I am a homeschool mum of 4 boys (3 school age). We are currently doing Story of the World from The Well Trained Mind for history. I want to start to supplement this spine with some of the history and literature suggestions you have listed; especially/only for my oldest who is 12 (starting Grade 7 in the new academic year in Feb (we are in Australia)). My boys do History together, and in 2025 we will be studying "Early Modern Times: Elizabeth to the Forty-Niners."
In the spirit of "progress over perfection" may I ask, can I take sections from older grades from your curriculum, to supplement The Story of the World for my seventh grader...or would they be developmentally unsuitable?
(Last bit of explanation: It is hard to get on top of everything when I feel like my own education was so deficient! I don't have a strong enough working knowledge of the texts in your curriculum to make these decisions on my own, and at the same time, I can't just put everything on hold until I get myself up to speed.) I will appreciate any of your thoughts!
I think many of the texts I currently have available would be suitable for a younger student as long as they he is a pretty strong reader. You can also feel free to sift through the questions in the study guides and lower the number your student does. In fact, I rarely assign all questions in a lesson to my own students. I might tell them to pick 4 logic questions, 1-2 rhetoric questions, and 1-2 theological questions. I tend to use the grammar questions as recitation questions in class to see if they are tracking with the material and understanding what they're reading okay.
I completely understand about your not feeling like your education was up to the standards you want to hold your children to. Mine was not either. Many of us are repairing the ruins of our own inadequate educations and working to make something better for our kids. I commend you for your efforts! Let me know if I can be of any further help!
I appreciate your recommendations for grades 7-12. I am also enjoying your study guides! I’m a homeschool mom and am trying to offer my children a richer education than what I received. Do you have a post for how to use your study guides? For instance, I just looked through the Genesis 1 study guide and love the depth of the questions and the that point to virtue and the Westminster catechism. But that lesson could be a whole semester of study (or life long!). How do you recommend we parse? How do I help my students walk through these ideas without feeling overwhelmed or that we are leaving out more beautiful ideas? My older two are 13 and 15. I have five more coming up behind.
I am slowly making strides to make our lessons more joyful and to lead my children into deeper study. What I’m fighting against is my own mindset that seems to rush through information to check a box instead of playing with and resting and wrestling with one idea and allowing that to lead us. Again, I’m getting there, but I was public school educated and also have German heritage- so my utilitarian underpinning is strong. 🤦🏻♀️
Any practical help is appreciated. Perhaps you have these with paid subscription- please let me know that as well! Grateful!
I am blessed to hear both that you are working hard to provide your kids with something better than what you received and that the resources here are useful to you. Your experience is the same as mine and countless others who have discovered classical education and realized how much better it is than the modern "education" that is being pedaled in public schools and, unfortunately, even in many Christian schools. I love homeschool families, my family homeschooled for quite a while before my wife and I both started teaching at an ACCS school.
As to your question, I completely agree that the total study guide would generally be too much for any one particular assignment. If someone were just self guiding studying and in no hurry then it might be great to do everything, but as you and I both want to move students through a whole curriculum of study in a certain amount of time we have to make some decisions about how much to do. In reality, though I am the maker of these guides and I use them in my classroom, I almost never assign all the questions to my students.
What I do on any given assignment varies but I generally use the grammar questions as recitation at the beginning of the class. In other word, I don't assign those questions for written answer very often, I ask them to my students orally for review to make sure they are tracking with what they have just read. Those questions are really just about comprehension of the text and so I want to see if they can recreate the reading and regurgitate what they took in.
Logic questions are more analytical, asking why a character or author would do or say something, asking what is meant by a certain statement, comparing and contrasting characters of parts of the story, asking what could be inferred from a piece of information, etc. I often assign most of these, but sometimes I'll say "pick any 4" or "just do odds today" or maybe I'll pick a couple of my favorites and insist on them answering those.
Rhetoric is where I ask students to bring their own thoughts to bear on the text or on an idea presented in the text. "Should the person have done that, why or why not?" or "The idea of beauty is discussed here. What is beauty, how should it be defined? Is beauty an important part of society? Why or why not?" I would expect my students to have a bit longer response here and so just one or two of these is generally sufficient. Again, you could pick or let them pick.
Finally, theological is just letting Scripture come to bear on ideas or concept from the reading. In the case of reading the Bible itself I generally bring up a few good cross-references. Same rules apply of how much to assign.
I want the Great Books curriculum to be a tool box for families and schools. It's an aid to help facilitate study and discussion, but you should feel very free to pick and choose whatever load seems appropriate to your situation. You are right about wanting to make learning joyful. There is good in pushing hard and challenging your kids too, but we don't want this to be misery and drudgery. Trust your gut on that and find the appropriate mean for your family.
