I asked this question on the GB, but thought I would ask here in case any of you don't read the GB forum. I am getting ready to develop a lit yr based on LOTR for my rising 9th grader. We will be using LLfLOTR, but this particular child is an advanced student that loves to analyze literature and language (she actually sees herself as a linguist one day). She has asked that we go beyond LL and learn about how Tolkien created LOTR and the works that influenced him. Since I am not a serious Tolkien fan at this kind of level (I am a fan, but a reading fan, but not a "tackling all things Tolkien" type fan), I was hoping that maybe someone on here might have some insight. I have already read and own, Kreeft's Philosophy of Tolkien and Pearce's Tolkien: Man and Myth. So those we will read, but that is not what she is asking for. I am wondering if the History of LOTR http://www.amazon.co...=A2M4Z83ZJUHG3D would be what she wants? Or Letters of Tolkien http://www.amazon.co...d=ATVPDKIKX0DER She also wants to incorporate The Silmarilliion and some of the Unfinished Tales. This part gets my head spinning b/c I don't know what order we should read things in. And, do we read the Unfinished Tales or should we read Children of Hurin or The Book of Lost Tales, etc? Any insight that may be offered would be appreciated. She really wants to understand the process that he went through as an author to create the work he did. Thanks!

Are there additional readings suggested with this? Reading the Tolkien books sounds fantastic, but are other books scheduled in there too, to make a wider variety and heftier list for the year? Or do you have to schedule those yourself, and if so, is that pretty doable, or does it make it really difficult to fit all the Tolkien components plus additional readings in? I'm envisioning doing this in ninth or tenth grade, whenever DD studies medieval history (it'll be ninth if I line her up with the younger students so we can all enjoy some family medieval excitement, tenth if I keep her on her own rotation, which would have ancients in ninth, but I'm not opposed to moving it to tenth or even twelfth), but there are other things I want her to read to go with medieval history too. Second, would it work well to use LLfLOTR along with one of the Writing With Skill books (either 2 or 3, depending on how the schedule falls)? It sounds like LLfLOTR has writing assignments but not a lot of writing instruction. I could easily make it two credits of English, or 1.5, depending on how many hours it all actually takes. I'm looking for the balance between sufficient and overkill, kwim?

My 13yo DS really likes LOTR and is interested in studying it more in depth. I've seen a lot of people mention Literary Lessons but was surprised at how expensive it is. I don't see it available used either. :( I would appreciate any feedback. Is it worth the expense? Blessings, Angela

Could someone tell me if my son would be capable of doing this at his age? He has read some heavy books: To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Hobbit, The Old Man and the Sea.... Any opinions on this, or would I be better off waiting for 9th grade? He just turned 14 this month. Thanks in advance!

First, Tolkien was Catholic and according to his correspondence, he incorporated elements of his faith and Catholic doctrine all through the LotR trilogy -- at first unconsciously and upon revision, purposely. Is this aspect LotR explored in LLftLotR? Also, I remember a lot of elements of Norse mythology wandering through the pages of LotR. Looking at the LLftLotR website, I don't see that mentioned. Does she address Norse mythology? Any help is appreciated!

It is about $55 new. I think I would like to pass down the set to my younger son to use instead of buying an additional student book. Do you have your kids write in the student book like a workbook or write their answers separately in a spiral notebook??

Would you use this curriculum on a student who really has no interest in the trilogy, and not really a super strong reader? I would say he is slightly above average. He'll be doing 7th grade work next year.

elective course? I have looked at this several times and I know my ds would really enjoy it, but it never seems to fit in our plans. For example, this coming year we will be using MFW WHL which contains a British Lit credit in the English portion. Our umbrella school requires a British Lit credit, so it's something we have to complete...but I would love to incorporate Literary Lessons from Lord of the Rings in somewhere, somehow. I was thinking I could just add it in to our MFW English, but wow, that seems like a lot for one English 10 credit, KWIM? So I was wondering if we could complete it for an elective credit, and if so, what would I call it. I mean one should be learning literary lessons in their main Lit program, so not sure I can get two credits for doing pretty much the same thing with different books.:confused: Just trying to talk this out, see if I can come up with a plan of action, or if I should just forget about LoTR and carry on as planned. Advice anyone?

