EXACTLY!!! If you know it you can teach it, even if you know it only a couple weeks before they do… :biggrin:
Thank you so much, Sonya, for sharing your insights. I’m loving it.
Thanks Sonya - you wrote a lot of interesting things. I am interested in the progymnasmata way of teaching rhetoric - how do you go about finding out more about this? My DD is due to start kindergarten next year, though she will be homeschooled and I have long been debating what to do with her regarding writing and other forms of language arts since her reading is so far advanced now.
How to find out about the Progym and exercises. Well, Wikipedia has a great post about it. You can look at curriculum - but you DON’T need it unless you are very uncomfortable teaching writing. I found a couple things online - this looks pretty good as a curriculum and I’ve linked to a sample of the fable stage: http://classicalcomposition.com/samples/
My friend with all the Merit Scholars used this: http://classicalwriting.com/Progym.htm. I have mixed feelings about this curriculum - but mostly I can’t stand it. My friend loves it, my son took this in a class with her for 2 years - I taught baking/cooking while she taught writing. The problem may have been the teacher. The author put out a book 6 years ago that was pretty good. But parents wanted more of a “how to” not principles. So she wrote this whole series. Much of what my son was doing was busy work. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of busy work. The books got expensive - and well, you know my feelings on it.
My favorite book on writing by imitation is “The Wirters Workshop”.- http://www.amazon.com/Writers-Workshop-Imitating-Better-Writing/dp/1933859334/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349313349&sr=1-12&keywords=writers+workshop This does not follow the progym but it is really a short little treasure.
Logos Press put out these: http://www.logospressonline.com/index.php?p=product&id=37&parent=18 click on the PDF sample and you will see what I mean when I say that you can do this stuff yourself. In the older grades you may want a curriculum, but k-6 you should be fine.
There is this: http://gemini.utb.edu/achurch/progymnasmata.html
You can get a ton of information on all things Classical from the Circe Institute. These guys are a distinctly Christian outfit, so you need to be aware of that before you truck on over.
Some poeple think that formal writing lesson should wait until age 7 or 8. Phewy. Not our kids. That doesn’t mean they should be actually writing out stories, but they should be able to narrate a story back to you that you have read to them. I am not after original material - that is silly as kids haven’t read enough to gather a storehouse of sentences and ideas to put together. But they can certainly retell what they’ve heard.
Sonya,
Thank you very much for your very informative and detailed posts. Coincidentally, I had been looking into how to teach writing and the available writing programs out there (including the ones based on the Progym) for the last couple of months, so your posts were very timely! I wish I could feel confident enough to teach writing without having to rely on prepared curricula and workbooks, but I don’t think I could teach her to the level that I want her to achieve on my own, as English is not my native language. (Now, math and science are another matter altogether. I have no qualms about being able to teach her all the way up to Calculus and Quantum Physics if need be. lol )
So here are the programs I am considering:
Classical Writing - http://www.classicalwriting.com/
Classical Composition - http://classicalcomposition.com/
Writing Tales - http://writing-tales.com/
Writing With Ease/Writing With Skill - http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/language-arts/writing.html
IEW - http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/catalog/writing
I believe the first three are based on the Progym; I don’t think IEW is, and I am not sure about Writing with Ease/Skill. Do you have any experience with any of these? What are the pros and cons of each program?
Just to give you an idea of where she is with regard to language arts:
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Reading - approximately 5th grade level based on lexile scores and RL. Decoding skills are likely higher if I ignored reading with comprehension.
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Spelling - about 3rd grade level. She is a natural speller and is blasting through AAS. In fact, the only reason I am even doing a structured spelling program with her is because she learned to read via whole words and simply intuited the phonics rules when she was 16-18 months old. I never went through phonics systematically with her, and going through a phonics-based spelling program is just my way of making sure nothing falls through the cracks. Plus, she is a little perfectionist and absolutely hates it when she spells a word wrong! At the rate we are going, we will be finished with all 7 AAS levels before she turns 5.
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Handwriting/Writing - She LOVES to write, in both manuscript and cursive. Aside from her daily 25-30 spelling words/phrases, she also voluntarily writes a page or two in her daily journal, which is typically a retelling of a story she had just read, a letter to her dad, or a story from her own imagination. Most recently, she wrote a pretty long letter to the Little Einsteins telling them that Pluto is no longer considered a planet and even included the reasons why. (This was after she watched a LIttle Einsteins episode that included Pluto as a planet.) lol
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Grammar - To be honest, I don’t know if I should even be thinking of doing a grammar program with her at this point. With the amount of books she reads, I think correct grammar just comes instinctively to her. She read the Brian McCleary grammar storybooks a couple of times and she can now reliably identify parts of speech, knows punctuation, capitalization, etc. I started doing First Language Lessons 1 with her (mainly because she is so far advanced in all other areas that I didn’t want her grammar to lag noticeably behind or hold her back in her writing), and we finished the entire level 1 in a month or so. There is not much that will be new to her in FLL 2 grammar-wise, but she loves the poem memorization and narrations.
