I've been reading Confessions as part of my daily devotional. I like it a lot. It's not a hard read.

I really think you can get by without the dvds. Prima is mainly vocabulary and memory work with a little exposure to grammar at the end. All of which is covered in greater depth in Latina Christiana. I love Prima; it's a real gentle introduction to Latin. Just focus on daily recitation of whatever you've learned. It will serve you well in future Latin studies.

You might want to check out the Lost Tools of Writing. Maybe Leah can chime in here.

Great minds, Jami. I was just coming to post the link.

I used God and Government by Gary Demar when I was in High School and loved it. It really shaped my thinking on the subject--even to this day. We also read Animal Farm in that Government course as well. I highly recommend the Demar series. It's one of the few courses from my high school experience that I remember fondly. You can learn more about it from the American Vision website.

Hmm. How about Walden by Thoreau? That's my first thought. It's pretty significant.

Ernest Gaines A Gathering of Old Men

I believe it is Modern Manuscript/D'Nealian.

Kim, It may comfort you to know that since he wrote that book, Wilson has softened his position on homeschooling quite a bit. In fact, his own daughter homeschools. I was a teacher at an ACCS school and once held the very same opinion. I didn't believe that homeschoolers could provide what we could provide in the classroom--ahh, the ignorance and the arrogance. I shudder! Now that I've been homeschooling for several years, it all seems very different to me. It's quite obvious to me now that as a homeschooler, I have many advantages over the classroom. It's not that I can do as well as the classroom in my home, I can do BETTER! Please don't be discouraged by Wilson. It's not true that the homeschool is inferior to the classroom. If you are a Christian, you may be interested in RC Sproul, JR's book When You Rise UP. This book takes the opposite position from Wilson (although the 2 are friends). Sproul argues that homeschool is the best and only option. It may provide some balance and encouragement for you.

What's her age?

I'm another one who strongly feels that LCC and CM are quite complementary. There are some small differences but I blend the two easily and have been very pleased. For example, LCC makes the study of Classical languages and classical history and literature the core of its curriculum. Charlotte Mason never comes out and says this, but at the time she was writing, this was a basic assumption about education; she didn't need to say it. And if we examine her curriculum recommendations, we see Latin and Plutarch (classical biography) and Mythology front and center in her elementary program. In fact, in her list of things every student should be able to do by age 12, she has listed, Read Julius Caesar in Latin. That means a pretty aggressive Latin course has been followed in elementary school. Again, there are some minor differences, but at heart both teach the same thing: read deeply, think about what you are reading, avoid predigested facts in the form of textbooks, learn foreign languages, study the Ancients for wisdom, spend time dwelling on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

Caryn, The VP history program is very flexible. I use the cards as you describe. We use Geurber, and others, and lots of living books, but use the cards to structure the course and for review work. You don't necessarily need the resource kits if you've got a good spine. Geurber is good and I also really like the Famous Men books as well. The TMs have worksheets, tests, and some projects and writing assignments. It's different from the SOTW activity book, which has comprehension questions/ narrations prompts, maps, coloring sheets, projects and a book list (which wasn't very impressive). I don't use any of these, preferring to put together my own course. If you've got the cards, a good spine, lots of living books, then you may want to include KQ maps, a couple of coloring books from the VP catalog, if your dc like to color, history pockets or some other hands-on activity. It really just depends on what your goals are. Check out the VP_elementary yahoo group too. Edit: okay, just saw your dc's ages. You do NOT need the VP tm. The SOTW activity book might be nice since it's geared toward the younger set. The coloring pages and maps are a bit easier. Lots of people combine SOTW and the VP cards. And for the ages of your dc, I would recommend the Famous Men books over Geurber too. You'll need to consider which history sequence you'll follow as well: 5-year or 4-year. If you decide to follow VP's history cycle, then you can take 2 years to go through SOTW1, OTAE on year and NTGR the next. I personally think that First Grade is too young for formal history and prefer to start the cycle gently in second grade and ramp it up in third.

I was just going to offer them myself. :D

I don't usually post on this board. I'm usually on the other curriculum boards. But I found this thread intriguing, so I'll jump right in. For my second child, close in age to my first but a different gender, my church threw me a Shower of Blessings. It was a party to celebrate my new pregnancy, but there were NO presents. I like the idea. We had a community celebration, ate good food, women gave advice and encouragement to me about adding baby number 2, all without the need to BUY MORE STUFF. I'm a minimalist too, Drew. I can understand your frustration. We can still celebrate and honor the births of children without resorting to BUYING. Blessings, Angelina in LA

Wendi, We use VP and just spent the last 8 weeks on the Civil War. Was there anything in particular you were wondering about?

