High School Humanities

[Kfamily]

I'd really love if anyone here could share with me how to handle humanities in high school.

 

My goal is to combine history and literature with art and philosophy, although I do understand that others do not combine or may not even include art and philosophy. I've a number of ideas for my older dd's next humanities study and I'm hoping to check my ideas against others, catching myself in anything I might be overlooking and maybe to gathering some new ideas.

 

I'd love details such as how many papers you have your dc write (what kind, length, etc.) and how you incorporate video lectures, documentaries and other media. Also, how do you arrange and choose your booklists? Do you integrate art and if so, how do you handle this? (Philosophy too?)

 

Anyone with unique or non-conventional approaches are very welcome!:D

 

My dd is very interested in all of these subjects, so this will be meeting her needs for certain.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Kfamily

[abbeyej]

Hm, maybe my approach is just a cop-out :), but we're doing all of those things (it's just 9th grade so far) and more or less following TWTM and even though I didn't plan out each subject to coincide exactly with the others, the overlap (because of the chronology involved) is so clear that ds makes connections every day.

 

This year he's using SWB's History of the Ancient World (semester 1) and History of the Medieval World (semester 2 -- this amounts to about 40-50pp per week to read, and I have him summarize or outline each chapter as he goes). That takes us from the earliest recorded history to the first crusade (just before AD1100).

 

For literature, we're studying the following works:

Gilgamesh

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Oedipus the King

The Lord of the Flies (yes, this one is out of order -- we drawing some other thematic connections)

The Aeneid

Ovid's Metamorphoses

The Confessions

The Consolation of Philosophy

Invisible Cities (Calvino -- also out of sequence, but considering thematic elements that connect it)

Uncle Tungsten (also out of sequence -- more closely connected to this year's science: chemistry)

The Disappearing Spoon (see above)

Beowulf

The Lord of the Rings

I think our approach is basically as outlined in WTM.

 

He's also using The Bible and Its Influence, which I'm just head over heels in love with right now. :) It takes the student through the Bible (not every page or even every book, but significant portions that give a solid representation of the books of law, history, poetry, prophecy, gospels, letters, etc) while discussing literary elements and the impact of the Bible in art and culture throughout history. He's studying it spread over the whole of the year instead of in the small spots where it fits chronologically, but I think it's a perfect fit in terms of the year taken as a whole.

 

He's also doing Memoria Press's Classical Rhetoric program which uses Aristotle's Rhetoric, Adler's How to Read a Book, a study of figures of speech, and review of Latin and logic (you can skip the logic if you haven't done traditional logic previously).

 

I think this exercise in reading Aristotle's Rhetoric (not to mention some of the literature above, such as the Confessions and the Consolation of Philosophy) is good preparation for further study of philosophy in future years.

 

For art history, we're using Gardner's Art Through the Ages v. 1, which coincides fairly well with our history studies. Each week he reads the chapter (or portion of a chapter), then glues copies of the art (I determined the most economical way to do this was to buy two extra used copies of the text) into an 11x14 sketch book, copies the identifying information, and writes several sentences for each piece of art. These can be his own observations or answers to the questions from the (otherwise poorly designed) CD that comes with the text. It took him a couple of weeks to "get into" this, but now I think he's really enjoying it. I wouldn't give this text to a student who hadn't studied a little art history previously -- it might be a bit daunting. He has worked through Hilyer's A Child's History of Art and later the Annotated Mona Lisa in previous years.

 

Like I said, each of these is somewhat separate: ancient and early medieval history; literature; Bible; rhetoric; art history; (Latin prose as well)... But there is *significant* overlap day-to-day and plenty of opportunity for good discussion and connection between subjects.

[Kfamily]

Thank you abbeyej, this was exactly what I was hoping to read/learn. And we too are not exactly corresponding everything together, but they are related enough to work out that way. :001_smile:

 

We'll be using The History of Art for Young People by Janson and my plan was to add Khan Academy's art history to it. (Since we'll be covering a lot of the ancients this year, we'll be using only the art history through the ancients.

 

I really like the sound of The Bible and Its Influence. We're using, along with reading the Old Testament, The Bible Through the Ages. (It's just one of those books I happen to already have but that looks interesting.)

 

I have The Story of Philosophy and will be using just the first section (ancients) to go along as well. I want to add a book or more for philosophy, but I want to start carefully and then add as we can handle it.

 

Your explanations as to how you have your son handle the art and history (writing portion) was very helpful too.

 

This was really helpful!!:grouphug:

Edited September 25, 2012 by Kfamily

[abbeyej]

Oh, and I forgot Teaching Company lectures! Much of the lit this year corresponds to lectures from The Western Literary Canon in Context, so we're listening to those lectures as we come to them. Also using Elizabeth Vandiver's Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid sets (6 hours each, iirc).

[Candid]

We use Tapestry of Grace which does the blending for you. They use The Story of Philsophy as well but they do blend in some readings to go with the book for important people.

 

I agree with Abbeyej that the connections get made almost automatically.

 

I've posted before that one book that Tapestry uses that I think everyone should give a shot is Words of Delight which tackles the Bible as literature.

 

However, I encourage you to go over to their Bookshelf central site and look at their R materials. They are the only program I know of that includes real Ancient Egyptian poetry and a separate book on Mesopotamian poetry. It will be harder to get a grasp on Greek and Roman lit they use because they use the Norton Western Lit Anthology for those works.

[jibaker103]

We use Tapestry of Grace which does the blending for you. They use The Story of Philsophy as well but they do blend in some readings to go with the book for important people.

 

I agree with Abbeyej that the connections get made almost automatically.

 

I've posted before that one book that Tapestry uses that I think everyone should give a shot is Words of Delight which tackles the Bible as literature.

 

However, I encourage you to go over to their Bookshelf central site and look at their R materials. They are the only program I know of that includes real Ancient Egyptian poetry and a separate book on Mesopotamian poetry. It will be harder to get a grasp on Greek and Roman lit they use because they use the Norton Western Lit Anthology for those works.

 

I second Tapestry of Grace. Everything is well laid out and easy to follow. The beauty, however is in the fact you can switch levels, cut out, or supplement each week to tailor the curriculum to your students needs and/or your desires for learning. It also keeps you in check from straying to far exploring rabbit trails.

 

We are using Year 3 the 19th Century and we are loving the history, geography, literature, and the arts. We use the government as the mood strikes us and we will incorporate the philosophy starting in the spring.

[Kfamily]

Thank you both.:001_smile:

 

I'll take a look at Words of Delight, because that sounds very interesting.