Can we just list Literature curriculum for 8th grade? I'm specifically looking for something that uses whole books and expects essay writing. So far I've looked at Literary Lessons from LOTR (daughter's favorite, but she'll have already read the books) Excellence In Literature English I (my preference) I'd appreciate other suggestions.

to join us here and face your fears. :lol: Yes Heather, that includes you. :D

The website for LLfLOTR says that you need one student book per student. Is it possible to share student books? If one student is from another family, would he need his own student book at home? Thanks! Jean

My ds will be using Beautiful Feet's Middle Ages study next year for his 8th grade year. There is some writing, research and vocabulary involved. Would it be too much to add Language Lessons from Lord of the Rings or IEW's Medieval History for writing? I haven't seen either in person, so I'm not sure what is included. I'm assuming IEW would just be writing. I think LLFLOTR includes writing with literary analysis and vocabulary (?). Would doing one of these with BF be too much? What if we left out BF's writing? How much writing is included with LLFLOTR? My ds hasn't done any literary analysis at all, and he hasn't even read LOTR yet, so I think doing LLFLOTR would be great. But I love the look and step-by-step approach of IEW's lessons. He definitely needs work with writing, but maybe literary analysis can wait. Hmmm.... What do you think?

So, we've finished up the first book (1/2 of FoTR) of LoTR, and next comes the first unit study, on Tolkien's life. I know many people have mentioned the Unit Studies being their favorite part of LLfLOTR and how rich they were, and have very much been looking forward to them, and so I wanted to ask... how did you approach these? Just reading through the few pages of each study and taking the quiz seems like not enough. For this first study, I thought of assigning Tolkien's biography (which I've read myself in the past and thoroughly enjoyed), but since the whole unit study in a way is a summary of that, it seems like then it would be boring to have to read the actual unit study, so I thought it might end up being overkill... How about the next one on Exploring Language (on that one my friend has TC lectures on Linguistics - I may borrow some of those :D ) - any other ideas? How did you flesh out these unit studies? When we get to Gawain, Beowulf and Arthur, we'll be reading (or at least listening to) the texts of those books - and we've just finished studying the Iliad and Odyssey - but what about the other unit studies? Any fabulous ideas you can share? Did you do any of the suggested projects or papers, and which ones were the most successful/memorable?

and how did you put all that down on your transcript? This would be for my 10th grade son, who will be studying the Middle Ages. I am trying to decided between this option and using SMARR. We used SMARR ancients last year but I'm not sure I want to use it again. My son, who used to love to read, will hardly pick up a book now in his free time. I don't know if this came from all the analyzing, too much writing, or just his age! I thought I would try something a little lighter this year, maybe. Thanks!

My ds, about to start 6th grade, really wants to do LLFLOTR this coming school year. He has read the books before and as we will be studying the medieval times, he wants to add this. We have never used a formal literary analysis program before. We have talked about what we have read and have looked through parts of Figuratively Speaking. Would LLFLOTR be too much as a first intro to lit. analysis? Also, do I need both the student and teacher books or can I just use the teacher book?

One of the last few decisions I need to make for next year. My son is a voracious reader however, we need to slow down and analyze a few because I think he is missing a lot of the symbolism from his favorites. Anybody have any strong pros or cons for either?

What are the other books that are used ? Thanks so much for any help.