Well... if you only want ONE title :D, then I'd recommend "Revelation." I taught this in my AP English class and also in my College Freshman Lit class. It is often found in anthologies and has some great themes. The thing to remember about O'Connor is that she sets up her stories all the same way: two characters, one who initially seems to be the bad one and one who seems to be good (at least in his own eyes), the she points out that the true person in need of redemption is the self-righteous one. She deliberately sets up the story to offer the character a moment of grace, which the character either chooses or rejects. If you keep this in mind, her stories will make sense. They are not necessarily easy to read; she's gritty. But they are so worth the effort. Enjoy!

Okay, one more suggestion. It would be completely remiss of me not to recommend some Flannery O'Connor short stories. (She is after all, the picture on my avatar :D) She is a master and her themes are stongly and deliberately Christian. I did some graduate work on O'Connor too. I love her.

I would be hesitant to dismiss Brave New World as well. Huxley brilliantly anticipated the way of our culture: a consumer-driven, entertainment/pleasure-oriented society that cares about nothing but the here and now. Sound familiar? If you preread it and find that it won't work in your situation, consider Fahrenheit 451. This is another favorites of mine and would also provide some great opportunities for discussing many of the same themes.

If you are looking to pair Lewis's space trilogy with anything, it needs to be 1984. Lewis loved that book and wrote the last book in his trilogy, That Hideous Strength, modeled after 1984. He was very influenced by it. They deal with some of the same themes but from a different perspective. They would fit nicely together.

Glad to be of help. I don't know of any curricula that teaches this sort of stuff. Several of the ladies here have encouraged me to write some study guides and I think I'd like to do that. I think it would be fun, and I've already done all the research. I've spent the last 2 days really thinking about how I would put it together. I'll post a separate thread about how I'm thinking of putting it together and I'll ask for everyone's input on what would be most helpful.

Sorry for throwing around terms like that. Let me explain. It's not complicated. A bildungsroman is a novel of development. So any book that starts with a child and follows him through adulthood is a bildungsroman. David Copperfield (the Dickens novel not the magician ;)) is an example of a bildungsroman. Jane Eyre is significant because it is a FEMALE bildungsroman, quite unusual for the period. A DOUBLE bildungsroman then follows the development of TWO people. In the case of Mill on the Floss, the book follows the development of a brother and sister. I heartily recommend Mill on the Floss. You won't find any of those pesky Gothic elements in there! It's one of my favorites. If you read it, keep in mind that ELiot is commenting on The Woman Question, but she is also making a pretty strong comment on how society's view of gender roles affects the male too. Oh and I don't know of any books about bildungsroman, other than a book of literary terms--which I don't think would be terribly helpful without someone to talk you through them.

Vicki, That's a very legitimate question and one that it is asked a lot about literary analysis. Did the author intend to put all that in there? The answer is yes, no, sometimes. How's that? lol. Literature has certain archetypes that always mean the same things in all literary works. The literary scholar Northrop Frye wrote about this in his work An Anatomy of Criticism. So some things are without a doubt intentionally placed in the work. Nothing in a work of literature is there by accident. The choices that an author makes are significant. So we can safely say that Bronte was intentionally casting Bertha Mason Rochester as a symbol of unrestrained passion: the color of her room is red. Red is always a symbol of passion (think of the Scarlet Letter! AHA!). She is also associated with fire; another big symbol of passion. The very description of Bertha is also filled with associations of passion and s*xuality: swollen dark lips, eyes opened wide, and Jane calls her a vampire. There's another archetype. Vampires are symbols of unrestrained passion and threatening s*xuality. When you study literature for a while, it all starts to fit together, and you recognize symbols and archetypes: there are tons. Sometimes, when people talk about symbolism, it is easy to imagine that you can make a work say anything you want to, and people do try to do this. And sometimes they go to far. You always have to go back to the text and see if it supports the claims. So, with regard to the bridal veil. Was Bronte thinking of the symbolism of the hymen when she wrote it? I don't know. But we can know that she intends to connect Jane and Bertha in our minds, when Bertha puts on Jane's veil, suggesting what Jane will become after her wedding. And we can know that when Bertha rips up the veil, Bronte introduces a violent image to connect to the wedding. We can know that Bronte intends to associate the Bridal veil--at the very least a symbol of virgin purity. That's why it's white--with dangerous passion and violence. These images combined with the things that Jane says all point to a certain type of anxiety about her upcoming marriage. And the book itself is filled with all sorts of symbolic imagery quite common in the literature of the period. So, I would be comfortable saying that Bronte intended it. Do authors sometimes include things subconsciously in their works? Sure they sometimes can put things in a work that is more than they intended and perhaps even reveals some of their own anxieties and issues. This is true of Jane Eyre as well. The book is quite autobiographical and reading through Bronte's letters, we can see the sorts of anxieties she herself struggled with. All of that helps us to understand the work better. But I do say, proceed with caution with this type of analysis. People do get carried away. In addition, really trying to grasp the historical, social, and cultural context of a work will bring these things to light. The Woman Question, as it was called was THE issue of the day, and an understanding of this debate really opens up the text. Does that help at all? Symbolism is really not so mysterious once you get the hang of recognizing archetypes: light, dark, windows, doors, cages, birds, fire, water, and on and on. There's meaning inherent in the symbols themselves.