I have been planning for sometime to write a post on "how to use this curriculum" and just haven't gotten it done yet. I need to do it soon. Thanks for the reminder!
The Paid subscription gets families/teachers access to PDF versions of the study guide that have a little bit of extra content (character lists, vocabulary, geographical references, events, etc.) and paid subscribers will also eventually have access to the Teacher Editions with answers to each question and additional suggestions for assignments, research papers, essays, etc. In the long term the plan is to make print editions available and package an entire 7-12 classical humanities program including Great Books History and Literature, Formal logic, Classical Composition, and Rhetoric. I plan to give early access to Paid subscribers to that content as well. The road is long but progress is being steadily made. I long to offer more to families and teachers and I am working diligently toward that end. So paid subscriptions do get some immediate benefits by going access to PDFs as they are finished, but they also just help the work to continue and they become a part of something. One day this curriculum, Lord willing, will be complete and they will be part of the reason it happened.
I hope this was helpful. Glad to answer any other questions you may have. The Lord bless you and your family!
I added a footnote to that entry for now, a brief apology for why it's there. I am sure you're not going to be the only one who raises the question and it is well worth answering. Thanks!
Not because I like Hitler, That’s for sure. Even so, ours important to confront bad ideas and to understand what motivates evil men to do evil things. Reading such a work critically and Christianity will help make people immune to such withering hate rather than an easy target.
That being said, I may not leave it on the list as I need to reduce the volume of works I cover in the later grades, I think I’ve got too many on there at present.
Respectfully, I’ve been teaching them for years on this level and to great benefit. Also, there’s not a book on the list that doesn’t deserve to be read multiple times. I think we underestimate regularly what young people can meaningfully engage. I didn’t take logic until college but I bow teach it to 7-9th graders.
I am a homeschool mum of 4 boys (3 school age). We are currently doing Story of the World from The Well Trained Mind for history. I want to start to supplement this spine with some of the history and literature suggestions you have listed; especially/only for my oldest who is 12 (starting Grade 7 in the new academic year in Feb (we are in Australia)). My boys do History together, and in 2025 we will be studying "Early Modern Times: Elizabeth to the Forty-Niners."
In the spirit of "progress over perfection" may I ask, can I take sections from older grades from your curriculum, to supplement The Story of the World for my seventh grader...or would they be developmentally unsuitable?
(Last bit of explanation: It is hard to get on top of everything when I feel like my own education was so deficient! I don't have a strong enough working knowledge of the texts in your curriculum to make these decisions on my own, and at the same time, I can't just put everything on hold until I get myself up to speed.) I will appreciate any of your thoughts!
Hello! I am sorry for the delayed reply.
I think many of the texts I currently have available would be suitable for a younger student as long as they he is a pretty strong reader. You can also feel free to sift through the questions in the study guides and lower the number your student does. In fact, I rarely assign all questions in a lesson to my own students. I might tell them to pick 4 logic questions, 1-2 rhetoric questions, and 1-2 theological questions. I tend to use the grammar questions as recitation questions in class to see if they are tracking with the material and understanding what they're reading okay.
I completely understand about your not feeling like your education was up to the standards you want to hold your children to. Mine was not either. Many of us are repairing the ruins of our own inadequate educations and working to make something better for our kids. I commend you for your efforts! Let me know if I can be of any further help!
Thank you! I am grateful for your resources. I'll have another look through. May the Lord give us strength and wisdom.
I appreciate your recommendations for grades 7-12. I am also enjoying your study guides! I’m a homeschool mom and am trying to offer my children a richer education than what I received. Do you have a post for how to use your study guides? For instance, I just looked through the Genesis 1 study guide and love the depth of the questions and the that point to virtue and the Westminster catechism. But that lesson could be a whole semester of study (or life long!). How do you recommend we parse? How do I help my students walk through these ideas without feeling overwhelmed or that we are leaving out more beautiful ideas? My older two are 13 and 15. I have five more coming up behind.
I am slowly making strides to make our lessons more joyful and to lead my children into deeper study. What I’m fighting against is my own mindset that seems to rush through information to check a box instead of playing with and resting and wrestling with one idea and allowing that to lead us. Again, I’m getting there, but I was public school educated and also have German heritage- so my utilitarian underpinning is strong. 🤦🏻♀️
Any practical help is appreciated. Perhaps you have these with paid subscription- please let me know that as well! Grateful!
Hi Joy,
I am blessed to hear both that you are working hard to provide your kids with something better than what you received and that the resources here are useful to you. Your experience is the same as mine and countless others who have discovered classical education and realized how much better it is than the modern "education" that is being pedaled in public schools and, unfortunately, even in many Christian schools. I love homeschool families, my family homeschooled for quite a while before my wife and I both started teaching at an ACCS school.
