Oh Lisa, no need to edit on my behalf. As my thread history will show, we tried almost every writing program out there before we found LTOW. LTOW is a fit for us but I think I probably have to give a bit of our background to qualify my review and put it in context for others reading. Dd was homeschooled starting halfway through 5th grade. Prior to that, her writing training was in public school through the Columbia Teacher's College program. At that time, I found that she could write most types of writing: narrative, personal memoir, nonfiction, 5 paragraph essay, small report, persuasive and comparative essays. However, while she understood the structure and basic mechanics, her organization was lacking. From what her teachers told me, the expectation of Columbia TC is that they learn what to write first and the how later. It's hard to explain her writing from that time. She wrote these wonderfully constructed paragraphs that simply didn't flow together. Her word choice was varied and interesting but she contradicted her points. She mastered complicated sentence structures but she didn't know where to put them for maximum effect. So, when we started homeschooling, we were looking for something very specific. I felt like all the mechanical pieces where there. She just had so much to say and she needed help organizing it logically. At first, I used her old writing pieces and worked through them with her, teaching her how to reorganize, strengthen and cut where needed. Once I took that as far as I could, I started doing research. Corbett's book and Ruth's epic writing thread lead me to LTOW as a solid program to teach invention and arrangement. For a natural writer, who doesn't struggle with mechanics, this was a good fit. That said, we don't follow formulas and LTOW's "Edmund should not have followed the white witch for three reasons...." didn't last long around here. I liken it to IEW (we tried that tooðŸ˜). Great tools to have as a writer but we don't add -ly words to every paragraph. We are using/customizing the invention/arrangement tools to fill a specific need and I have seen a lot of growth. Her Circe teacher is also terrific and allows her to move beyond the formulas with confidence. Now, where will we go from here to create the elusive high school English credit? Ummm, I have no idea. But that's another thread.

Woo hoo! Just got my hands on the new Barbarians course on eBay for $20!!!! Trying to find the Global Perspective one now because that's one I want to own with two more behind dd.

Yes! Units would be great. I like that format. It gives a beginning and an end and also allows for the inevitable rabbit trails. I think this "geographical" approach would work for every time period of history, no? This is just the type of creative approach I was envisioning. She's the kid who always asks, "What was happening in xxxx when this was going on?" She's going to love this. Thank you so much for your help with this! After this thread and my simultaneous science one, I'm actually starting to feel like we can actually do high school.

Aha! That makes sense. Ok, back to drawing board. I don't think she'd mind covering cellular biology. It's just that we covered middle school biology and she is dreading another tour through botany and evolution. Maybe I can pull together a Cells, Anatomy and Genetics compilation drawing from a good biology text and Great Course lectures? Would that make more sense?

17 pages worth of courses.....even those obscure but interesting sounding ones! Now the question is, can I get my hands on them long enough to use them? Some of them have month long holds. I also wonder how we would use the guidebooks?

Bumping this to see if anyone has any thoughts.

Oh Lisa, would you?? My daughter would love a year like this. This is a great idea!!!! And my library has almost all the TC series with guidebooks!!! If I'm missing anything, I'm happy to purchase it. I'm planning the same kid of thing for medieval so anything that carries over is a bonus. I'm off to check out that barbarians course on TGC's website.

Oh yes! The Hive has saved me countless hours of sleep, protected me from at least half a dozen panic attacks and prevented at least one nervous breakdown ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ Regarding placement, 1 and 2 cover different types of essays. LTOW 1 is largely focused on the Persuasive Essay. The goal of Level 1 is to teach the canons (invention, arrangement, elocution) until they become second nature. They use the Persuasive Essay to do that. At first, the instruction feels formulaic and limiting. My daughter hated that part. However, once the skills are firmly in place, they let the reigns out and give your writer more freedom. That's when you really see the best of this program. LTOW 2 covers the Deliberative and Judicial Essays, Narratives, and Comparison Essays. I haven't taught Level 2 so I can't speak to it but if the quality is anything like Level 1, I think it will be great. We only got through Level 1 Lesson 4 last summer before it became obvious that she would benefit more from a class so she started the class in Level 1. I would imagine that if you feel your Ds has a solid grasp on Persuasive Essays after your wife teaches, then yes, move to Level 2. If not, there are kids who take each level more than once to hone skills. Your Ds will choose his topic for every essay. Topics are generated from great literature that your child is reading. So although the instruction stays the same, the level of writing gets more advanced depending on the literature topic he chooses, kwim? My daughter will move on to LTOW 2 next year but I will continue to assign persuasive essays in her other subjects. Based on the skills she's learned, she can crank out a pretty good Persuasive Essay on just about anything now.

