From the CiRCE Website: Coming in October, you’ll be able to join other LTW teachers in a series of free monthly webinars. One part of the program at a time, these free web-based events provide in-depth teaching tips, advice, and insight from the folks who helped create and write the program and who have been teaching it for years. The first webinar, scheduled for October 14, will cover Lesson One, especially Invention (The A.N.I.), and will be taught by CiRCE Certified Master Teacher, Renee Mathis. Future webinars will cover sorting, the 5 topics, exordium, noun and verb editing, and much, much more. Teachers: don’t miss this great opportunity to have your questions asked and your confidence renewed! Here is the Webinar Schedule __________________

From the CiRCE Website: Coming in October, you’ll be able to join other LTW teachers in a series of free monthly webinars. One part of the program at a time, these free web-based events provide in-depth teaching tips, advice, and insight from the folks who helped create and write the program and who have been teaching it for years. The first webinar, scheduled for October 14, will cover Lesson One, especially Invention (The A.N.I.), and will be taught by CiRCE Certified Master Teacher, Renee Mathis. Future webinars will cover sorting, the 5 topics, exordium, noun and verb editing, and much, much more. Teachers: don’t miss this great opportunity to have your questions asked and your confidence renewed! Here is the Webinar Schedule

I just updated the review both to clarify what I said about the phonics program and to include the book Classical Phonics, which is a wonderful phonics handbook and I can't believe I left it out of my review.

I just posted a review of Memoria Press's Kindergarten curriculum on my blog if anyone is interested. We had a great year!

The focus is definitely on Western Civilization. However, other events are covered even if they are not given their own card. Genghis Khan is covered on the card for Marco Polo. In MARR, the Eastern Byzantine culture is covered and the Middle East, and Asian, and North African, in addition to Europe and England. And if you feel like you want to cover world history alongside American history. That is really not difficult. For example, when I taught VP early American, when I got to the card on the Louisiana Purchase, I backed up and covered French history from the French Revolution to Napoleon so that the LA Purchase would make sense.

librivox.

Great. This is exactly what I have planned for first grade next year. George's AMerican history plus Omni III for my older and Eggleston plus AO read-alouds for first grade. Great minds? :)

I have both Guerber and Child's Story. The Child's Story of America would probably be better for the third grader. I think mine were in 5th and 3rd when I did American history,and my older child did well with Geurber but if my oldest had been in third I probably would have gone with Child's Story. Like Jami said, you will come back to it. Guerber would work well in 7th grade.

Yes, Bruce Etter has a good talk on using Omnibus in the homeschool, and Ty Fischer is very good at explaining how Omnibus is put together and what their goals are. That's where I found out the questions in Omnibus are based on Norms and Nobility.

I only have a minute to answer this. I'll try to come back later. It's really reading ability and maturity for the topics. What I did was for Omnibus I in 7th stick to the SEcondary Readings, all the Bible readings and a couple of primary readings, like The Odyssey. We could have done more, but we had a full, good year and my son got used to the format of the program. Omnibus II is an improvement of Omni I--VP says this themselves. It is paced better and there's more time for writing, etc. This year--Omni II--I've taught a 6th-10th grade class and because I was unsure where everyone was in their abilities, I again chose primarily the secondary works and then some of the primary selections. WE have had a great year. The kids had no problem with the reading and we have had great discussions. Next year, for Omni III, I am ramping up the workload quite a bit. They are ready. One thing to remember is that the student will struggle at first with open-ended discussion. Be prepared for silence! But they get better at discussing. They have to develop the skill. My son is much MUCH better this year, than last year. There are some audios. Is it audiomp3.com? Jami? You can download talks about how to teach Omnibus. Some of them are very very helpful. I think there may be a list on the yahoo group. I don't remember. hope this helps.

Omnibus is unusual as a Great Books program in that it is rooted in the Word. So, not only are actually studying books of the Bible in the Great Books program, but you are also studying works of theology and church history. But the real kicker is that the questions for EVERY book take you back to the Word and ask What does the Bible say about this? And the student looks up relevant Bible verses and examines pagan ideas in the light of Scripture. We spend a lot of time talking about Scripture and the Word in my Omnibus class. It's been a really fruitful time and I can see some real spiritual growth in my students. Let me offer one warning however for anyone looking at Omnibus: Don't feel like you have to cover every book. You really don't. Ty Fischer has a great introduction to Omnibus II where he talks about not trying to do everything. It's much better to cover a few works well than to rush through a reading list at a dizzying speed. What number to cover will be different for each family. Start slow. You'll find that once you get your groove, it gets easier. But don't feel guilty for leaving books out. It's better not to burn out. And like Jami said, Great Books are a lifelong pursuit.

Well, for me, I use Omnibus in 7th and 8th and still teach a separate history class. Let's just say I'm not a total believer in the strict Great Books approach. The basic structure for history didn't change. I just changed the difficulty of the books. So, I still have a spine (in 7th and 8th I use STreams of Civilization) and then biographies and some historical fiction and then we cover select Omnibus titles as well. The biggest difference is not so much in the approach as in the ideas that we explore. They are able to think better and make better abstract connections. We even did a debate on the Crusades, which was difficult but quite fun.

Yay! It really does fit well and I love Geurber's writing. My kids really enjoyed that year as well. Now if I can just make the time to write the modern American history volume that I have already researched... :D it will be the perfect sequel to Geurber--at least in my mind.

Let me give this a shot. Here are my off the cuff thoughts. So don't hang me if I don't have a fully developed thesis here :) I hear what you are saying. And for the Christian, entering the Great Conversation does not and should not imply some sort of level playing field, where all ideas are equal and we'll see which ones are good. Not at all. RAther, it's more like we are in the Great Conversation whether we realize it or not. We are either self-conscious and deliberate participants or we're being affected and influenced and we don't know it. See, we can't understand the world we live in right now if we don't understand the ideas that brought us here. There is truly nothing new under the sun, there is no great debate raging right now, that hasn't been raged before. So, if I understand that the "newest" debate going on is just the latest installment of an ancient discussion, it's much easier to recognize what the real issues are and then address them--from my CHristian perspective of course. do you see where I am going here? Like I said, I'm not fully developing these thoughts, just throwing them out there.

That's so true, Jami. And that's what I've done this year. One card/topic a week: one read aloud to the group and one discussion, then separate reading assignments based on age and ability.