Here's how I break it down for my five-soon-to-be-six children: Grade 1 & under - don't have to listen to history readings Grades 2-6 - listen together to history read-aloud (Famous Men, etc.) Grades 7+ - do independent reading & assignments; may also listen to my read-aloud if they choose. For our read-aloud literature, however, everyone listens.

The Shadow Series, by Piet Prins. Titles include: The Lonely Sentinel Hideout in the Swamp The Grim Reaper The Partisans, and Sabotage. Also, It Began with a Parachute Snow Treasure Hey Mac! - this is a first-hand account by a combat infantryman

Well, there's the classical approach, via the Trivium, and then there are classical subjects. Latin, Greek, formal logic, rhetoric, ancient Greek & Roman history -- those are classical subjects, and they do usually accompany a classical approach. But, some people can still implement the broad approach of the Trivium w/o teaching all of the classical subjects. A good book on this is Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn's book, Teaching the Trivium. All that being said, I can't imagine doing it without Latin, so I guess that's my "litmus test," if you will. Not very thorough of an answer, but maybe I'll post more. Gotta run and make our Friday pizza. It's movie night, too. :lurk5: (I've been wanting to use that smilie!)

That link looks like the one I used years ago. I used the "Tunic" pattern to make a robe. It turned out fine.

Hi, Beth!

Yes, that's true. My friend was originally told not to do both by VP staff when she was new to the program, and thought they were stating it as a general principle at the time, but then realized it must have been what you said above. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Well, Harvey's & Rod and Staff are the two most recommended companion programs for CW users, so maybe you should take a second look at Harvey's. CW sells a workbook for this, and schedules the grammar component for you in the Instructor Guides. (I use Rod & Staff personally, though). Oh yes, have you checked EPS? They have a wealth of grammar & writing products. Here's the link: Educators Publishing Service If you got a text/workbook that is mastery-based, or has a chapter per part-of-speech, you could just cover the various topics as CW schedules them in the IG. Does that make sense? HTH,

Very helpful, Jann. I tried to give you a rep point, but I must have done so already because I was told I need to "spread it around" first. :)

A friend of mine's dd is doing Omnibus 2 online this year. They love it! It was originally recommended to them by Veritas not to sign up for both the primary and secondary books online, so they're doing the secondary books on their own. My ds is signed up for Omnibus 3 next year, and we also will do the secondary books ourselves for two reasons: 1)cost, and 2)because this is a trial year for us. That would be my recommendation for you as well. However, I can give you two reasons to consider signing up for both, if you want to look at this from all sides: :D 1) The secondary readings for Omnibus 1 are more fun, and easier to read than the primary ones (Narnia, etc.) so it should be a fun class. 2) My friend told me that Scholars Online was not as hard on her daughter as she personally was! She was afraid that the online class would be more rigorous, but it turned out that it was easier than they expected. So, I guess it depends on how much money you have to spend. :)

For children's versions, I really like Black Ships Before Troy, by Rosemary Sutcliff, The Tale of Troy, The Wanderings of Odysseus, also by Sutcliff, and In Search of a Homeland, by Penelope Lively. (The last one is actually the story of the Aeneid.)

Yes, that's right. Thanks.

I don't forget it -- I just don't think to "count" it for school. We read, memorize, and study it, as well as hear (and take notes on) wonderful expository preaching, currently from the book of Ephesians.

Silly me. Angelina already told you what I just said.

Karen Ciavo has done this. If she doesn't respond, I'll look up the post I saved from her last year and try to help you out. I use Omnibus, but not TOG, so can't personally help you.

You will definitely need the text/CD combo. The CD contains the entire text of the book, plus answers to all questions in a colored font. It also has schedules and additional resources. Omnibus has quite a bit of history, but it is studied via primary source material, which some categorize as literature (e.g. Herodotus, history books of the Bible, etc.) It does include optional reading assignments from Spielvogel's Western Civilization text, which many use to give a bigger picture of history and to fill in the gaps. The text has a schedule included for doing the readings in a school year. Most books will need 2-3 weeks to cover. Each book studied is broken down into daily "sessions" in the text. So, to get through it in a year, you need to do one session per day. Some sessions are optional activities. Each day there will be a reading assignment as well as questions about what was read the day before. You can assign these orally, or in written form. Occasionally there will be a writing assignment, like a short persuasive or critical essay. I think that the first year is the toughest. We only managed to do a couple of the books. You'll just have to jump in and tailor it to fit your needs, and the abilities of your dc. If you want to study the secondary books as well, you'll need two Omnibus sessions per day. We opted to have my ds read the secondary books during free reading time, but not to do the questions. Next year, we'll do both. HTH,

Have you noticed that some of the IGs do not have the Core page numbers listed? They tell you the Skill Level & Lesson #, so I find them that way, but I usually have to look at my ds's workbook to find specific page #s and then write them into my IG.

I agree about the IG problem. I keep turning the page, thinking I'm going to see what my ds has on his page, and then I remember what I have!

Ahhh. I see. Thanks.

I use Aesop without the Instructor Guides. The nice thing, however about the guides is that you have each week's model right there for you, as well as the answers to any grammar exercises. At the Aesop level, however, these exercises are simple enough that you won't need an answer key.

Just want to clarify that you plan to use MUS for Algebra 1 and then Foerster's for Algebra 2. Is that right? Will you be using the Alg 2/Trig book that spans two years, or a different one? TIA,

Not Angelina, but I vote for 5th grade as a good time to begin Homer A. It begins with simple projects, similar to Aesop, but then the learning curve steepens.

:iagree: This is an excellent idea!

For Homer A, we've done pretty much everything. For Homer B, we sometimes skip the parsing exercises. There are quite a few, as well as a parsing review chart. Also, like Anglelina, we would often do only one sentence-shuffle exercise on Day 3. For Aesop A, I tailored each lesson to the child, working directly from the Core and choosing vocab/spelling words to go along with our other language arts/spelling work. This was the first year that I used the workbook, and did skip quite a bit of the grammar, because we don't begin formal grammar until fourth grade. I chose the sections that would be helpful, and not too abstract, and used them. For Aesop B, we won't skip as much, becuase I do rely on CW for teaching grammar, reinforcing it with Rod & Staff. As far as the Writing Projects go, we would sometimes skip some of the Day 1 "chart work." After getting some advice on the CW board, I realized that some of the Day 1 work can be done orally, or mentally, without constructing all of the charts. Some of the charts are done during the analysis portion anyway, but are described a bit differently in the Core manual for the writing project portion. This confused me at first, and I thought my ds had to make two sets of charts. HTH,

Looking back at the course description, I think I'll just call this "American History." When he comes back around to American History & Modern Literature in 12th grade, I'll call the history part "American Government." This is how SWB organizes it in TWTM (p. 655). Thanks for drawing my attention to this.

Thanks, Angelina.