I can see the importance of learning another living language, ie French or Spanish, not just because you want to order a coffee in France one day, but because it enhances your thinking about your own language. Learning a living language is fun when you do go to the country and get to speak it; I have had this amazing experience myself. You get to understand an entire new world and way of thinking through interacting with other people in that language. However, because there are no Latin speaking nations today, this experience would not be a future option. So why is Latin so important outside of word roots that can be learnt with Caesar's English? Why not French, Spanish or Italian, plus a word roots program? What secret am I missing?

I also want to add that it is so important to point out that the NT supercedes the OT. By that I mean that if it says, for example: "an eye for an eye" in the OT, and "turn the other cheek" in the NT, then the NT teaching supercedes the former. I really think this is foundational teaching if anyone is to understand Christianity, because so many people who did not learn basic theology are confused about it. For example, how many times have you read comments to news articles from people sending the most inhumane verses from Leviticus to support the idea that 'Christianity is violent'? And then you get groups who don't understand the Christian message, like this one: http://www.splcenter...entity-movement who simply reinforce the idea that Christianity is somehow based on teachings that you should use violence or ostracism, which confirms to the uneducated, who don't understand logical fallacies, and those who are already prejudiced, that Jesus taught this sort of thing! I ran a program in sunday school for a few years, and we used the Telling God's Story text which focuses on the gospels are central. The author writes an introduction about why he starts with the gospels. If you ask anyone who went to sunday school 30 years ago, what they learnt, they will tell you they only learnt stories from the OT! There was a survey I once came across, and most Christians don't even know who Paul was, or that he wrote most of the NT! My 2c :)

"Christianity" is not the Old Testament, but the New Testament. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realised this, and most sunday school teachings used to base their stories on the Old Testament. The Old Testament is Judaism. If you want to give your children a true flavour of Christianity, then read one of the gospels, Luke might be the best; but add Matthew's the Sermon on the Mount. Then read a story book about Paul's road to Damascus story where he is blinded by a light. Read some of Paul's letters, especially Galatians, 1Cor 13, and also 1John. These books are the foundation of Western Christian culture. When reading OT stories, it is important to point out to children that it was written 200-800 years before Jesus even walked the earth, and that it makes the basis of Jewish scriputure. The context for writing the OT includes the insecurity and wars around Israel at the time. It is such a huge topic!

I found the Intermediate Logic by Nance to be too dry and mathematical, plus way too hard even for me. Cothran FL II was fun and had lots of exercises. There are quotes from Thomas Aquinas and other famous historical people, that you analyse. Enthymemes are in both Nance's 1st book and Cothran's 2nd, but they approach them slightly differently. Enthymeme analysis is one of the most important things to learn in formal logic IMO. These are arguments with one or more terms missing. Practice at finding the missing terms is fun and also vital for good reasoning and writing, plus uncovering bad reasoning (when a fallacy is revealed in the missing term). HTH

Martin Cothran believes you should start with Formal Logic, not Informal (ie fallacy detective). I've reviewed a stack of logic books and have gone through all the exercises in Nance's and Cothrans Formal logic books, prior to introducing them to my son. I really don't know how I could have taught it without having gone through the book by myself first. This is what worked for us: We read through Fallacy Detective (in spite of MC's advice) in grade 6. It was a fun intro to Logic that inspired my son to tackle formal logic. Then I introduced Formal Logic in grade 7. I bought the Nance Intro to Logic, plus answer book and DVDs and my son has now almost finished it. I found that the Nance Intro to Formal Logic was better than Cothran's Logic I, but Cothran's Logic II was better than Nance's Intermediate Logic. The thing I like about Nance is the very short teaching and minimal theory, followed plenty of exercises, in each section. Next we will do Cothran's Logic II. After that we will probably go over it all again!