Dd has requested an Anatomy, Physiology, Nutrition course in lieu of standard Bio for next year. Is this a good idea? Or should we do standard Bio with a concentration on areas of interest? She probably won't go into the sciences in college but I don't want her to be limited on school choice without a conventional bio on her transcript. Thoughts??

Derek, after all of your help with math, I am so happy to finally help you back. DD is enrolled in the Circe Academy LTOW 1 class with Renee Mathis. It is a wonderful class and Renee is a great teacher. Before I enrolled her, I taught LTOW from the latest edition of the DVDs and teacher guide. I never saw the earlier version but, in my opinion, once you get over the learning curve it is very easy to teach. I would definitely recommend the DVDs. I could not have taught from the Teacher's Guide alone. Circe tutors also host teacher workshops around the country that teach the scope and sequence as well as methodology. Just look on the Circe website for dates/locations. Regarding workload, my daughter works about 2-3 hours per week on LTOW in addition to the 1hr per week class. When I was teaching, it took me about an hour a week of prep and the time for correcting/evaluating the writing. Someone once told me that LTOW is not a writing program, but a thinking program. I wholeheartedly agree. My daughter is a natural writer but LTOW has helped her so much with the thought and organization of her arguments. She's grown tremendously in this class. I enjoyed teaching it but my daughter's writing is very personal for her and my critiques, albeit gentle, were causing a strain on our relationship. She now loves the energy of the class and the outside evaluation of her writing. Let me know if I can help any further. Good luck!

Melissa, our daughters may be together? Mine is in LTOW 1 with Renee Mathis. Wonderful class!!

One other question Regentrude, would you recommend the DVD's on Vandiver's lectures or are the CDs ok?

Has anyone tried any of these? The Joy of Ancient History - it's a collection of the "greatest" lectures from their Ancient History collections. From Yao to Mao by Kenneth Hammond Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations (selected lectures from this one)

Thanks Luckymama. My Dd's schedule will look similar to yours except we'll be finishing AOPS Intro to Alg and doing Geometry. Hmmmm.....maybe I can convince dd to add Arabic along with French??

THIS! Sometimes it feels like she's changing by the minute. I'd love to see if I can plan an easier start and ramp up as the year progresses.

Yes, history/lit integrated....that's what we want. Maybe this list with lectures/books on Greece and China? I'm thinking if she's reading this amount/level of lit, maybe leave the history to lectures and documentaries?? Or are there also assigned readings in these lecture series? Did you assign any writing or outside reading along with this?

Whew! Loooong Sunday and I'm just catching up now. Thank you for everyone's input. There are a lot of great ideas here. Thank you Lisa for helping so many of us!! So, my dd is bright and a very diligent student. However, she is asking for something specific. We've run the gamut on the early primitive civilizations. She wants to do the 2nd half of ancients but more in depth with literature to match. I was thinking of building an empire study of Egypt, Persia, Greece, China and Rome. She can handle heavy reading and will enjoy the literature for sure. I just don't want to bog her down with too much technical detail. This is her first year of high school and I'm still trying to convince her that we can have fun with it.😉😉

Definitely World.

I am putting together an Ancient History year for DD's 9th grade year. What were your favorite courses for this time period? Favorite lecturers? Any creative approaches you used? I'm thinking of creating a "Major Empires" type thing. This will be our third time through ancients and she is thoroughly sick of Mesopotamia...lol. So, I'm trying to think of a new spin.

