I would do the same thing as the other parents posted, following the example listed in TWTM (4th ed., p. 433). My daughter would: Day 1 (or the student can take two days for this if needed) 1) Read the quote for the given lesson, write it on an index card, and memorize both the Latin quote and the English translation. 2) Read through the Roots/Prefixes/Suffixes and write them on index cards: Word part on the front and definition on the back. 3) Read through the Key Words and make flash cards for them. Same thing, key word on the front and definition on the back. Days 2: 1) Add the new prefixes/suffixes/roots and their meaning to their Word Study list (as recommended in TWTM.) Day 3-4: 2) Work on memorizing the the roots/prefixes/suffixes and their meaning as well the key words and their meaning. Day 5: Complete the lesson exercises. Every two weeks, she completes the additional Key Word exercise pages and then takes the test. I hope this makes sense. In the TWTM, they give an example of what a Word Study list of roots/prefixes/suffixes can look like. It looks something like this: Prefixes and Suffixes Prefix Suffix Meaning/Function Language contra- Opposite, against Latin -able Makes an adjective out of a noun mal- Bad Latin Word Roots Root Meaning Language functio To perform Latin cedere To go forward Latin I made pages for my daughter that follows this model. I'll attach a picture below. Hope this helps because I had a little trouble figuring out how I wanted my daughter to do this. It was tricky because the program is written to be taught by a teacher and not self-taught. I really needed it to be self-taught. This method is working o.k. but I may tweak it next go around.

I'm working on a literature list of for my grammar stage kiddos for next year. TWTM doesn't recommend specific titles/bios for the following people. Any recommendations? Saint Augustine Erasmus Martin Luther John Calvin Sir Thomas Wyatt John Knox Rene Descartes I'm checking my local library and Rainbow Resource but I'm wondering if there are favorites anyone can recommend. Thanks

Thank you for sharing the info. I was just looking at Elemental Science curriculum for high school and Late Night Labs are the core of their lab assignments. I guess I'll have to start looking at other programs. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.

I would appreciate examples of these as well.🙂

I agree with BusyMom5. I would stick with Saxon and follow the first plan you listed and I would not switch to the 4th edition.

I don't have the iBook but here is a sample page from Workbook A, in case you don't want to create a login for the Pearson website.

I highly recommend listening to SWB talk on writing in the high school years. I've listened to it several times, taken notes, and planned my daughter's writing courses following the recommendations given here. https://welltrainedmind.com/p/a-plan-for-teaching-writing-focus-on-the-high-school-years-mp3/

I had my daughter outline sections from library books related to what we were studying in history. She didn't always read the entire book. Sometimes she would read a section on a topic of interest and then outline the section. Outlining from the Kingfisher proved tricky because it's very encyclopedic. As far as adapting SOTW for older students, we simply read the section in SOTW as a family and then my older students went off and did the work outlined in TWTM. A three-day plan looked something like this: Hope this helps. History Ancients 5000 B.C. – A.D. 400 “The First Writing” o SOTW: Ch. 3, Section 1: “Hieroglyphs and Cuneiform” o KHE: “Summer and Akkad, 5000-1600 B.C.”, pp. 9-10 o Fact: List 6-8 of the most important facts, in your own words and in complete sentences. o Narrative Summary: Write a narrative summary of today’s reading Ancients 5000 B.C. – A.D. 400 “The First Writing” o SOTW: This Ch. Only has one section otherwise, the pages for section 2 would be listed here. o Additional Reading: Title of library book o Outline: Two-level outline on topic of interest. o Map Work: Student p. 8 Ancients 5000 B.C. – A.D. 400 “The First Writing” o Additional Reading: o Narrative Summary: o Timeline: Add important dates to your time line along with the accompanying caption (we get these dates from the SOTW or the Kingfisher Encyclopedia) o Hands-On Activity: Make cuneiform tablet.

Has anyone heard if there are plans in the works for a vol. 4 - The History of the Modern World by SWB? If so, date it's expected to be out? Thanks.