My father went to boarding school and also loved it. I think it's a great idea for teenagers. The disruption of getting to and from school, especaially in traffic, or the experience of having to endure bullies on public transport, would not be an issue if they were boarding. They also get room mates their own age and get to enjoy communal life, like dining rooms, like monks do. It's a little like 'homeschooling' but AT school. We went to see a boarding school that has one of the best reputations in our state. If we had to drive him there each day it would mean 2 hours a day in a car for him, and they still have to do 3 hours of homework, sleep 10 hours and eat! Anyway, the facilities were amazing, and the teens are guided and looked by professionals after every step of the way. We are hoping our son will agree to go when he's in grade 10, but at the moment he is totally against the idea.

Along with a whole stack of MCT books, I also added Linda Fisher's "A Will of her Own" to read to my 12 yr old. I was hoping it was something like the Shakespeare Stealer series. Boy was I in for a shock! I had to skim over lots of bits about brothels and prostitutes, inlcuding a reference to Will Shakespeare using a brothel and sneering about his wife and kids. WS was also portrayed as an opportunist and has a kind of a cunning, slimy, smartarse character that does not fit our picture of WS at all!! Also, the main character, the 'hero', Lucy, steals money from her dad 'because he never gives her any'. WS steals a wallet. Sheesh! I gave up at chapter 7 and got rid of the book completely. According to RFWP the book is suitable from age 10 onwards. Seems they haven't even read it themselves!

MCT (Michael Clay Thompson) series

MCT (Michael Clay Thompson) series

I have a son who sounds just like yours (he has HFA with severe ADHD). When we started homeschooling last year, we were advised by MUS to begin at Alpha and work quickly through the first 4-5 levels. After doing this, he is now on Epsilon. I know it's time consuming and tedious to go back to the beginning, but I felt we had some holes to plug up first, and so I'm glad we did. Poor Executive Function (breaking things into steps and following it) is a big problem with HFA and ADHD, so it would be essential to have a thorough knowledge of the basics. Also, Algebra isn't usually recommended until 8th grade. Your son must only be in 6th grade, and even for kids who are academic and do not have ADHD, it would be hard. HTH

That's great news! I'm having withdrawls. If they were afraid of 'someone' not associated with homeschooling/education stealing their talks, for whatever reason I can't imagine, they could always create a subscription. Even then it wouldn't be necessary, because there are ways to download even the most 'undownloadable' videos/audios on the internet, for those who have the time .... which ironically aren't the educators. I did try to listen to them with my phone, but the sound quality was so bad I could barely understand a word, plus jogging with the new wider Nseries Nokia in my pocket isn't much fun.

Shelagh's videos are here: http://www.rfwp.com/pages/shelagh-gallagher/videos/ I downloaded them to my ipod, but I haven't watched them yet, so can't comment.

We love all his books. I wouldn't skip Paragraph Town - you don't have to buy the entire level; just pick and choose. In fact, we will be going back over PT when my son has finished IEW-B, even though we are almost finished Voyage level grammar. Also, I wouldn't miss Caesar's Eng. Where can I find Shelagh Gallagher's PBL speech? thanks

They used to have all of their audios available on MP3, and now they've changed it :sad: I used to download them to my ipod and listen as I went for a run or walk, or during long drives. Who has time to sit at a computer for even half an hour when you could use that half hour to do 2 things at once: exercise and be inspired? I have already emailed them twice, begging for the videos to become available on MP3. They replied saying that they have changed it to vimeo because they are unsure at the moment about what to do with copyright etc. <sigh> Quite frankly, I'm sure there are still ways of copying Vimeo videos to MP3; I just don't have the time to go looking for and fiddling around with converters etc. :bored: So, I suggest that more homeschoolers email Circe and express your needs; that homeschoolers need the MP3 versions as we just do NOT have time to sit for too long! We need to double up on things like exercise and listening!!

Does he have any free podcasts specifically about LToW?

I don't think you need the entire package, but I would start with the books Sentence Island, Practice Island and Building Language. They are deceptively far more advanced than they look. Plus they are a LOT on fun! You can get through these fairly quickly and move onto Paragraph Town and Practice, plus CE, then onto Voyage level. If you are interested in poetry; Music of the Spheres is at Island level, but once again more advanced than it looks.

