vision of HS: TWTM or TOG as spines ...

[serendipitous journey]

Hi! I'm visiting from the K-8 board ... I know there's lots of time before we hit high school, but I'm working out what I want my trajectory to be like, and am having a hard time deciding where I'd like us to be in high school. The two main ends that make sense to me are to follow TWTM recommendations, or to base us out of TOG (and also follow TWTM recs ;)).

 

We are secular but morality/ethics/character is central to my homeschooling efforts, and I am working toward a very firm grounding in Biblical studies. I'm not concerned about keeping us rigorous/accomplished in math & science b/c those are strengths in our household; also, Button is accelerated in math (and in language), which I mention in case that would change your suggestions. I'm just thinking that the structure of TOG might serve us well and result in a deeper, better-rounded education. But it may be that following TWTM recs, which I hope I am disciplined enough to do :001_smile:, would be even deeper and more rounded.

 

Any thoughts y'all have would be very much appreciated!

[Janice in NJ]

Hi! (Waving - don't know how to make the cheerful, little waving guy appear...)

 

Welcome to the Self-Ed/High School Boards.

 

So, what's your background? Have you read any of the Great Books? Lots of them? Studied them in College? We all come from different backgrounds here. :001_smile:

 

What do you think high school will look like? Are you psyched? Scared? What do you hope for?

 

Have you perused the TOG site? Downloaded the sample? Have you read the high school sections of TWTM? How about Susan's WEM? Have you tried to read Don Quixote a la WEM style? ;)

 

Janice

[mjbucks1]

Hi there!!

 

Janice asked you some excellent questions!! I thought I would just tell you why I chose TOG. Although fairly well read, I have not read through all the books I want my children to read. I work on Saturdays outside the home, have a 3 year old, and have a mother-in-law going through indefinate treatment for cancer (and she was living with us when I made the decision to go with TOG). I decided that for me, TOG would be easier in that I would already have everything I needed, including wonderful teacher notes and discussion questions. I wrestled with this decision for almost a year. Ds is finishing week 3 of TOG year 1, and I love it. I could not pull off anything close to what TOG has, BUT that doesn't mean someone else can't. I am certain there are many bright moms out there who are strictly following TWTM and doing it very well. I think you are wise to start looking ahead toward high school. Many blessings!!

[serendipitous journey]

Hi! (Waving - don't know how to make the cheerful, little waving guy appear...)

 

Welcome to the Self-Ed/High School Boards.

 

So, what's your background? Have you read any of the Great Books? Lots of them? Studied them in College? We all come from different backgrounds here. :001_smile:

 

What do you think high school will look like? Are you psyched? Scared? What do you hope for?

 

Have you perused the TOG site? Downloaded the sample? Have you read the high school sections of TWTM? How about Susan's WEM? Have you tried to read Don Quixote a la WEM style? ;)

 

Janice

 

Hi Janice! (friendly wavey icon here, too :001_smile:) Thank you so much for the reply, and for helping me clarify my thoughts (which are not well-formed, and I have a head cold besides )

 

I have a horrid educational background pre-college (not good schools), an art history degree from a good, small liberal arts school and a masters in Neuroscience (I left the PhD program to homeschool). I have read some selection of Great Books but not all: the Bible a few times, the Iliad and Odyssey, Paradise Lost, some Dante, and a few more modern things; some theology and philosophy. Everything translated into English, which is my only language.

 

I'm hoping HS will be a good time for Button to read widely and deeply and work through his own sense of meaning. Aside from that, I'd like to make sure he gets a good foundation in music & art history, is able to enjoy poetry and good literature, has an excellent history background and a sophisticated science understanding. (not much to hope for!) and math is very important, fun too I hope, so we're planning on moving past calculus to linear algebra/fancy statistics.

 

this prob. sounds horridly arrogant or ambitious. but it's just a dream at this point.

 

I'm psyched RE high school, but DH frets we won't be able to provide a truly excellent education RE the private schools who have teachers with advanced degrees in their fields. also he mourns the lack of an air table for AP Physics :001_smile: but thinks we can prob. work around it.

 

I've read TWTM, incl the hs section, and WEM but not lately (years ago). I've just started looking at the TOG sample and like much of it, but of course our worldview is different. I'd start ancient history with the diaspora from Africa and prehistory, ideally ...

 

-- thank you again for your help focusing my questions! and please forgive any abruptness/apparent over confidence; it's dinner hour here and my oodles of caveats/insecurities may not be coming through....:D

 

PS (adding as an edit): what I thought TOG could specifically add was accountability, guarantee of topical coverage and guidance with in-depth analysis. I also had thought of maybe VP for grades 2-6, then switching to Kolbe, but wasn't sure if the umbrella program idea is best for us ...

Edited September 22, 2011 by serendipitous journey

[Starr]

Have you looked at SWB's high school history books? She has an Ancients and Medieval out. Check Peace Hill Press.

[Candid]

I strongly suggest you get download the Tapestry samples and read through both Dialectic and Rhetoric discussions and think about what you'd have to do differently in those discussions to fit your world view.