I agree with Susan C. WWS is an excellent program but we experienced a lot of frustration at the beginning for two reasons: 1) We tried to follow the schedule and complete the assignments in the time indicated, and 2) I had my daughter read the text and do the work on her own with minimal help from me. My plan for my next child is to give her as much time as she needs and read most of the lessons with her. I agree that taking 4 years to complete all three books is a good plan. Give you son as much time as he needs. The program is great, the schedule, not so much. I usually had my daughter work on writing for about 45 min. to 1 hr. and then move on.

I second buying the study guide, however, in order to complete the book in a school year, your student will have to read and complete the related work for three chapters, every week. We just started school this week and my daughter is working through the third chapter of History of the Ancient World. We're already seeing that she's going to have to cut back on the number of questions she answers. It's a lot of work. The guide is very helpful but you may choose not to have your student complete all of the work. Just an idea.

We followed the recommendations in TWTM fairly closely. We did history study twice a week and science study twice a week. So it looked something like this on a weekly basis: Monday - Two-level outline on a topic related to her history study. This would be from our history spine or a library book. If she used the library book, it would not be an outline of the entire book, just a section or chapter from the book, a topic of interest to her: a person's childhood, career, what they were famous for, their death, etc. Tuesday - She would write a narrative summary, half a page to a page long, on the same topic she outlined. She wouldn't write from the outline, yet. I introduced this in the 8th grade but your student could very well be ready. I chose to follow the recommendation in TWTM to simplify my life?. Thursday - Two-level outline on a topic related to her science study. Friday - Narrative summary, half a page to a page long, on the same topic she outlined. You could also have your student outline one topic and then write a narrative summary on a different topic, if you're not having them write from outlines yet. The other writing came from her formal writing program which, for us, was Writing With Skill. If she had a lot of writing to do for WWS on a particular day, then I would not have her do the history/science writing for that day. Lastly, I had her write literary essays after she finished a book on her formal reading list. Again, 1/2 page to 1 page long. So, on an average week, she would write 4 short outlines/narratives summaries plus her WWS work or 2-3 outlines/summaries per week and her WWS work, if she was working on a longer writing project.

Thank you for sharing this! ?

I forgot to mention something, I haven't decided if I'm going to have my daughter take a separate geometry course. She does very well in math but it doesn't come naturally to her. She's had to work very hard at it. Last year, I had her take Alg. 1 at a local homeschool academy because I was very nervous about not being able to help her myself if she needed it. It turned out she didn't need the class at all, in fact, it was slowing her down. She did a lot of waiting around while the teacher helped the other students. She ended up with 110 on the final (they had to do separate worksheet assignments for real life application that were very challenging so that' where the extra points came from). If she does take a separate geometry course, she'll likely take Jacob's Geometry. If she doesn't, I'll have to change the above course name to Algebra 2/Geometry. Still working this out myself. ?

I can't offer a whole lot of advice because my oldest will be in the 9th grade this year so this is my first go at high school. We have been using Saxon beginning with 5/4 ( with my oldest, because she started out in public school -- my younger kiddos started with Saxon K) and we're planning to continue with Saxon for the remainder of her high school years. You didn't mention which grades your son took each Saxon class in. That makes a difference because they won't cover all of the needed geometry until they complete Saxon's Advanced Mathematics. In the 3rd ed. of TWTM, SWB says that taking Saxon's Advanced Mathematics past the 10th grade "has one drawback: the student doesn't finish Advanced Mathematics until the end of eleventh grade which means that he will not have full knowledge of geometry when he takes the PSAT'S." She goes on to explain that this is a concern if your student has consistently tested above the 90th percentile and a National Merit Scholarship is a possibility. So that's one thing to think about. In the 4th edition of TWTM, she's added a chapter titled "Preparing for High School: An Overview" and in it she provides some sample transcript entries and course descriptions which I found very helpful. This is a portion of the course description in that chapter: Course Grades Curriculum followed Algebra 1 & 2/Geometry 9, 11 Saxon Home School Study course along with Geometry: An Integrated Course (Larson, Boswell & Stiff), pursued with a tutor/ The overview of how a transcript might look is also provided. They did it by grade. High-School Credits Curriculum What you put on the transcript Course Hours Course Units 9th Grade Grammar 120 English 1 1 language arts Rhetoric 90 Speech 1 1 elective Great Books 320 World Lit. 1 1 elective World Hist. 1 1 history Math 120 Algebra 1 math Science 108 Biology 1 science Foreign Language 108-216 Latin/modern 1-2 foreign language Art and Music 108 Fine arts 1 1 elective Algebra 2 was listed the same as above and Advanced Mathematics was listed like this: Math 120 Advanced math 1 math Using the example provided in TWTM, 4th ed. as well as others I've found on-line, I began writing some course descriptions. This is what I wrote for Saxon Algebra 2 which is what my daughter will be taking this 9th grade year: 9th Grade Plan Course (Name of the Class on the Transcript) Course Description Subject Area Hours Credits Earned Algebra 2 Saxon Algebra 2: An Incremental Development, Home School Study Course, an integrated course covering traditional second year algebra topics, as well as a full semester of informal geometry, Topics are taught with real world, abstract, and interdisciplinary applications. Mathematics Maths 180 1 I've found that Christianbooks.com has great curriculum descriptions that you can get ideas from to create course descriptions. Hope this helps.

