If you used Philosophy for Kids

[Roadrunner]

From Proflock press, can you tell me if you did anything for written output? I am planning on mostly going over it orally, but hoping somebody had a brilliant idea and created some sort of a "workbook" for it. I am tempted to create a page for each philosopher we cover with main points maybe. Thoughts?

[deerforest]

Nope, and I intentionally didn't go into any additional details about the philosopher than what was included. I am planning on a more advanced course probably in 8th.

 

We used it in 6th and we both read the selections separately, DD would do the included exercises and then we discussed together. We went through it much faster because she loved it so much. I actually liked that the focus was a little bit on philosophy and a lot on her own opinions and discussion points.

 

The things we loved about it (and it was her favorite thing we did last year) definitely would have been lost if I had wrapped this initial intro into anything else. She is now quite sure she loves philosophy and that was my goal!

[Miss Tick]

We've done the first half of the book and we have just done it orally over dinner. Any more requirements from me and there would be a revolt. Sorry!

[Farrar]

We used most of it. I usually picked out one of the questions at the end (or, even more often, had the kids pick one that "spoke" to them) and do a sort of freewrite in response to it.

 

The questions are better for discussion, IMHO, than writing. Though, honestly, that was one of the things that I didn't love about it. Sometimes the questions seemed a little... out of left field or something. The path from the philosopher to the topic to the questions was a little meandering.

 

Still, overall, a good experience. We skipped around a little but probably did about 2/3 of the book.

[Momto6inIN]

We're about halfway through and have just done discussion with it. We really have had some lovely meaty discussions with it! It's amusing to hear the emotional 12 year old DD get so passionate about something and have her two 14 and 16 year old brothers completely dismiss her with their cold hard logic ... great arguments ensue and the 8 year old DD rolls her eyes and asks if we can move on to the next question LOL

[Roadrunner]

We will go with consensus - no written output. I guess I was worried about retention, but maybe we will just treat this as an interesting intro to philosophy and reinforce in later years. Thanks!