Oh, then you might be headed down I-65 towards Nashville? If so, then Mammoth Caves in KY is a MUST-SEE!

Right! Agreed! Just pointing out what seems to be inconsistent. :001_smile: Except I 'm not sure about the "right to be upset." JT

I'm trying to improve also. So the first recommendation I have is really practical for homeschoolers and is one that I have done myself. I've found as I have DUG IN at the same time as my children, I have indeed made progress. This is kind of a "not muzzling the ox" thing. I DO grammar with them. I DO writing with them. (CW has really helped me here.) I mean that I don't just hand them a workbook, instead we read through lessons together. We memorize Latin together. We discuss logic lessons together. I try to do some of their homework as my homework. I try to keep up with their Great Books reading in our humanities course. You might also try a discussion group. The WTM boards is a kind. There are yahoo groups that have had great discussions. I have been most challenged by the couple that I have been a part of. I also consider the adult Sunday School class at my church to be this kind of encouragement. Read the Great Books on your own....just read, or follow WEM suggestions. I have just read portions of some of them, but slogging through has really helped my reading comprehension and has given me LOTS to think about. In all of these the common thing for me is _not backing away from the challenge_, but trying the best I can. The discussions challenge me to think through issues. The school work has given me tools. Just the story of an art major-turned-homeschooler.

[ My boys liked Poetry for Beg so much that they want to continue with Intermediate Poetry which is scheduled for next school year. My oldest will be doing Diogenes Chreia and my middle son will be doing Diogenes Maxim. At the Diogenes level, CW is more independent, so it's easier to incorporate both programs into our school year. The boys will do Intermediate Poetry together. HTH! We've enjoyed the poetry books the most here. One son has gotten almost all the way through Advanced Poetry. He chose this last poetry book as an elective even.

Hmmmm....... Isn't your response trying to convince people of what you think is the right way to treat families who would rather choose their own time and place to discuss heavy subjects? And further, to convince us that the way the owner of the studio made a public speech at a recital is wrong and that you are right? That there is a right way to do this and a wrong way? And do you extend the right to choose what is right for themselves to the owner of the studio? Does he have the right to think and choose to make a speech if he thinks it is the right thing to do?

This pontification is unavoidable these days. It has happened; we dealt with it. I can't control what others do. I can control my reactions, be gracious, and choose to do what my responsibility calls for.

Our family really likes it! I agree with Silver Moon that you use the student guides to plan out what to be done each day of the week. Yes! It reinforces grammar by integrating the study of grammar with real literature. I think it therefore, helps dc with their reading comprehension; it empasizes the use of grammar in understanding/decoding more difficult sentences or passages. This carries over to their writing in that their using models to imitate, helps develop dc's style, especially in sentence structure and word choices. Of course, the progym gives them style or arrangement models for paragraphs and essays. So there you go: reading comprehension, grammar reinforcement, style and arrangement as well as topics of invention; it works on the arts of language all with good models. It's certainly worth the money, time and effort. Betcha like it.

I see little problem with what happened. Our family has taught values at very young ages. Abortion and prolife issues are a values that should be talked about openly and this can be done in an age appropriate way. I think the speech created a great opportunity for discussing something so important. Everyone wants to influence others towards what they think is right.

Gombrich is middle school level. He tells art history, of course, in narratives. He's got all the bias of early 20th century though.

My dd could have gotten a full ride at the state universities because of her National Merit status. The private college she is attending did not give her a full ride. While my husband had a job, she was required to pay a couple of thousand or so per semester. She ended up not having to paynearly as much because our need is so great now that my husband is out of a job. OT: Anyone need a superb PHD chemist with both lab and industry experience?

How 'bout Lexington, KY? This is the beautiful Blue Grass Area of the state. There's the Horse Park with lots of activities; the Mary Todd Lincoln house and the Henry Clay Estate to tour; a nice Shaker Village with actors and events....lots of others here: http://www.visitlex.com/whattodo/topten.php There's even more stuff that is a little ways out of town like the birthplace of Abe Lincoln which is just an hour away.... Terri

>>>Our only question is whether or not there is a viable Christian campus group or church with which she could be involved. >>>> We live not too far from Danville and Lexington. My dd visited the campus last year. You've mentioned so many good things about Centre and they are confirmed by our visit and by people that I know who live in Danville and who have connections with the college. I know that they do have several vibrant Christian campus groups and a church right off campus that many students attend. There are some Chrisitian faculty too. The president of the college is a professing Christian that reportedly plays guitar for one of the campus ministry groups. I know too that the football coach is a strong Christian. That said, there were a couple of concerns we encountered as we investigated our dd attending there. If you would like details, pm me.

Here's a list of books arranged by historical period that are included in the Great Books of the Western World collection printed by the Encyclopedia Brittanica people. http://greatbooksdiscussions.org/highschool-readings.htm The Well Trained Mind chapters are arranged by categories of Great Books. For example she has history books in one chapter and poetry books in another. Each chapter is arranged chronologically. If you do a google search you could find more on the web, I'm sure. Most people in Classical Education today seem to focus on the western civilization books for a foundation for students in their own culture.

...he refers to God and then says he is not a believer. I guess he might mean that "God" is an unpersonal force? Anyone else catch that? Anyone have a clue why he used the term "God?" I still liked his insights about math.