I like the idea of the "last hurrah." I'd like every year to be a "hurrah" but I guess that might be too idealistic. I'm going to pull out those old threads on skills needed for high school and beyond. I think we've checked those boxes but I want to make sure. Thanks for all your help Kathy. This is a lot of work but you're right, it's so much fun.

Thanks for this Joan. I've started searching specific courses here. I also like the idea of finding the book first and then matching a syllabus. Question....Is there anything proprietary about syllabi? In other words, is it "bad form" to ask to see the syllabus somebody created for a specific text? I'm planning to customize my DD's program but I'm the kind that takes 3-10000 resources and pulls from them to create the plan. I just don't know the AP world/process just yet and I don't want to offend anyone.

Thanks Kathy. Scheduling is one of the reasons why we're looking at this option. She's still exploring so many areas of study and different activities so I want to afford her as much time as possible to try things out. Her volunteer work is also need based and therefore hard to schedule. We also travel quite a bit and I would hate to stop those rich, cultural experiences just to sit in a class of busywork. (One of the reasons we homeschooled was to end that.) We have narrowed things down just a little bit though. I think we've figured out that DD is probably not headed in the STEM direction. She does, however, thoroughly enjoy math and science so I think a couple of related AP classes might be of interest down the road. I think that would also get the 101 math and science classes out of the way for a humanities student, no? (We probably won't be able to afford the uber elite schools where AP credit wouldn't transfer.) She fancies herself a writer so, based on what you recommended, maybe we could do AP classes based on interest and areas where we just need the college credit. Then, to your point, outsource english and writing (AP or DE) to hopefully secure recs from teachers in her strength areas. Does that sound about right? We have a pretty decent community college and a 3rd tier 4-year university about 40 minutes away, so that might be an option later on. We just moved here so I need to do some more research. You're right she's young and believe me, I don't want to rush her. She's my first high schooler and just the thought of it makes me nostalgic for Cinderella costumes and tea parties. I'm just trying to get a general, loose framework in mind as we begin to choose curricula and classes for next year. For example, in planning her freshman year, I was thinking of trying to self study a lighter AP to test the waters and see what she thinks. Maybe Human Geography? Or is it just too early to think about AP and maybe I should just focus on a fun transition year?

I had looked at the College Board website but found it so confusing, laborious and hard to use. I just assumed you all were getting information elsewhere, hence this post. I then did a specific Google search for what I was looking for followed by the tag College Board and voila!, there it was. So, thank you. This step by step is exactly what I was looking for. Of course, in my search, I now see that most of the AP exams will be changed over the next couple of years. So much for advanced planning :cursing: :cursing:

At the risk of sounding completely unqualified to guide my daughter through high school :scared: :scared: ..... I have many, many questions.... If dd wants to self study for select AP classes, where would I go to figure out what books to use? I know many of you have written your own syllabi but what resources did you use to create them? What does it mean to "audit" an AP class? I probably wouldn't submit for CB approval, instead opting to list the class as "Advanced _______ with AP exam" as I've seen some do here. Is it too ambitious to begin self study freshman year with a bright, self directed, driven student? DD loathes busywork so I think if we go the AP route, self study is the way to go. I just want to feel confident that I can create a meaningful course that results in the AP score she'd be happy with. Then again, DE may be a better fit down the road. She's a young 14 so it's hard to imagine that now, but she changes and matures every day, so who knows? We are starting to plan our very first year of high school and in between complete panic attacks, I'm trying to get more information so that maybe, just maybe, I'll believe we can do this. For now, that means reading all of Lori D's stickies during every waking moment......

What does "prestige" mean? Is college the "moon" for every kid? Isn't decent "earning potential" totally subjective depending on lifestyle choices you make? Is college necessary for every kid to reach their goals? Can't learning still happen outside of the conformed world of the 4 year school? We are currently wrestling with all these questions as we plan our very first high school year. Interesting thread.