See what you all have started!:D I can't stop thinking about Jane Eyre now. Let me discuss one more scene to make my point about the themes in the book. After Jane becomes engaged, a lot of anxiety and tension builds up as the wedding approaches. She actually says, "The month of courtship has wasted; its very last hours were being numbered. There was no putting off the day that advanced--the bridal day." This hardly sounds like an excited bride-to-be. On some level she is dreading the approaching day, or perhaps really dreading the approaching wedding night. During this time, Bertha Rochester starts up with her antics. Bertha as a symbol is fascinating. She represents unrestrained passion, which led to madness. Victorian doctors believed this: female s*xuality was dangerous. So, Jane's got all this anxiety building about the wedding and we've got the madwoman in the attic symbolizing this anxiety. What does Bertha do? Well, she sets Rochester's bed on fire. Hmm? Pretty strong symbol there, right? Then she rips up Jane's bridal veil. Well, the bridal veil is a symbol of the hymen. When the groom lifts the veil, it is a symbolic deflowering of the bride. (I got of all this from reading books about wedding traditions. very interesting stuff.) So for Bertha to rip up the veil makes the event violent. So, we've got Rochester's bed on fire and a ripped up veil to represent the anxiety that Jane is going through. She fears that she will become a Bertha if she doesn't keep her passions in check. The connection between Jane and Bertha is made throughout the book. The most obvious connection being that they are both locked into red rooms--red symbolizing passion. She starts to push Rochester away. She won't be alone with him. She refuses his attempts to lavish jewels on her, etc. So, all this tension builds up and then the revelation comes that Rochester is married. Her anxiety is realized: he would make her a fallen woman. It's in this context that she flees to St. John. She runs away from passion only to discover that needs it. She hates passionlessness and so she returns to Rochester. I really like this book. Can you tell? This is fun. Thanks for getting my brain going this morning.

Ooh, there's so much that I want to say. I've got a 50-page paper here I'd just love to talk about :D. But I'll just give a couple of thoughts on the ending. First, Rochester isn't just maimed. He's lost his eyes and his hand. What do the Scriptures say? If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Rochester has been punished/purified for his sins. He's a new man now. But when Jane returns to him, she doesn't know any of this. She returns because SHE has changed. She rejects St. John and the passionless life he offers. This is death to her. As an aside, Bronte does such a great job developing all this. What does the Rivers family represent and offer Jane symbolically. Well, his name is SAINT John and his sisters are Mary and Diana, the Christian and Pagan symbols of virginity! It's pretty clear what kind of Jane is being offered here. But she rejects it. This is a huge social comment. So she returns to Rochester, finds him in this new humble state and the roles are now reversed. Whereas previously he was the aggressor in the relationship, and played games with her to make her jealous, now she is in control. She teases him and playfully flirts, kissing and petting him. She arouses his jealousy by leading him to believe she's with St. John now. Now, obviously her new financial independence plays a huge role here. So is no longer dependent on Rochester for her livelihood. This definitely changes things for her. And she famously writes, Reader, I married him. Two things about that statement: 1. it's active,not passive. Just like the new Jane. 2.She places herself between the reader and Rochester. She will not accept who the reader (society) wants her to be, nor the fallen woman that Rochester tried to make her. There's that great line where she tells Rochester, I will not be your English Celine Varens! She won't be his mistress even if it's a technicality. I think Jane/Bronte carves out a third option for womanhood here; the pure and passionate wife, which I think is a very Christian idea. The marriage bed is holy, not defiling, Scripture says. The Victorians were really quite gnostic about female s*xuality. They thought men were base, s*xual creatures and women were spiritual creatures. Women were to "save" men through their higher spiritual influence. That's a simplification of a pretty complex issue. Interestingly, this is the argument that suffragists used to get women the right to vote in England: that the country needed the spiritual leadership of women. Now Victorian readers totally got that Bronte was challenging their view of womanhood. Reviewers declared the book to be "dangerous." Others like George Eliot, thought that she didn't go far enough in her criticism of society and so she wrote The Mill on the Floss, which is a double bildungsroman that deals with the same issues. I wrote my thesis on this book too ;). Love those Victorians! Hope this helps some. I haven't thought about Jane Eyre in years and now you've got me all excited about it again. Fun. Fun. Don't feel bad about not liking it. It's okay. I was turned off by some of the description and gothic elements too. To understand what's going on there, Bronte uses nature as a Mother figure for Jane. Often the moon leads Jane out of danger, etc. Nature is a big theme in Victorian literature, particularly gardens, but that's another topic.

