I'm with you on this one! I've studied translation enough to tell you that when folks move to paraphrase instead of pretty close translation that they are always subtracting meaning from the passage that the writer probably worked hard to put there. Sigh. Footnotes are a much better way to go and some things just won't be gotten, and its okay!! That's why some people study Shakespeare for their whole lives. There's always more.

I don't have an ipad, but Evernote who I use on my droid has been advertising this little dandy: http://blog.evernote.com/2011/06/08/introducing-evernote-peek-the-first-ipad-smart-cover-app/

What does she like?

I think I might drop back on grammar then. Having good grammar in your writing is not the same as being able to identify parts of speech, especially fairly complex items like verbals. If you feel you must do more parsing, then chose a one book shot like Rex Barks. Can she outline? Does she write from outlines? That would be something I'd want her to practice. I feel like I've turned into a shill for SWB's Plan for Writing talks, but they could be helpful to listen to and implement. They are certainly a lot less expensive than a full program of writing. You can find them here: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/audio-products/audio-lectures.html

What's your goal? Good writing? Ability in grammar? What's her likely trajectory in college?

Also And Then There Were None by Christie. Ten people on an island, who's the murder?

It's more how they talk about the program and terminology. I think in the end the student learns the same or similar skills, I'm just not sure they learn all the vocabulary. However, logic is not a subject I've either studied myself or studied much about. We had been using the Building Thinking Skills materials for years and this was the logical next step so I just bought it. I wasn't really thinking "logic" program at the time.

We are currently using this: http://www.criticalthinking.com/getProductDetails.do?code=p&id=01201 It's not exactly "classical" in its orientation, but we've done fine with it.

SWB's talks on "A Plan for Writing" middle and high school level might help you. You can find them in the Peace Hill store: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/audio-products/audio-lectures.html You might also read the introduction to the Writing with Ease instructor's book to give you an over all frame work: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/media/downloads/pdfsamples/wwesample.pdf I suspect that you might see that where your daughter is struggling is her ability to organize her thoughts and then get them onto paper. Both these resources will help you. A 9th grader should be easily able to come up to speed on the middle school part in a school year (I suspect half a school year will be all she needs, but I maybe underestimating so assume a year). Then she can move ahead with the rhetorical pieces in the high school talk.

I hope you've been convinced writing is important. I have been using SWB's Plan for Teaching Writing talks as my guide. It is easy to set this up and do it. I can't think of a better spent $8. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/middle-grades-mp3.html http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/high-school-years-mp3.html

I agree with Sebastian. Most groups don't want to trick you into buying their stuff, but some maybe naive about the wideness of their beliefs. If you aren't sure from their about pages and samples, ask (most have a contact us page as well). You can also cultivate a questioning attitude in your children. If my oldest is bothered by something, he'll come to me. I can't read every thing in detail so developing this is a great help to me.

Can I encourage you to take this list and go back to your local home school community and find out what is offered there. Different places have different things. Some things you might be interested in might not exists but you could do them on your own, what you'll want to weight is the amount of extra time and energy that will take and balance that with your whole family. So knowing what is out there now is helpful. I'd also think ahead, don't wait until you want to do something to support it. Support it now or may not last until you need it.

We've used this for the last four years with Tapestry and for students comfortable on the computer it is a dream to use.

I think the more of it you can keep on the computer the better. Learning how to set up an organization system of folders that makes it easy to both find and save work done on the computer is for the best. AND starting to do as much work as possible on the computer is also good. There are tons of free apps out there that will help. I like Evernote for capturing information and the Google calendar has a to do list app which when used with the calendar can create a powerful organizational tool.

I'm assuming you mean novels. Novels are very late additions to literature so you need to read some other material as well. So I would include a good book of poetry that includes significant poetry OR you can find most of it online. I wish I could point you at something but I'm afraid we are using several books. A student who will have to take a college introduction to lit course will have to read and be able to dig into significant amounts of poetry. If he's not strong in English, you might consider the easy way to read Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook. Poetry is really not my thing, but she makes me want to read it. What I would do to enrich her book is find the poems that she references and print them out in full from the internet (except lengthy works). This would not be enough for a strong student in literature, but for a child who is not keen on reading it could work. I might also include some plays. You could have some fun with this and do things like reading Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead together. That would give him two bites at the same apple but from radically different literary approaches. In the same way you could read The Tempest and then watch Forbidden Planet thus getting Shakespeare and sci-fi.

Yes, I could have been clearer about that, but in a classroom setting that would be needed. I figured it might be something she's used in the past. My ds has to write two one page persuasive papers a week now that's he's in ninth grade (and a sample of whatever rhetorical device he's studying) and the literary response paper is just one way or kind of paper he can write. I like because it gets him thinking about whatever he's reading before we go full on with more literary techniques. I know sometimes when I walked into a college classroom I had a sort of expectation of being filled rather than working ahead of time to engage the work. This is in a "lecture" that you have to buy (although cheaply) from Peacehill Press. I think it updates what is in the WTM.

The Atlantic had a recent article on college debt that I found both interesting and depressing as I look forward to children in college: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/print/2011/08/the-debt-crisis-at-american-colleges/243777/ Here's a couple of snips to get you curious: And most annoying: Okay, after those, you'll have to read the rest on your own.