 

I've used Tapestry for four years and am presently leading a Rhetoric level discussion on the year one literature. Tapestry is amazing, but it also includes clear analysis of the world view and its own Christian point of view. I find that essential, but I'm not sure a secular user would.

[Janice in NJ]

Hi Janice! (friendly wavey icon here, too :001_smile:) Thank you so much for the reply, and for helping me clarify my thoughts (which are not well-formed, and I have a head cold besides )

 

I have a horrid educational background pre-college (not good schools), an art history degree from a good, small liberal arts school and a masters in Neuroscience (I left the PhD program to homeschool). I have read some selection of Great Books but not all: the Bible a few times, the Iliad and Odyssey, Paradise Lost, some Dante, and a few more modern things; some theology and philosophy. Everything translated into English, which is my only language.

 

I'm hoping HS will be a good time for Button to read widely and deeply and work through his own sense of meaning. Aside from that, I'd like to make sure he gets a good foundation in music & art history, is able to enjoy poetry and good literature, has an excellent history background and a sophisticated science understanding. (not much to hope for!) and math is very important, fun too I hope, so we're planning on moving past calculus to linear algebra/fancy statistics.

 

this prob. sounds horridly arrogant or ambitious. but it's just a dream at this point.

 

I'm psyched RE high school, but DH frets we won't be able to provide a truly excellent education RE the private schools who have teachers with advanced degrees in their fields. also he mourns the lack of an air table for AP Physics :001_smile: but thinks we can prob. work around it.

 

I've read TWTM, incl the hs section, and WEM but not lately (years ago). I've just started looking at the TOG sample and like much of it, but of course our worldview is different. I'd start ancient history with the diaspora from Africa and prehistory, ideally ...

 

-- thank you again for your help focusing my questions! and please forgive any abruptness/apparent over confidence; it's dinner hour here and my oodles of caveats/insecurities may not be coming through....:D

 

PS (adding as an edit): what I thought TOG could specifically add was accountability, guarantee of topical coverage and guidance with in-depth analysis. I also had thought of maybe VP for grades 2-6, then switching to Kolbe, but wasn't sure if the umbrella program idea is best for us ...

 

Hi Ana,

Knee-jerk reaction? You have time on your side, and you have a good understanding of the challenges ahead of you. Before investing a large amount of money in a program you may not need, I would start with TWTM suggestions. Just start reading the great books. The WEM offers lots of guidance; use on-line freebies like Spark Notes to give you a leg up when you need it.

 

For history, I would suggest you check your library for an AP history prep book; browsing it should calm your fears about what the private schools are doing: even they don't try to cover everything. Then check your library for the high-school history spines recommended in TWTM. If they are too tough, drop back to the 8th grade recommendation.

 

If you're looking for more, I can recommend two of the Great Courses in particular. Don't buy them without checking your library system. Most good systems have TC courses; these are two of the most popular.

 

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=370

 

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=2100

 

I really think you should explore on your own first. If you decide to go with TOG, you will know why you want it.

 

Peace,

Janice

 

Enjoy your little people

Enjoy your journey

[Nan in Mass]

We are a TWTM/TWEM family. I don't follow the recommendations exactly but adapt them to my children. We have love this method. It gave us the flexibility to choose which books we wanted to read. We did scifi instead of most of the moderns. It gave us a method of analyzing literature that my children went on to apply to everything. Just this summer, my son, who is in college, told me about the new modern fiction series he is enjoying. LOL He spent most of a car ride voluntarily, with no prompting from me whatsoever, answering most of TWEM questions for the series. My sons do the same thing when they come back from a movie, as well. Is it an in-depth analysis? No. But they give it voluntarily and with no prompting. It seems to have sunk in and become part of how they think about the world. I am uneducated as far as literature goes. TWEM uses one set of very general questions for each genre rather than a set of questions that is specific to a particular book. I think that is why my children were able to take the pattern and continue to apply it on their own. It certainly is why I was able to take the pattern and apply it to whatever works we chose to cover. I had no luck getting my children to discuss things given specific questions, but those general questions produced many good discussions. They were very applicable discussions, too. For example, when we read Plato's Republic, we spent lots of time discussing the role of gymnastics in my children's lives. Star Trek entered into many literature discussions, too LOL. TWEM let my children work from their experience; I didn't have to scramble around making connections with their own experience and drag that sideways to meet someone else's questions. As far as the other things recommended in TWTM for high school, I found the general method for tackling any sort of book helpful.

I know nothing about TOG, so I can't compare the two for you.

Nan

[Tullia]

I haven't used TOG, but I have looked at a friend's materials. It is impressive, but based on the things in your op I agree with the suggestion to look at samples to see if the perspective works for your family. FWIW, several years back I used Omnibus I and found juggling the Reformed theological perspective with ours exhilarating one year, but by the following year our lives had become complicated so I switched to a college text as our spine.

 

Even though we didn't always use specific TWTM curriculum suggestions (I'm mostly familiar with the 1st edition), following the general guidelines kept me on track with regard to goals without making me feel overly confined. When WEM was published, I bought a copy to use as a reference, but somewhere along the line my son discovered it and WEM edged out most of our lit curriculum. In fact, he has "our" copy on his bookshelf now because he's using it this semester.