I agree with happypamama. The study and teaching guide might be what you're looking for. My daughter will be using History of the Ancient World and I purchased the Study & Teaching Guide. The work for each chapter is divided into 4 sections: Section 1: Who, What, When , Where seems to be about basic facts and Section 2 - Comprehension is short answer questions. Both can be completed open book. Section 4 is map work. Section 3 is called Critical Thinking. These seem to be short essay answer and it is recommended that the student not use the book to answer these. In the "How to Use This Study Guide" section you're given three other ways you could use these sections for example "Have the student complete section 1 using the book and section 2 as a quiz" or "Use section 1 as a pop quiz, etc." What I'm wondering about is, has anyone written lesson plans for this series? It looks like my daughter will have to complete three chapters a week to finish the book by the end of the year. Completing all the sections (not all sections have map work, though) for each chapter three times a week seems like a lot. We'll start school after Labor Day. I guess we'll see how it goes.?

Do you own a copy of The Well Trained Mind? They have a great book list there that we'll be using this year. I have a 9th grader too. Let me know if you don't have a copy and I can give you the book list.

I'm selling History Odyssey: Early Modern Level 2 on ebay in case anyone is interested. It's new but I had it in storage so it's not "shiny" and new?. Thanks.

Thanks for the tip! These are on sale in my city too.

What are you doing for History and Literature?

My oldest will be in the 9th grade too so this is all new to me. I will be attempting to teach high school TWTM way. Totally scared but going for it. Keep me in your prayers ? Algebra 2 - Saxon English 1 - Rod & Staff English 9, The Elements of Style, and Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Research Papers Rhetoric 1 - A Workbook for Arguments: A Complete Course in Critical Thinking and New Oxford Guide to Writing World Literature 1 - How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, Essential Literature Terms, and a selection of books from TWTM Ancients list. Ancient History - The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome, Study and Teaching Guide: The History of the Ancient World, The Timetables of History, and National Geographic Concise History of the World: An Illustrated Timeline Biology w/ Lab - Apologia's Exploring Creation with Biology, 2nd ed, Biology Study and Lab Notebook, lab kits, The Story of Western Science Spanish 1 - Rosetta Stone (most likely but not definite) P.E.

I second Klama. My daughter will be in the 9th grade this coming fall and we will also be studying the Ancients using SWB's The History of the Ancient World. I've put together a formal reading list for my daughter using the list in TWTM. This will be our first time using The History of the Ancient World so I don't know well the book list correlates to the chapters. I'm not going to worry about trying to keep the literature aligned with the chapters in history text. Instead, I'm going to focus on teaching her "how" to read and write about literature "The Well Trained Mind" way.

For those of you who used Apologia's Exploring Creation with Biology, which lab kits and materials did you purchase and from where? I'm looking on the Rainbow Resource site and it looks like I'll need a 1) microscope, 2) Prepared slides kit, and 3) Dissection kit. Does that sound right? Is the kit from Home Science Tools compatible? Thank you.

The Robert Fagles translation is the one recommended in both the 3rd and 4th editions of TWTM. That's the one I purchased for my daughter for the upcoming school year.

Any recommendations for safe email account providers for kids? I would like one that doesn't collect and share data and is generally safe for kids. Thanks.