I've bought and read nearly all of their books in the first 3 levels, and for a 6th grader I would start with Sentence Island, Practice Island and Building Language. You should be able to move up to the Voyage level within a year. A similar question was asked here: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/466095-be-honest-is-mct-worth-the-money/

I share everyone else's view: we absolutely LOVE MCT! I love hearing how much everyone else is enjoying it as well. The books are so incredibly original and funny. Whoever thought of making word roots interact with each other as characters (in Building Language) or having a fish go in search of sentences, or a duck go looking for paragraphs and finding himself in a street where everything is topsy turvy? The bit where he looks out at the reader intrigued my son no end. Oh, and another favourite: anyone else read 'John Silver and the Vague Abstraction'? It's in Grammar Voyage. Two kids end up on an island where they meet LJS and they correct his grammar. LJS has a 'pet' called the vague abstraction. You should see my son do an impersonation of it! Start with Sentence Island. If you just buy that, perhaps with Sentence Practice, then you can decide from there if you want to continue.

Don't miss it! Your child will meet 'Sub' and "Re' and all the other characters who interact and come to life. This doesn't happen in CE. By bringing them to life, the child remembers them. There's also an exercise in BL, where the child has to draw a picture of all the characters like Sub, Re, Ex, De and Spect. I love MCT because it's so original.

Thank you so much; I really appreciate your input. It's given me courage to be stricter with it. We only have a few more years with our son and we want to fill that time with quality input, rather than 'vidiot' games!

LOL, I like that description :) We are going to ban the computer during the week, but still deciding what to do about weekends. Would still love to hear other people's policies

My son is 12 and we have been allowing 1 hour per day and 4 hours over the weekend free time (semi supervised) on his laptop. All he does is play minescraft and he became so addicted that his whole day was centered on getting that one hour at the end of the day on minecraft. It became a major, major stress for him and us, and a constant distraction from his school work, social time and other activities. So my dh and I are trying to decide what to do: ban computer time altogether? Ban minecraft and gaming, but only allow Wikipedia? Only allow Wii sport games? Incidently, one of the top schools for boys where I live encourages parents to ban gaming altogether with boys up to the age of 15 at least, and it cites reseach that shows how this age group and gender tends to get more addicted than any other (LOL, who needs research to tell you that?). Girls, OTOH, tend towards getting addicted to social media. I also work as a nurse part time in an adolescent mental health unit, and all phones, laptops and gaming are totally banned (except Wii Fit and Sport). I would love to hear from other parents who have found a solution to this problem! Total bans? Allowing only certain sites?

I would start with Island level, then move to Town level within the year. Island level is NOT simplistic, and quite challenging. In fact even *I* learnt a great deal from the story book Sentence Island .... and I'm still recovering from it! My son loved SI and Paragraph Town so much; he is still talking about them a year later.

My 12 year old son scribbles horrible outlines that often make no sense and show total contempt for the exercise. Then he proceeds to write his own way, ignoring the outline altogther. His essays are about average, but need many prompts from me, as though I'm his 'invisible outline'. He's doing IEW-B. I have seen many threads from experienced homeschoolers, saying how important outlining is. How much should I push this outlining? Is there another way to teach outlining, a fun creative source out there that might inspire him? Or should I drop outlining? Thanks :)

My ds did it last year, in 6th grade, and it was a huge struggle. Mainly because he is not an independent worker. I persisted and persisted, but I wish so much now I had waited at least another year. Many others share this view; that a child will get a lot more out of it if used later. I'd say the ideal would be 7th, even 8th. I should have spent far more time in 6th with narrations. Now I have to go back to narration to fill in some of those gaps. We got all the way through to the independent project in WWS, then swapped to IEW-B. IEW was SO easy after WWS! Ds, now 7th, has no trouble at all with IEW, and he also writes his own stories inbetween lessons.