 

ETA: Didn't see Nan's post before I posted. Now, I'm wondering what it is about those general questions??? Nan wrote: "I had no luck getting my children to discuss things given specific questions, but those general questions produced many good discussions." Same here.

Edited September 22, 2011 by Martha in NM

[serendipitous journey]

Thank you so very much for the thoughtful and kind replies.

 

Michelle, I also have in-laws who live with us (in an attached but separate space, in our case; maybe you could say we live with them!) and in the back of my mind is what to do if and they need more intensive care or end of life care . After the other responses I'm leaning toward trying to adapt TWTM instead of using TOG, but I think I'll keep tabs on TOG as an alternate for a year (or years) when our family's energies shift toward our elder members. Thank you for the perspective, and blessings for you and your family.

 

I've been looking at the replies over the last couple of days, and re-reading portions of TWTM, and looking a bit at TOG (it's hectic here! I'm sure you all understand :001_smile:). I think a good strategy would be to read carefully and then teach the TOG sample I have, or at least work through it far enough to get a good feel for it. If TOG seems to add enough to our homeschool to balance the different religious perspective, maybe I can try to incorporate it during one of our elementary years. Either way, I'll hit the books and read TWTM's later-years guidelines, look at the AP resources a la Janice's suggestion, and plan to do a TC video series with an eye to using them as spines or supplements. -- I am watching their History of Science course (sporadically ;)) at the moment and have been seriously tempted to run our history along those lines -- except that I'd have the same feeling after watching their art and music histories, so I guess I should just plan on coordinating them all and having a truly fabulous lesson plan. Until that magical moment, I'll keep winging it ...

 

it was wonderful to hear that the general questions approach has served so well; I'll be getting a copy of WEM to help me with that.

 

than you again. I'm very, very grateful, and especially that you have been so tolerant and encouraging of my grand hopes & my looking far ahead!

[Nan in Mass]

TWEM is great. Where else could you get one book that would cover Tristan et Iseult (in French), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Peter Rabbit, The Odyssey, Chaucer, Macbeth, Ben Franklin's autobiography, Wodehouse, The Householder, and Roman Lives (to name a few of the things we've applied it to)?

Nan

[Janice in NJ]

Oh - one more thing, Ana,

 

At this stage I would strongly caution you against spending (wasting?) too much time generating grand, long-term plans. At this point, your time is better spent directly interacting with the material itself.

 

I've been sucked into the curriculum vortex more times than I care to share. I always think it's going to generate some great peace in my life. No so! It just takes a ton of time - most of it completely wasted. (If my spreadsheet folder could talk.......:glare:)

 

It truly is better to spend your time reading history and the great books at this point. Study science. Explore the arts. Interact directly with the books and lectures themselves.

 

Time spent figuring out how to organize it so you can offer it to your kids at some future date is no where NEAR as productive. Really. I've been around on these boards for over ten years. That plan-the-perfect-long-term-education path is strewn with dead bodies. We can tell you stories about gals who have passed through these chat-pages over the years - gals who devoted themselves headlong to the job of learning all there was to learn about curriculum. Many, many, many of them no longer homeschool.

 

Your kids are young. You have time. Rather than search for the perfect organizing tool - just in case ;) - begin interacting with the great books and world history directly. The organizing tools will be there when/if you need them. (Psst. They will have improved by then. The laws of homeschool marketing seem to dictate that products need to be updated at least every four years.) And the more you self-educate, the better you will be at selecting tools for your entry level when/if you ever need them for organizational purposes.

 

Make sense?

 

Peace,

Janice

[Nan in Mass]

Yup. That is why TWTM works for me. It is a procedure that I follow every day with whatever materials look good that day. I, too, have spent oodles of time planning future materials only to find when we arrived at that point that better materials had arrived on my doorstep or that my childrnen had a better idea or that whatever I had planned was now unsuitable. I'm not saying that you don't need a grand plan. You do, absolutely. I just don't think it should be planned in great detail. Don't count pages and assign dates to anything further than a few months or at most one school year away. In all likelihood, when the time comes, the plan will have changed, at least a little bit.

Nan

[Nscribe]

Ditto on what Janice and Nan said.

 

As the time has drawn nearer, I have found being able to be nimble/flexible to be huge.

 

Example, we hit this year and my daughter was totally ready to tackle Biology with a hefty dose of Chemistry as well. Before, I had assumed we would tackle one, then the other, matching to math levels. However, after the holidays last year I assessed and realized we would spend this year doing just for the sake of doing, if I didn't change course. So, I read these forums and settled on using Zumdahl Chemistry, Miller/Levine Biology, some Teaching Company complementary pieces.

 

Seven weeks into it I am so glad I did versus staying with the program I had planned. She grew in maturity so much over the last year she was ready and frankly I would not have guessed that factor change back two years earlier.

[mjbucks1]

At this stage I would strongly caution you against spending (wasting?) too much time generating grand, long-term plans. At this point, your time is better spent directly interacting with the material itself.

 

:iagree:

Janice, you are so right!!!!!!!