As to your question, I completely agree that the total study guide would generally be too much for any one particular assignment. If someone were just self guiding studying and in no hurry then it might be great to do everything, but as you and I both want to move students through a whole curriculum of study in a certain amount of time we have to make some decisions about how much to do. In reality, though I am the maker of these guides and I use them in my classroom, I almost never assign all the questions to my students.
What I do on any given assignment varies but I generally use the grammar questions as recitation at the beginning of the class. In other word, I don't assign those questions for written answer very often, I ask them to my students orally for review to make sure they are tracking with what they have just read. Those questions are really just about comprehension of the text and so I want to see if they can recreate the reading and regurgitate what they took in.
Logic questions are more analytical, asking why a character or author would do or say something, asking what is meant by a certain statement, comparing and contrasting characters of parts of the story, asking what could be inferred from a piece of information, etc. I often assign most of these, but sometimes I'll say "pick any 4" or "just do odds today" or maybe I'll pick a couple of my favorites and insist on them answering those.
Rhetoric is where I ask students to bring their own thoughts to bear on the text or on an idea presented in the text. "Should the person have done that, why or why not?" or "The idea of beauty is discussed here. What is beauty, how should it be defined? Is beauty an important part of society? Why or why not?" I would expect my students to have a bit longer response here and so just one or two of these is generally sufficient. Again, you could pick or let them pick.
Finally, theological is just letting Scripture come to bear on ideas or concept from the reading. In the case of reading the Bible itself I generally bring up a few good cross-references. Same rules apply of how much to assign.
I want the Great Books curriculum to be a tool box for families and schools. It's an aid to help facilitate study and discussion, but you should feel very free to pick and choose whatever load seems appropriate to your situation. You are right about wanting to make learning joyful. There is good in pushing hard and challenging your kids too, but we don't want this to be misery and drudgery. Trust your gut on that and find the appropriate mean for your family.
I have been planning for sometime to write a post on "how to use this curriculum" and just haven't gotten it done yet. I need to do it soon. Thanks for the reminder!
The Paid subscription gets families/teachers access to PDF versions of the study guide that have a little bit of extra content (character lists, vocabulary, geographical references, events, etc.) and paid subscribers will also eventually have access to the Teacher Editions with answers to each question and additional suggestions for assignments, research papers, essays, etc. In the long term the plan is to make print editions available and package an entire 7-12 classical humanities program including Great Books History and Literature, Formal logic, Classical Composition, and Rhetoric. I plan to give early access to Paid subscribers to that content as well. The road is long but progress is being steadily made. I long to offer more to families and teachers and I am working diligently toward that end. So paid subscriptions do get some immediate benefits by going access to PDFs as they are finished, but they also just help the work to continue and they become a part of something. One day this curriculum, Lord willing, will be complete and they will be part of the reason it happened.
I hope this was helpful. Glad to answer any other questions you may have. The Lord bless you and your family!
Oh, also, I am a big proponent of annotated reading. You might check this out as a starter if that's new to you: https://stgb.substack.com/p/on-the-marking-of-books
This is very helpful! Thank you!
Over all, I was admiring your work, then I came to Mein K. in one of the history and literature modules. Why?
Well, I am much relieved.
I’m glad. I assure you, I am no Nazi sympathizer. Quite the opposite.
I added a footnote to that entry for now, a brief apology for why it's there. I am sure you're not going to be the only one who raises the question and it is well worth answering. Thanks!
Not because I like Hitler, That’s for sure. Even so, ours important to confront bad ideas and to understand what motivates evil men to do evil things. Reading such a work critically and Christianity will help make people immune to such withering hate rather than an easy target.
That being said, I may not leave it on the list as I need to reduce the volume of works I cover in the later grades, I think I’ve got too many on there at present.
I’m in the 72nd grade 😂 and see so many books I have yet to read. Thank you for the recommendations. Never too late!!
Haha! This is just a suggested plan, but everything on here is good to read at any age and multiple times!
Thanks very much for this. An excellent resource.
My pleasure
Stupendous. Missing Melville, however.
Hmmm…I thought for sure I had Billy Budd, Sailor on there…apparently not. I guess I’ll have to think about if I can fit that in.
Well, by Melville. I meant The Whale. You work too hard for us.
Yeah, there’s no way to fit that one in my curriculum plan but I might do a study guide for it someday just cause.
Respectfully, I’ve been teaching them for years on this level and to great benefit. Also, there’s not a book on the list that doesn’t deserve to be read multiple times. I think we underestimate regularly what young people can meaningfully engage. I didn’t take logic until college but I bow teach it to 7-9th graders.
What’s your basis for this claim? What objective standards are you appealing to?