In honor of banned books, etc., I found this NY TImes Book Review pair of pieces interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/books/review/why-read-books-considered-obscene.html?emc=edit_bk_20150925&nl=books&nlid=72406955&ref=headline

So, Orson Scott Card is exactly who I was obliquely referring to! Shannon and I just finished discussing Ender's Game. We both found it a powerful and moving book. I think that Speaker for the Dead has one of the most powerful moral messages of any book I've read. But yeah, I'm hesitant to buy the books, because is that supporting an author whose veiws I find repellant? Interesting that you picked the same example I was thinking of!

I definitely wouldn't try Easy Spanish Step by Step with a 5th grader. My older is working through it . . . slowly . . . she did the first 6 chapters in 7th and I hope we'll finish it this year in 8th, but it is a ton to memorize, and it's really a slog for her. Hm. I wonder if I should be looking around? So far I've just been in the suck-it-up camp, but maybe it really is moving too fast. I'll have to check some of these other options out. She's be doing the allinonehomeschool Easy Peasy spanish for awhile, and she likes that. She just started the EdX beginning spanish class, and it's kind of hard because they speak quickly, and are native speakers, but I think it is a good supplement for hearing the language. And it's free.

Hear hear! I'm having this issue with a writer I'm currently reading and enjoying - I find his social and political opinions repugnant but find him to be a brilliant writer. I sometimes have a hard time holding both of those feelings at once. I wonder if it's partly an artifact of the internet news/social media world we live in today. Meaning, I bet I've read and enjoyed books from tons of writers who I'd disagree with vehemently on social issues, I just didn't know about their views. It seems that it's a peculiarly modern phenomena to conflate the writers life and opinions with the writer's work in the way we do today. Am I wrong? VC, did 17th century authors have this problem? ;)

Shannon and I did the EdX Geometry course last year. It was great - it demystified geometry for both of us. Really clear and understandable presentations. However, I don't think it's enough for a stand-alone geometry class. First off, it doesn't have enough practice to help you really learn and retain everything. You definitely get it, but then you move on to the next thing, and without practice and review, I think it just fall right out of your brain. I'd definitely pair it with something else for reinforcement and practice. That could be a regular text, or something like CTC's Understanding Geometry. Or maybe even Khan Academy, I'm not really familiar with its geometry. But you definitely need something else for reinforcing practice. It also doesn't have you write proofs. It does present proofs, and it explains them really well - like I said, it demystified the whole proof thing for us. But it doesn't have students write proofs or use the standard two-column format I remember from high school geometry. I definitely think it is a fantastic addition to geometry studied, but like the EdX Algebra class, I think a student is going to need some other kind of practice, worktext, or text in order to really learn the material and retain it long-term.

I will be interested to hear what you think of A Sense of an Ending, Stacia. My book group discussed it this winter. A lot of people liked it, but I hated it. I gave it one star on goodreads, which is pretty rare for me as I usually don't finish books I dislike this much. Clearly, I'm in the minority with this, as I am with finding The Martian unreadable! I'm ok with that. :D

Here is Shannon's Literature list from 4th grade (books discussed and studied "for school" not free reading: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – E. L. Koningsberg The View from Saturday – E. L. Koningsberg The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame The Happy Prince – Oscar Wilde The King of the Golden River - Ruskin To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee The Witch of Blackbird Pond – E G Speare The Chronicles of Narnia – C S Lewis The Princess & the Goblin – George MacDonald We actually did 20,000 Leagues in 5th grade. I highly recommend getting the Annotated version - it has all the previously redacted material included, but it is in italics, so you can read it or not, but it was really interesting to see what was redacted by the translator, and the annotator's explanations of why that was.

I don't have anything brilliant to add at this point, but I'm enjoying eavesdropping. I knew I had some soul sisters in this forum! :)

Now see, I'm with Stacia - violence and cruelty bothers me much more than bad language. I didn't watch Pulp Fiction for a long time because of the violence. I did end up seeing it, and I did think it was a brilliant movie, but it was definitely pushing my tolerance for violence to the breaking point. I've mostly avoided Tarantino because despite his sometimes brilliant filmmaking, the violence is just over the top for me.

Which text are they using?

