I would add 1984 and brave new world in 12th grade- 2 sides of the same coin. mature topics, but not ones they won't encounter in college- I would rather mine meet them at home! -sarahlange

i do a mixed-age geography drill 15m every day, and a 30-45 min 1x wk discussion period (the youngers do geog notebooks with state pages, etc and I pull up wiki or some other resource and discuss the politics, history, etc of a country, zone or geographical issue with the highschoolers) I count the cumulative effect as a geography credit in highschool and find the retention is much improved with discussion/application and daily brief review. FWIW -sarah

they want you to be local, when i last looked this was not a nationwide program.

anyone with firsthand knowledge about stanford? either application process, student experience or both :) thanx -sarah

have you looked at Kolbe? they have syllabi for ancient greek and ancient roman lit and history thru lit, plus booklets with quizzes. FWIW -sarah

i attended both at different times in my life :) some assorted comments: both are greek-heavy, both are drinking schools sewanee has a heavy emphasis on faculty availability and faculty friendships with students- dinner at houses, etc. vandy profs tend to be much more distant. no grad students teaching at sewanee, many at vandy. vandy is better-known outside of the south. sewanee is in the middle of nowhere- but only an hour and a half out of nashville and about 45m? out of chatanooga. chatanooga has a neat bohemian vibe- a touch of asheville- whereas nashville is nashville. sewanee has new stable complex- amazing! both have pretty southern girls :) FWIW -sarah

i used it in a university class when my eldest was little and thought it was outstanding. -sarah

I think you might really like _ the writer's workshop: imitating your way to better writing_ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933859334/ref=ox_ya_oh_product its a real gem FWIW -sarah

to be absolutely blunt: 1. the prof was stupefyingly boring. on video. 2. the first couple of lectures (all we got through before sending it back... I love the TC return policy!) conveyed the prof's disdain for all the conventional grammar I have been working so hard to instill! 3. the prof seemed to be trying to complicate simple concepts- deep and intricate theoretical interpretations of things that are relatively straightforward. nonsense on stilts. FWIW -sarah

you might enjoy _the art of biblical narrative_ can't remember author right now. excellent 'bible-as-literature' text -sarah

for OT I had them read through chronologically, and know a list of facts about each book: who wrote it, when, where, how many chapters, what is it generally about, etc. and then had them read through each book and do a broad outline to get the feel for the book: what happened at the beginning, middle and end. after that, we used 2 bible survey encyclopedia ( one new white zondervan, one old dark blue can't remember the name and the book is packed right now) to get ideas about what 'scholars' had said, refined our outlines, hit points we had missed, and talked it all out. The kids ended up having read each book several times thoroughly, with a list of facts that I can use in oral drills and sword drills and a good working knowledge of location, flow and gist of each of the Historical books, plus a nice outline of each. and a million fun rabbit trails. (we have not yet done all the prophets). NT is harder because the epistles are so packed, but we did a similar thing- know facts about the book and writer, read it a zillion times to get comfort with it, outline it, discuss specifics, discuss the gist. We found ourselves to disagree with some of the accepted interpretations of several of the epistles, philippians specifically- so often referred to as the book of "joy" we found to be much more about mixed groups getting along- loving your neighbor. 2Tim and passing the baton... what are the 3 things paul counted as accomplishments at the end of his life? etc we also thought the christian liberty workbooks were pretty good for the younger set- chronological, with timelines,etc- though we didn't use them as workbooks per-se. FWIW -sarah

gwen- great idea, found 'em for cheap! bev- wow with a capital WOW- I can't believe how much less that is. good stuff ladies, thanks so much! -sarah

I read of some folks using the ThinkWell lectures independent of the course subscription, but the site is not allowing me to purchase only the lectures... wants to charge me $300 for the entire course. :confused: could someone lend me their magic wand please? How did you get the lectures cds ONLY? I found the hotmath site for lower-level math vids, and chalkdust publisher for higher level math vids... but i want at some of the science vids ... pleeeze holp -sarah

Does anyone have a syllabus using Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics that they are willing to share? TIA :)