssey, Illiad, and Aeneid, last semester he closed he read Beowulf, La Morte d'Arthur and Don Quixote, and this semester he read The Inferno, Arabian Nights, Utopia and the Dickens - and we usually take more time with those.  We've found the Shmoop.com website great as a supplement. (Shmoop has sophisticated but age-appropriate overviews of the themes, historical context, "why does this matter," etc in classic books, written by grad students. It's a nice support to a reading-heavy curriculum.)

 

We always have a philosophy spine for him to be working on.  This semester he's also read the first volume of The History of Britain, which has a great BBC series to back it up.  He also enjoys narrative history - this semester, he's devoured three books about the Renaissance by Ross King, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, and 1215: the Year of Magna Carta.  

 

This all works out to about 500 pages of reading a week, but it's where his heart is, and I find that he needs a great deal of volume in his areas of strength to keep him centered. Otherwise he gets what we call the "border collie syndrome" we saw when he was in public school (you know how a perfectly normal border collie, when deprived of work and kept inside, will be crazy/anxious, tear up the house and chew its paws?  But when you give it a flock of sheep (or geese, or an agility course) and a lot of work, it's a happy, well-adjusted dog?  Like that.)

 

I admit to mooching off various curriculum lists to get ideas for his bibliography, since he just needs so much quantity.  The Ambleside Online site is great for books lists. Sonlight is a literature-based program that is organized by time period, and I've gotten ideas from there as well.  When in doubt, I choose Newberry books that get great reviews on Amazon.  

 

For writing, we've had a good experience with Writing With Ease and Writing with Skill, by Susan Wise Bauer.  In addition to being a good program with just enough work every day, it's also super organized and very easy for him to work through on his own.  

Thank you so much!  Such great information in here.  My ds will eat up non-fiction and historical books as well, so perhaps I should delve more into that type of thing. 

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I used the Omnibus reading lists for the last two years. Many of the purely religious content Ds did not read. However, commentary based and philosophy based content he greatly enjoyed as long as it was filled out with other religious texts covering various traditions not just Christan ones. He greatly enjoyed reading the religious texts from multiple different faiths and I was not expecting that one at all. He also got very geeked out about Shakespeare.

 

We are going with Roman Roads Media curriculum next year. It is a full literature credit and a full Social Studies (history, philosophy, doctrine, whichever you want to spin it as). By combining the literature with history, my son is exposed to books he would not normally read. Our library book club gets him reading more kid literature he would normally skip, but he finds it fun to hang out with other kids who like to read. Then he gets to pick classics and fiction which he uses as personal reading. These three together round out literature for us.

 

Some examples of fiction/classics:

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Fahrenheit 451, Anthem, Red Badge of Courage, Hamlet, Lord of the Rings, Animal Farm, Giver Series

 

Some examples of kid lit from book club: Homework Machine, Candyshop War, Number the Stars, Esperanza Rising, Bridge to Terabithia, Land of Stories, Sisters Grimm

 

Examples from Roman Roads: Herodotus, Iliad, Odyssey, Orestria, Thuclydities, Plato, Aristophanies

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