Yes, W&R has some nice features. For the OP's son, I'd suggest Narrative 2. That was the book my dd worked through as a 6th grader, we expanded the assignments (for each lesson that she did, she wrote a full narrative) and she really had fun with it. We didn't continue with the series because she was really beyond it at that point. But it is a very nice option. I thought at the time that a kid who completed Narrative 2 would be better prepared for WWS than a kid who was transitioning straight from the WWE books. ETA: So much for helping you narrow down your options, OP! :lol:

Well, the good news is, however it goes, you are in good company!!! ;) :D

Don't feel bad, Angel, I don't have a problem with 4 letter words, but I found The Martian unreadable because I felt like I was sitting on the shoulder of an overgrown adolescent male. I have felt sheepish to admit it, but despite the promising topic, I just couldn't get myself to read that book. :leaving:

I know exactly what you mean about the "how harrowing" question. I'm about halfway through, and so far, it is very dramatic, but not as harrowing as, say, Uncle Tom's Cabin or Beloved. Solomon Northup, the narrator, is so *real*, so down to earth, so clearly a person just like you or me who found himself in a completely untenable position, but there is no drama, in the sense of no added drama that you feel like is there to tug your heartstrings. It requires no suspension of disbelief, because it is entirely real. It's very shockingness grows out of the matter-of-factness with which this amazing man tells his story. Anyway, I do recommend it at this point, though I will report back if it gets too horrible. I would say The Soul of the Marionette is very uneven. Parts of it were brilliant and thought provoking, but more than half the time I didn't really understand quite where he was coming from. But it was a good kind of confusion, that made me want to learn more and form my own opinions. One of the things that struck me was his refutation of the idea popularized by Pinker and others recently that humanity is getting less violent. That was a thought-provoking argument. And the link he made between a modern scientific worldview and gnosticism was extremely thought provoking. Like I said, I have been watching a Great Course and i've put a bunch of books on hold, inspired by this read. It's been awhile since I've taken the time to try and learn something entirely new for my own sake entirely, rather than as preparation for teaching. So I am grateful for that inspiration.

Sure, I wasn't trying to characterize all the BW teachers, I certainly don't know all their bios. Shannon's current teacher isn't a homeschooling mom, or a mom of any kind, but I think she may have been homeschooled herself. I was just trying to address the OP's concern that some curricula that were created by homeschoolers who were not also writers might be missing something important. Obviously, it's possible to be both a professional writer/editor, and a homeschooler - as are SWB and JB themselves.

I know, right? I always hope our different perspectives and agreement to disagree about WWS is helpful for others - I know that reading about your POV and your dd's experience has helped me analyze my own. :cheers2:

In our case, more practice using basic algorithms, and more practice to become fluent with addition/subtraction and multiplication facts. And a break from the challenge on days she doesn't feel up to it.

I just checked and my copy of The Man in the Brown Suit is at the library, so I will have to swing by and pick it up later today. I'm reading Twelve Years a Slave, which is definitely the best slavery-narrative I've read so far. I'm also reading The Search for the Red Dragon and reading/listening to Remarkable Creatures and listening to Excellent Sheep. The book I just finished is The Soul of the Marionette by John Gray. Not the Venus/Mars John Gray, but the social and political theorist. Weird path led me to this book - I recently finished re-reading His Dark Materials, and I saw that Pullman had cited a short story by Heinrich von Kleist, 'The Puppet Theatre', as a major influence, along with Paradise Lost and Blake's poetry. As I was searching the library for the von Kleist story, this book popped up so I put it on hold too. While I was waiting for it, there was a brief discussion of HDM on another thread, where someone posted that it was a Gnostic polemic. I've heard of Gnosticism but really know very little about it, but this was intriguing (I had been arguing that Pullman's books aren't atheist at all, but I wasn't sure what they were). So I start reading Gray's book, and voila - I realize not only is Pullman's book Gnostic, but so is a lot of my own world view. I'm not a Christian, so this surprised me, but Gray does a fascinating job making an argument that the whole modern materialist scientific-enlightenment worldview is really a different take on Gnosticism. I probably only followed about 10% of his argument, but it was really interesting. This is a book I might have to turn around and read again. It also inspired me to learn more, so I'm watching a GC on Gnosticism. Interesting personal exploration this whole thing as led to, I have no idea where it is going but it will definitely enrich our discussions of HDM when Shannon reads the series this year.

