My daughter (12 yr old) LOVED the Creative Writer. It turned writing into her favorite subject. After the first level, we are now doing OYAN and saving things like WWS for another year? or maybe not at all. WWS made us crazy here too. I wish I could just get the WWS dummies guide, so I would understand the basic goal and final destination so I could teach it myself. I agree it can be maddening at times in it's complexity, though some people really work well with that style.

I'm glad we started it this year! My daughter is in grade 7 and she really likes it. It's nice that it's so independent and doesn't take much time during the week. We've been using it with LTOW (loosely) and with WWS2 (though I've been doing WWS2 at half time because it's just a bit too much writing for the week. I don't know if we'll continue on into the poetry half of the book or not. We've been doing one lesson a week (on fridays). I'll see how our year is going. I'm glad to see they have a level 2 as well. We might do the story part of level 2 first and then go back and pick up the poetry unit in CW1 afterwards.

This is what we are doing this week too... trying to use WWS 'framework' to apply it to our own material. I feel like WWS is taking too much time out of our day and then she's too tired to do any other writing. I wish that either WWS was only a 2 or 3 day a week program, OR that SWB would publish another Complete Writer focusing on the middle grades like she did with WWE.

shhh! don't tell anyone, but we skipped a big chunk of the middle of the book to skip ahead to the literary analysis and the poetry sections because we wanted to mix it up a bit and enjoy a different style of writing. My DD enjoyed these parts much better than the beginning of the book.

yay! It worked! Thanks Justin! Now I have something to listen to while folding laundry :D

Thanks! Except, I'm having a problem purchasing it. It says 'the request quantity is not available' and won't let me put it in my shopping cart. I only tried to purchase 1. Looking forward to listening to it!

Thanks Michele!! That is great to hear :) I love downloads, because the shipping to canada is usually so expensive and there are never 'free shipping to canada' sales :confused:

Thanks!! I couldn't find that page for some reason. Do you think the audio download is just as good as the DVD? I would love to save the shipping costs, if it's worth it.

Can you post a link? I can't find it :)

We used classical comp for fable and narrative (after having done level 2 of writing tales and a bit of CW homer).. so we've done quite a bit of work in the early pro gym stages. I've just started looking into next year (7th grade) for writing. It's the last thing I need to plan out, and I would love to get some help from others who have used this curriculum. It looks really crazy to me! It's such a jump from the first two levels, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how we are going to tackle it. Maybe it's because the version that I own is the earlier Selby one that was in a binder (not the brown covers)... have they updated it significantly to warrant another purchase? It just seems to me that it's going to be difficult for my daughter to use the program. The language of the samples seems so flowery and hard to understand. Is she supposed to be writing with that same style? It's so different than the fables and narratives from last year. help!! We also have LTOW (3rd edition) and I am loving what I see, looking through it. Maybe we should just skip CComp and use LTOW for our program? It's so hard to see what the bigger picture is as she's my oldest and I'm not sure where we are going with all of this. thanks for any help

Also, another Kolbe mom and myself moderate a yahoo group called "Kolbe parents learn the classics". We aren't too active, but the idea is that hs parents can read the high school books ahead of the kids (or alongside) so that we are better prepared to teach them when we get there. Anyone is welcome to join us :)

Here are a few reviews for kolbe academy that I found helpful when i was looking into it originally. There is quite a bit about the high school program.

From a newsletter they sent out last year (aug 2011... the newsletters are linked from this page) this is what they said: (although I think their timeline for implementation has been delayed a bit, since Memoria Press took over the publishing for CC this year... meaning right now I know they have course plans available for Fable, narrative and a beta one for chreia/maxim with the others following shortly).

You can look at samples of any of their course plans here. They include a summary of the objectives for the course, and then a daily breakdown (into quarters) of the work to be done each day with a space for checking off work done, and recording grades. For most courses, there are also 4 quarter tests and answer keys. The language arts programs are using books that are fairy open and go, so you probably wouldn't need a course plan.. though I enjoy having everything planned out across the year into 4 quarters. Kolbe plans 7 weeks of work, 1 week of review and 1 week for exams (mostly a week off, if you do the exams at the beginning of the week). They follow the Ignatian style of education which I don't know LOTS about (8filltheheart has talked about it a bit on here somewhere)... it is very classical... and one of their main tenants is that you need periods of review to really solidify the knowledge. This is something as homeschoolers we often ignore, I think. The quarter system keeps the year in manageable chunks for me. In feb, I don't feel crazy that we are only on week 25... I think, yay! We are on week 7 of quarter 3!! Horray! almost done another quarter. :-) anyways, the LA programs are: grammar: the Old Voyages in English edition (very similar to R&S I believe, but don't quote me on that ) vocab: Sadlier/oxford vocabulary workshop. We used this last year and it was a good book. I don't have anything to compare it to because we haven't used anything else. there's samples of it here. writing: Classical Composition or Sadlier/oxford. Classical comp has been discussed on these boards before.. try searching it. It's also been discussed quite a bit on the Koble forum. The sciences often draw people to Kolbe as well, because they use the often more rigorous school textbooks like Holt (Life science and Earth Science are the two middle school books). I just received the plans for the life science course and I like how they have picked through the book, choosing which chapters to skim through and which to go into more depth so that it fits into the quarter system they follow. I could do it myself, but I love having the option of following their plan so I don't have to ... but still tweaking when I like. Some people are drawn to plans like this, because they like the 'idea' of it, but then they end up tweaking it so much that they might as well have not bothered to pay for it in the first place, because they ended up doing most of the work of planing anyways LOL. hth :)

I think they first came out with the TTC DVD and seminar workbook, which is what most people mean when they are talking about TTC. This is the theory of how to do lit analysis. You can then apply it to any book you choose. Then, they produced these Teacher Guides leading you through the process in specific books, holding your hand through the whole thing. They are pdf downloads (helpful to save on shipping!) You can try the entire guide for 'The Bronze Bow' for free. They also have a compilation of teacher guides grouped by age. These are called Ready Readers and are also available as a pdf download. Then, if you really want to have everything done for you, you can just buy a DVD of Adam Andrews teaching a lit course on a particular book. This includes a syllabus. These are called the Classics Club. There are a few other resources they sell that I haven't looked into, except which is a table that briefly lists plot, conflicts, themes and literary devices for over 200 books (K-12). I'm sure you can just find a lot of this out by either a) reading the books yourself and thinking about them, or b) using the internet or sparknotes/coles notes... but it does look handy to have anyways. It also is available as a download.