Great Courses for middle school and upper elementary? Favorites?

[SJ.]

I am considering paying for the streaming service for the Great Courses through Amazon.

 

Are these engaging enough for 10 and 12 year olds? Or would it be better to wait until they are older?

 

What were your children's favorites?

 

Thanks.

[SilverMoon]

Mine were not ready at those ages. About the time they were ready for high school level work they could start working into them. Probably no more than one or two a week at first, and not independently.

 

I'd stick with documentaries awhile longer. :)

[SanDiegoMom]

I am having luck with them.  Last year we studied Ancient Egypt, and I got the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt one -- it wasn't a long one -- 12 I think? -- and I didn't use all of the lectures.  I had them make clay objects that went along with the unit while we listened.  Prior to that my son complained about how hard it was to focus during lectures or podcasts.  It still was a little hard but his attention span increased with time.  This year we are using turning points in Medieval History with Dorsey Armstrong. Again, not the whole thing, but I'm choosing high interest ones (Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Magna Carta, William the Conqueror).  They are really enjoying them even more now.  I don't have them do a lot of output for history, but we pause and discuss some and relate it back to their history text (Oxford University Press European World).  They are fifth grade now. 

 

I plan to continue choosing ones to support our text as we would documentaries.  We have Turning Points in Modern History and it is fabulous.  I can't wait to use it. 

[OneStepAtATime]

This will really depend on the kid.  My DD was not ready for these until High School.  DS liked them when he was upper elementary through 6th then stopped liking them in 7th.

 

I would encourage you, as others have done, to select the most relevant lectures and include something hands on/related to help tie it altogether.  See how it goes.  You might look at purchasing just one course through one of their sales in a topic of high interest or sign up for streaming if you can cancel at any time and just try it out.  Read the reviews.  Not all courses are well done and not all courses have a strong "entertainment factor".  In other words, for some lecturers only someone really, really dedicated to the topic would be able to stay focused for long.  :)   Others are much better at keeping even the less interested engaged.

[Dmmetler]

My DD likes Art Benjamin's math classes, but she had done an in-person workshop with him first, so I suspect that helped.

[EndOfOrdinary]

We use Great Courses a TON! Ds really responds to the audio/visual component of the teaching, then they are incorporated into other subjects. We use Great Courses Plus to stream and for the guidebooks. We started in earnest in 5th grade when my very humanities oriented Ds maxed out his very STEM major mother! Here are the ones I can remember. It has been a few years now.

 

English/Languages

Iliad

Odyssey

Aeneid

Building Great Sentences

Writing Great Essays

Latin 101 (This was for me to remember from years ago in school, though we use it if Ds needs another explanation)

Greek 101 (I am SLOWLY going through this one)

Learning and Understanding Spanish (Ds and I watch it together as grammar instruction)

 

History

Holy Land Revealed

Famous Greeks

Famous Romans

Classical Mythology

Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt

Ancient Civilizations: A Global Perspective

 

Science

World's Greatest Geological Wonders

Understanding Chemistry

Science of Extreme Weather

Exoplanets (this one I do not know how much he understood, but it was neat)

Technology of the Greeks and Romans

 

Others

Understanding Great Art

Visualizing Mathematics

 

Next Year (as of now, but might change)

Modern Political Tradition: Hobbs to Habemas

The entire Middle Ages run

Understanding Great Music

 

Just about any of the travel section we watch as a family during dinner or in the evenings in the winter. They are delightful and very neat to talk about together.

[lisabees]

DD13 loves them.  But - she was only recently motivated by her interests.

 

Here are her current faves:

 

Secret Life of Words

Story of Human Language

The Other Side of History

Secrets of Mental Math

Food: A Cultural Culinary History

Last year, she liked the Pharaoh one by Brier.  He has a hieroglyphic one now.  

Tomorrow, we will be listening to the Beowulf lecture from Heroes and Legends.  I think it will be enjoyed.

 

On Audible, she likes Dorsey Armstrong.

[MamaChicken]

My kids are 10 and 13. We have listened to a number of great courses on Audible and are now loving gc plus. We watch while we eat lunch. We're currently enjoying

The visual guide to the universe (their current favorite, paired with the nasa app Eyes on the Solar System)

Visualizing mathematics (this one is amazing. I thought it'd make a nice light math day and explained negative numbers so beautifully that I don't think either of them will ever get confused again!)

Secrets of mental math

30 greatest orchestral works

Joy of science

Origin and evolution of earth

 

Ive also cherry picked lectures depending on what we are learning about. We went to see Messiah last night and there were 3 lectures to choose from. While we were at the concert, ds10 whispered, "This part was in the lecture!"

Ds13 is writing a paper on plate tectonics and has watched several lectures from different courses.

It's also been great for the kids to explore interests like oceanography and quantum physics.

 

I say try the free month and see if they like it. I initially got it with the assumption that we'd use the guide books, but so far that's been a bust. It's been very worthwhile without them though. So, maybe a little older for that.

While I was just checking my watch list I saw that they've added a paleontology class! I think I'll watch the first lecture while I put dinner in the crock pot :)

[EndOfOrdinary]

My kids are 10 and 13. We have listened to a number of great courses on Audible and are now loving gc plus. We watch while we eat lunch. We're currently enjoying

 

...SNIP...

 

I say try the free month and see if they like it. I initially got it with the assumption that we'd use the guide books, but so far that's been a bust. It's been very worthwhile without them though. So, maybe a little older for that.

At the very end of the notes for each lecture, there are questions. They are called further thinking questions in some, comprehension questions in others, but they are the last thing before the "Recommended Reading." We use these as discussion questions A LOT. They help me measure if Ds got any of the deeper stuff or was able to link the bits together for a larger picture. There are usually only 2 or 3, so we just talk and I sneak one in and then we talk some more, sneak it in, talk. It wasn't until Ds was taking notes and really working on short answer comprehension stuff for standardized testing that we started giving them as prompts. I still like them better as just discussion questions.

[SJ.]

Thanks, everyone! We will do the trial and see how it goes.

[Hunter]

Maturation levels in ability to sit through a church sermon is about equal to the Great Courses.

 

Some sermons/lectures are more interesting than others, but basically a kid can sit through regular church or he cannot. And while some can sit obediently, they might not comprehend much.

[MamaChicken]

Good suggestion. I had unsuccessfully tried the "here is the guidebook, why don't you read it?" approach.

I think we'll use the discussion questions today. We do that for our big history videos and it works well. I think we're doing supernovas for lunch today :). I look forward to our lunchtime tv watching now.

 

At the very end of the notes for each lecture, there are questions. They are called further thinking questions in some, comprehension questions in others, but they are the last thing before the "Recommended Reading." We use these as discussion questions A LOT. They help me measure if Ds got any of the deeper stuff or was able to link the bits together for a larger picture. There are usually only 2 or 3, so we just talk and I sneak one in and then we talk some more, sneak it in, talk. It wasn't until Ds was taking notes and really working on short answer comprehension stuff for standardized testing that we started giving them as prompts. I still like them better as just discussion questions.

[deerforest]

We started using them in 4th with audio only on Audible, but we used them as supplemental materials. Some we completed in full, like the Other Side of History, but there are others like, the Culinary History one, which we started with our ancients learning a couple of years ago, and today we listened to the Columbus-1492 one. We just listen to the ones that align with our other learnings.

 

DD loves them, and we've probably used content from several dozen by this point (7th grade). But, she's a very focused and mature listener who thrives on discussion while we are listening/watching.