Okay, I just woke up, and my head is groggy. I'll post a few thoughts and try to post again tomorrow when my thoughts are more in order. First, I'll say that it won't get any better (as far as you are concerned). There is no ending that will make it fall together for you. What it sounds like is that you might be expecting the novel to be something it's not. How much Victorian literature have you read? There is a serious question because I think to get the novel you have to understand what Bronte was saying in the larger context of the Victorian novel. So, my starting point in studying literature is always to find out what type of work I'm reading so that I know what to expect of it. This keeps me from bringing unfair expectations to my reading. And second, I find out as much as I can about the time period the work is written in. These works are contributing to a larger discussion of issues and themes of their time--issues that might not immediately click with us as modern readers. So, what type of book is Jane Eyre? Well, I would hesitate to call it a gothic novel as someone suggested, although it does have gothic elements as does Wuthering Heights. The gothic novel was already past its prime in 1803 when Jane Austen satirized it in Northanger Abbey. Jane Eyre was written in 1847, placing it at the beginning of the Victorian period. The book is sort of a combination of both the Romantic period and the Victorian period. You see the themes and techniques of both throughout the work. As far as themes and motifs, check out Sparknotes, they present a nice overview of some of the themes of the book. I wrote my thesis on both the structure of the book;--it's a female bildungsroman ( a novel of development)--and the theme of women's roles. The basic idea is that Victorian society had some very specific views about women. Almost every Victorian novel deals with the Fallen Woman in some way. I think you can only understand Jane's struggle if you understand what Victorian society thought about women. I'm tired, and what the Victorians thought of women is a rather involved and complex topic, so I'll leave it alone for now. But I'll say this: Jane wants to become a good woman, despite numerous and serious obstacles. As a friendless orphan and then later as a governess, she has no protection against the dangers presented to her. Many many governesses ended up Fallen Women, seduced by their employers and then cast off. This was the worst thing that could happen to a Victorian girl and it was common. There are echoes of this throughout the book: characters warning Jane not to fancy Rochester because men don't marry their governesses and because Rochester already has an illegitimate daughter. He's a real threat to her. But she longs for love and personal happiness and she allows herself to fall for Rochester and then he proposes. Seems like her dream is come true. But it turns out to be a nightmare. Rochester is already marry. Her worst fear is realized. Rochester will make her a fallen woman! And so she flees from him, and runs right into the arms of St. John Rivers. He's the opposite of Rochester, who is all brooding passion. St. John is all self-controlled duty. Now, I don't know how far you are and I don't want to spoil the ending. But Bronte sets up a conflict here for Jane. Does being moral and good mean being passionless? Does she have to be unhappy and unfeeling to be moral? What does it mean to be a good woman? Because what Victorian society taught was that passion in women was immoral and dangerous. A good girl doesn't feel those things! Not even toward her husband! The way Bronte resolves this conflict is quite interesting and socially revolutionary. That's where the true interest of the book lies for me. I spend a lot of time talking with my students about Victorian views of women, which are fascinating. Prominent doctors offered "scientific" evidence to support their assertions about women. Some of this stuff would really shock you. Good girls didn't feel passion. Queen Victoria herself famously advised her daughter on her wedding night to "close your eyes and think of England." So when Bronte offers St. John, boring as he is, he's the socially acceptable "good" alternative for Jane. This is supposed to be what she should want. Only she doesn't! Once you've finished reading it, I can say more.