SWB refers to a "literary response paper" as a special category of paper dealing with literature (in her plan for teaching writing for high school level). She seems to indicate that this is not a true analysis paper but a paper assigned to get the student to think about the work in question and to let the instructor know if the student has actually read the paper. These are short one page or so works as she describes them. She suggests these as possible approaches: • Some interesting or annoying element of the piece (scene, plot, or character). • Compare the work with some other work and draw parallels. • Point out how and why a metaphor is used in a work. • Argue a character acted ethically right or wrong. That said a student should learn to do some analysis too. So you'll want to decide what you're after for this before choosing materials. In our case we are beginning by focusing on the literary response paper as above, but while teaching literature we'll be building the vocabulary to be able to move onto literary analysis in a year or two in a more complete way.

Here's a good post comparing the two: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2656&postcount=2 Hey Stephanie, can you explain the last sentence in your quote above? I've looked at Omnibus before but it doesn't seem to have more great lit than Tapestry (different, maybe). But maybe I'm missing something. Or maybe you looked at classical which I hear had less strong lit at the R level.

My dad who has a PhD told me he found this dull (and he reads tons of military history). I also think I've read that it is fairly biased as well. You might be better off to study the war with a current book and Thucydides and the beginning of historians as subject rather than source.

This is true but taking the tests is not what the colleges use to evaluate a course of study. In both The GateKeepers and Rachel Toor's book, they say what they are looking at is a rigorous schedule of classes. There is not a lot of discussion of looking at the AP scores themselves and the highly exclusive private schools both Wesleyan and Duke work with most directly (and who get the highest rating on the rigor score) do not describe their course as AP and I, suspect, don't give a bunch of AP classes. If you want some AP classes, I'd focus more on the math and science ones and let Tapestry stand alone. To show the colleges you apply to the strength from Tapestry, I'd prepare a list of the books read and include a good description of how you studied history, lit, philosophy, and government (etc.) as an integrated study. It is possible that you could have your children do some prep books late in their high school years to take the AP tests having used Tapestry, but I'm not sure of the results, not because Tapestry isn't rigorous but because it is not designed for the tests, but a broader knowledge (plus, your child will have studied American history over 2 1/2 years which means that they will have longer in their own personal time line to remember some key information).

You can buy volumes of his sonnets as stand alone material if that is what she read and is interested in. I'd try to sample some different books and look at commentary so that you get some help from the editor. For the plays, I really like Penguin editions for their commentaries, but they are difficult to come by and somewhat academic so I think you can get whatever edition you would like. Rafe Esquith uses ArkAngel recordings of Shakespeare plays and I suggest them as great tool for a first read through of the play. They have the advantage over recorded plays and movies because they follow the play exactly (almost all staged or recorded versions make edits) and the student can listen while also reading the text and not be distracted by the visual element but still have the drama. Reading a good synopsis of a play in advance of the first read can help. You can find those on the internet, place like Wikipedia or you could get the book versions by Lamb or Nesbit. I would focus on tools to understand metaphor. Shakespeare wrote in modern English and doesn't need translation, but he does use complex metaphor and deals with remote contexts to contemporary Americans so having some tools in your daughter's hands to begin to unpeel his layers will help her. Those skills will translate well to other literature. Also, she doesn't need to understand every detail to enjoy Shakespeare. Scholars still debate major points in his plays that doesn't mean those plays aren't enjoyable. This is a place where a good edition of the play itself may help you by giving you some guidance.

This is good to hear! I start to think there must be something seriously wrong with me, or us, or something. I'm okay with writing off a day for a field trip that relates to our studies. We are doing ancients this year and we'll be driving to a museum to see a mummies exhibition, but the zip lining makes no sense to me (nor the laser tag from another person). The debate team is frustrating because I suspect my ninth grader would enjoy it, but he's not sure and he's my sensible guy so he sees the problem with the time as well.

This is puzzling me and I guess I'd like to know if I'm a nut or not. :D It's the beginning of the school year and I'm seeing a lot of announcements for clubs and field trips. I am astounded by how many are any the morning that could just as easily be afternoon events. For instance, a field trip to a zip line course in town at 10:00 AM instead of 1:00 PM (this one struck me because there is a 10 year old minimum age limit to go). And then today the speech and debate group is going to meet from 10:00 - 1:00 every week. Now, some field trips, I get that you are going to spend all day, or have to drive, or have mostly younger kids who might need afternoon naps (or their siblings). But high school speech and debate? With a middle and high school student, I want our morning study time to be pretty sacrosanct. We need that time to do school work. Math that needs to be done, etc. I may end up having to knock our schedule around for somethings, but I am curious if I am the only one who wants their mornings left alone.

I concur with letting your student look at a couple of translations if possible. I've been reading reformation area theologians and translation is super important. But I also found reading Homer's works with a better translator was really helpful. We use Tapestry of Grace and they use the Norton Anthology of Western Lit which if you buy new and the current edition will not be a cheap choice, but if you can find a used earlier version that might work and be cheap, too. Anyway, I've really liked their translations, they've been lively and readable.