Situation 1. DD13 wants to do LL LOTR next year for English. This is supposedly a year-long course, I looked at the samples, descriptions, schedule. However, it seems to include only one work, i.e. it deals only with Tolkien. I am outsourcing English and she will be supervised by a tutor, however, tutor being like-minded, she also feels this LOTR inadequate amount of reading for the whole academic year, particularly in light of the fact that DD pretty much read it all once already so we are looking into additional readings. What have you found to be good supplementary readings for this course, which would somehow "logically" fit in? I would like to keep it as "English" as possible as it makes little sense to have her go through the type of readings that I normally would / will group with the chronological order of Italian and world readings in Italian. DD13 is a strong reader with a good command of English, though literature is not one of her favorite subjects. ALSO, how much time weekly LL LOTR generally takes? Situation 2. This year DD14 had a relatively loose, mishmash year regarding English: she read fairly difficult and diverse readings, but not really structured by any particular logic (mostly British literature this year - two Shax plays, Byron's poetry and Childe Harold, one Dickens, Milton's Samson - and some Yiddish and German works in English translation, some poetry, as well as her own free readings which I allowed her to group with "school" readings as I did not want to sweat this particular area this year). This kid LOVES reading. I need some sort of general idea of what to do with her English next year. Neither she nor I function well without some sort of a structure and some organization of material. I do chronological literature tied to History for Italian (which includes non-Italian readings too, though whenever we stumble upon something English in the upper years we intend to read it in English), and now we are still "finding ourselves" as to how to organize English. For now, I think I should favor the approach of thematical readings or readings organized by national literature, i.e. the way it usually done (you know: British literature, American literature, Some-theme in literature with mostly English spine, etc.), rather than applying WTM approach to English too. So I have a question, being that she already pretty much started "British literature" and feels it would be fine to continue with that by "rounding" it into a course, and also to have a break from the 2-year Ancients cycle she is trapped in for history, classics and Italian, how do I go about organizing that into a reasonable unit which she can complete next year? What do you find are important works to cover and is there a good spine you can recommend (not that we absolutely need one, but just in case you do know something good)? I talked to her as to what she wants to do, but she is generally undecided, has no particular focus and would like some general structure that would be mostly chronological. So... suggestions, experiences? Her tutor has a "you decide, I teach it" policy. Thank you in advance. :)

We have a pretty good grounding in basic lit analysis and will be coming up to our first literary analysis paper next year. Since I feel we have the lit analysis itself covered, is there anything anyone would suggest that would incrementally walk us through how to tackle the lit analysis paper? In looking over the samples of IEW's Windows to the World, it seems like it is primarily intended to teach lit analysis with unit 5 focusing on teaching how to write a paper. Am I misunderstanding the sample? Thanks!

Earlier this academic year, someone posted a great description of this course for transcripts. I thought I printed it or bookmarked it, but now I can't locate it. Did anyone save this or remember who posted it? Thanks!!!

Hi! I am planning on using Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings. Once we finish this, where do we go next? What are similar style courses?

Here is what I am contemplating: MFW: Ancients and Lit Literary Langugae Lessons for Lord of the Rings Apologia Biology online Lial's Introductory Algebra Analytical Grammar Rosetta Stone Spanish Fallacy Detective Student Writing Intensive C this summer and next summer. I really like the look of MFW but he is keen on doing LLLFLOTR. I am afraid that it will be to much. Am I missing anything? What would you change and why? Also, what would you add and why? Thanks ladies! Jeana

We will be working through the King Arthur unit studies next week. Anybody BTDT and have any appropriate movie suggestions? Thanks!

I am planning to use LLftLOTR next year with ds. My question is, is there enough writing and vocabulary in this program or will I need to supplement. We usually do a lot of writing and we do Wordly Wise, but ds is already a year ahead in that. I would be happy to have an all-in-one LA program. I just don't want to leave anything out. We will also be using SL Core 7 (with Speilvogel instead of SOTW). I'm thinking ds will probably read most of the readers (he loves to read), but skip the assignments pertaining to them. Will that be enough? Thanks!

I'm starting to think about next year. Can y'all talk to me about LLfLOTR, please? I'm trying to decide if I should even keep it on the consideration table. I'm set on doing Rod & Staff English, Sequential Spelling, and Sonlight 7 (history & lit) next year. The following year I plan on moving into Omnibus with my older 2, so next year would be my best opportunity to fit it in. My ds10 is a huge Tolkien fan. He's almost done reading the LOTR trilogy. He's definitely a stronger/faster reader than ds11. Ds11 is a good reader, but slower than molasses. Given these facts, would LLfLOTR be too redundant and/or time consuming? I need to poke around at their samples some more, but I value the opinions here, so any input you can give me would be appreciated!