1) Reading _lots_ of books and articles including "hard" books, some Great Books, classic books such as ones by Chesterton and Doyle. 2) Learning to precis books and articles. 3) Knowing how to read fast and how and when to read slowly. 4) Sentence diagramming

It's exciting to learn things about narratives that we never knew were there!! It's also hard sometimes because we're not used to thinking that way. In the end however, the more we understand the structure of narratives, the more enjoyment we have. Analyzing by dividing into groups (here scenes) is also a way to remember the narrative, a way of making an outline of it. So each scene is a major outline break with the specifics being the subdivision details of the outline expressed by way of Theon's components.

1) Have you seen the thread on this board entitled, "What is NOT a Classical Education?" It's inspiring for me to read this! I've heard most of this before, but because it's all right there is kind of like an energy drink or a vitamen B pill for Classical Education. 2) I've also been reading ISI's "the Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What it Means To Be an Educated Human Being." ( http://tinyurl.com/55yube ) The essays, which are exerpts of longer works by the authors of Great Books, inspire me to continue journey that I began 13 or so years ago. They remind me what I am doing and why. This is kind of like meat and potatoes with marvelous desserts. The book is on a good sale right now, btw.

:thumbup: Fabulous thread!

Starting this past school year, 2009-2010, jrs and srs are allowed 2 free classes per semester in KY. You need SAT scores to be admitted.

Well, by that time I knew I wanted to use the progym for writing and I knew that LA along with math had to be the core of our elementary grades. So, with that goal in mind, for an introduction to writing, we used the then-new IEW with key word outllines and rewrites with dressups. I thought the material was worth only about one year. Next, we did content writing with research reports for history and science. Then, as for the progym, we used the very first trial run of CW Aesop. In the years following, since the other levels of CW were not out yet, we switched and used Composition in the Classical Tradition, at the pace of writing in 2 or so of the levels per year. As for spelling, we tried Spelling Power one year which did not work for anyone but our natural speller. The WTM reccomends workbooks for spelling that worked great and were cheap! As for grammar, I knew I wanted to do an extremely throrough book since they were now getting into the older grammar stages and they still knew very little grammar! My goal was to take 2 years to get through Harvey's grammar, but I knew that I needed a gentler introduction. So before we began Harvey's, we used only ONE year of Shirley grammar which gave them all 8 parts of speech and 5 sentence types. We also used at the same time, Mary Daly's diagramming book. The very next year we started Harvey's Grammar, making a copybook of the concepts and exercises. Latin studies began somewhere in there, though now I forget how it all exactly coincided. I had to learn what worked there too! With my younger two children, we used the WTM spelling-reccomended workbooks, 1 year Shirley, Mary Daly, with Latina Christiana starting the same year as these, then on to Harvey's and CW and Henle Latin. It's still working great with them except that we've taken a Latin break this year!

:iagree: Yup....I agree with Greta Lea about the Vocabulary program and Latin being too much. It should suffice well to just do Latin and read some of the great books for history and literature. Both are terrific vocabulary builders. Do you plan to continue CW? I would prioritize all the time you need for it. The writing and thinking developed there are the essential skill subjects for a lifetime of learning. Do the history/lit/science, the content subjects, every other day, either TT or MWF.

I tried for 2 years to like this program. What attracted me to it at first was that is was integrated LA. That made so much sense to me, to learn LA as you would naturally encounter it. During the first year, I wanted it to work as a stand alone program for my two young (1st and 3rd grade) dc. What I found was that even though the lessons were fun and easy and seemed thorough, and the reading selections were interesting and age appropriate, the dc simply did not retain enough of anything we had done all year. They were not able to apply what they did in LLATL to any of their own writing. The next year, I tried beefing it up with two strategies: 1) a separate spelling program and 2) with a copybook to copy out the grammar portions and examples and practice sentences. We reviewed concepts using the copybook information at least once a week. By the end of the second year, they remembered no more and still did not use most of the stuff they had learned in their own writing. After that, I chunked it. I knew that I had to have separate grammar, spelling and writing emphasis for real learning to happen. These dc are now 19yo and 17yo and have become very good at reading, writing, and comprehending using that strategy.

We make writing one of the core subjects of our homeschool here. This program is meaty enough for that. It is an writing program that integrates all the areas of LA, although I would not say that it is a comprehensive LA program. A student needs extra instruction in spelling, grammar, handwriting,and later logic and perhaps rhetoric etc... But it brings them altogether to bear upon writing and editing and thinking. The progym are thinking/writing excercises, you see. The authors of CW tease out the applications of LA skills and blend those into the ancient progym. They have also chosen marvelous classical models for students to read, analyze and imitate. The models, at least after the first levels, are challenging in content, vocabulary, and sentence structure so that the students have to really work during the analysis phase. The students' own analysis however, makes the model understandable and thus approachable enough to imitate. The authors also offer ancient great thinkers' analysis tools so that students learn to think in the ways that these great thinkers thought. Some people say that the fact that it is teacher-intensive is a weakness. To me it's a strength, because I'm getting educated too. I'm thinking better, reading better, teaching better because of it.

Yup! We're into Diogenes Chreia and it's fabulous!! Love the diggin' deep stuff with Aristotle's Four Causes!! I've also had one son make it all the way through all three levels of CW poetry! He loves it!