I have an almost 13 year old who loves to write and is good at it. And who has always been accelerated, I suppose. She is in the midst of writing one novel and doing world-creation for an epic fantasy series (if the volume of writing in her preparatory notebooks is any indication!) She is good at both academic and creative writing, but vastly prefers creative writing. If that sounds like your son, I'd recommend keeping Bravewriter in mind. This year is our first experience with it, but the more time I spend with it the more I see the wisdom in the approach - writing taught by a professional writer, not by a homeschooler, and writing instruction that protects, honors, and nurtures the voice of the writer and the thought process behind the writing, rather than focusing on formulas. The whole idea behind BW is that you can learn the formulas quickly and easily, it's figuring out what you want to say and saying it with eloquence that is the challenge, and that deserves and requires some of the effort. My biggest turnoff with BW initially was that it seemed too simple for my accelerated writer. I'm not sure where I'd place an accelerated 9 year old. My dd9 is doing Partnership Writing this year, but she isn't accelerated or anything. My almost 13 year old is doing the Kidswrite Intermediate online class, and it's fantastic. She wouldn't have been ready for it at 9, though. So I guess my suggestion would be to keep it in mind for the future. - 7th or 8th grade, once he's starting to show sophisticated analytical skills, not just great narrative and creative writing. In the meantime: if I were you, I'd listen to Julie Bogart's podcasts, and to Susan Wise Bauer's middle grade writing lectures, and I'd wing it - write across the curriculum on you own, without a curriculum, doing the kinds of assignments SWB describes in her lectures - summaries, outlines, rewriting from outlines, and basic literary analysis. And let him do a ton of creative writing on the side, as much as he wants, but don't "teach" that necessarily, unless he asks for it. I did WWS with Shannon when it first came out, she was 9 and a 4th grader when we did the first 10 lessons, and we finished WWS 1 in 5th grade. She could do it, fine, but it was joyless. Although it is less formulaic than some programs, it does really focus on learning how to do each part of the writing process, in some isolation, and doesn't really focus on the big picture. People have called it a parts-to-whole writing program, and SWB has described it as perfect for little engineers who want to know the steps to follow, no more no less. That's not to say that other kinds of kids haven't enjoyed it, but for my dd it was really a slog. She also didn't like doing writing assignments that were completely disconnected from her other studies. It felt very random to her, she's a girl who likes to see the big picture and the connections between things. We started doing WWS2 in 6th grade, and one day early on - I remember it, it was after working on a compare and contrast assignment about beavers vs. platypuses - she just looked at me with such a pained expression, and I finally realized, let it go - stop doing this. You are destroying her enjoyment of writing. Just because it's a solid writing program, created by your homeschooling idol, it isn't working for your kid. So - we went back to writing across the curriculum for 6th grade. It was great - she wrote about her history subjects and the books she was reading. She wrote a report about an artist and about the planet Venus. It was a great writing year. In 7th grade we did Lively Art of Writing to learn the essay form, and this year with BW classes she's learning about the thinking that goes into writing an essay that is worth reading. Anyway, just sharing this about our path because it sounds like our kids might have something in common. Try something that appeals to you, but don't be afraid to drop it if it isn't a good fit. Think hard about your goals, and what you want him to learn, and stay focused on that rather than on curriculum. Definitely listen to SWB's Middle Grade writing lecture for what you should be doing now, and her High School writing lecture to know what you are planning toward. http://peacehillpress.com/audio-lectures/ And check out Julie Bogart's podcasts: http://blog.bravewriter.com/category/podcasts/ Two inspiring women, whose writing advice is more similar than it appears on the surface. And good luck!

Yes, thanks, I put it on hold for Shannon. I think I posted on your other thread, but Shannon and I recently read and really enjoyed Rebecca Stead's new book, Goodbye Stranger.

We use BA as a supplement to MM, which is our primary math. BA is running about half a year behind - we did 3A & B in 3rd grade along with MM3, and this year we most likely do 3C & D with MM4. I do skip the geometry and measurement chapters in MM and do BA instead, so it's not two full math programs. But I've found that the extra drilling/practice in MM is helpful for my dd. She also doesn't want the challenge of BA every day so while I try to have us do a page a day, there are days we skip it, and days when it's fun and it clicks and we do 3 or 4 pages. I don't sweat scheduling it. Between the two programs, we are covering everything with depth and with sufficient practice. I do see that it has made a difference for her. Her sister started homeschooling in 4th grade, and that first chapter of MM4 just about killed us - she'd never done mental math or anything conceptual in ps and it was like learning a whole new language. With Morgan, having done MM 2&3 and BA 3a&b, this chapter is going pretty smoothly. Not easy-peasy, but much more smoothly than it did 4 years ago! So this stuff is really working. That makes me happy! Morgan is a perfectionist and hates to struggle/not understand her math, she feels stupid if she doesn't understand something immediately and starts to shut down. So having something more easy/straightforward to fall back on when the challenge ratchets up is good, it keeps us moving forward while incrementally increasing her tolerance of challenge, frustration, and the need to persevere in solving hard problems. It's really teaching a whole approach to learning and life. It takes time but it's so worth it.

Oh Heather, I'm so sorry for your dad's suffering through the night. I hope he has a better night tonight.

Who could resist such a recommendation? I just put it on hold.

Thank you - not sure how my brain did that last name switcheroo. I will fix it in my post.

I answered on your other thread that Arsenic and Old Lace - read the script, watch the movie version - would be a great play. How about some Shakespeare? There are lots of great movie versions, both movies and filmed plays. You can probably find live versions if you live in or near a city. With Shakespeare, I actually like to watch it first, and then read it - it makes the reading much more accessible. We've read, watched, and enjoyed Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night. Oh, and Romeo and Juliet. We've read Macbeth but I couldn't find a good theatrical version to watch. We've watched Hamlet, but not read it yet.