So, considering all of the above, when do you think I should start a more “formal” writing program with her, and how would you go about doing it? Does any program come to mind that you think will be particularly suited to her? You all gave me such great advice and food for thought in the advanced math thread that I am certain you will come through for me again! :biggrin:
And, by the way, even though we are roughly following a classical model for homeschooling (preschooling?), I totally agree with you about the Trivium and how it is not really applicable to our EL children. I mean, just looking at Ella, she is considered to be in the grammar stage because of her age and she proves this by being able to memorize copious amounts of information - such as the entire list of prehistoric creatures, their characterisitics, and where each one occurs in the prehistoric timeline. But she is also able to think about what she is learning in more abstract terms and even express her thoughts about what she is learning. I once found her writing in her journal - “I don’t want to be a paleontologist when I grow up. They always get things wrong. First they thought Oviraptor was stealing Protoceratops eggs. But actually it was protecting its own eggs. Then they thought Hallucigenia walked on legs that looked like stilts. But actually they were looking at the fossils upside down. And they were spines on its back. That is funny!”
lol lol lol
aangeles,
I will do the best I can here and give a recap for others who may read this.
Classical writing is done by imitation. Obviously a child has nothing to write about so you give them examples of good writing to copy. As they read and grow they develop a storehouse of sentences and paragraphs to emulate. It is hard to ask a 4 year old to write original work. They develop this ability over time while working with the best writings in a particular genre. This method for learning to write has excellent results.
Curriculum - Classical Wiritng - we have used the program. Above I stated that I hated it. We were in a co-op with a few families who decided to use this program. We got together once a week. Several parents volunteered to teach, I was asked to teach a cooking/baking class at the same time. So, I didn’t sit in on the classes, but I was not impressed with homework assignments nor how they used a thesaurus, or a whole bunch of other stuff. I grew to hate this class and we dropped out after 2 years. I would have dropped it the first year but they were friends. My son got mono and was very sick - our easy out. I called another friend this morning and asked for her impression of the series - she has taught it and her daughter moved to the class my son left. She likes the program abut does not like the way this other person taught. Evidently a lot of the things I hate about the program are not really in the program. So, I can’t give an honest review of this other than the book they put out six years ago which you can’t get anymore was terrific. We used that book a lot.
Classical Composition looks good from the examples. I haven’t used it, but if you need something I might consider it.
IEW -
aangeles,
I will do the best I can here and give a recap for others who may read this.
Classical writing is done by imitation. Obviously a child has nothing to write about so you give them examples of good writing to copy. As they read and grow they develop a storehouse of sentences and paragraphs to emulate. It is hard to ask a 4 year old to write original work. They develop this ability over time while working with the best writings in a particular genre. This method for learning to write has excellent results.
Curriculum - Classical Wiritng - we have used the program. Above I stated that I hated it. We were in a co-op with a few families who decided to use this program. We got together once a week. Several parents volunteered to teach, I was asked to teach a cooking/baking class at the same time. So, I didn’t sit in on the classes, but I was not impressed with homework assignments nor how they used a thesaurus, or a whole bunch of other stuff. I grew to hate this class and we dropped out after 2 years. I would have dropped it the first year but they were friends. My son got mono and was very sick - our easy out. I called another friend this morning and asked for her impression of the series - she has taught it and her daughter moved to the class my son left. She likes the program abut does not like the way this other person taught. Evidently a lot of the things I hate about the program are not really in the program. So, I can’t give an honest review of this other than the book they put out six years ago which you can’t get anymore was terrific. We used that book a lot.
Classical Composition looks good from the examples. I haven’t used it, but if you need something I might consider it.
IEW - I have not used this program but a lot of people I respect have. Their kids have excellent writing but they all write the same. I can tell a child who’s using the program by reading their writing. That doesn’t make it bad, and if you add the progym exercises on your own this might be your best bet if you want a high standard but aren’t sure of your ability. The progym is simple in the early years and there honestly isn’t a reason to have a curriculum. Got look at this http://www.logospressonline.com/index.php?p=product&id=37&parent=18 click on the “see a PDF sample” or something like that. They have one for all the books listed below this one. The whole book is like that and most of the curricula for the early years of the progym are essentially the same basic format. So if I were going to pick something I would want a program that was going to do what I can’t and do it well. IEW will do that for you. I’ve looked through some of their material and it really does a thorough job. In many home school circles it is the gold standard of writing programs. My son uses the Omnibus series for literature/history/religion class - we looked at taking an online class for the mental stimulation. Many instructors won’t take you unless you’ve used IEW. I think you cannot go wrong if you choose this program. However, just add the progym exercises.
Writing with Skill looks good also. It has the grammar built in, that is nice. I also like that they’ve added diagramming sentences. We like diagramming sentences. Ella will probably love diagramming sentences.This is more in depth than some of the progym books I’ve looked at. I will have to really look over the stuff more to give my full impression. But it seems like a fine program.
Writing Tales - don’t bother. It might be a fine program but it doesn’t have the depth and it is not going to give you the high standard you are looking for. Again, you don’t need a curriculum to do that - if you are going to get a program - get a program.
And you do realize that Ella is gifted don’t you? Her IQ is pushing well past 150. She doesn’t count. 
You are going to have to work hard to keep her challenged. It isn’t so bad now, but 6 years from now is going to be the test.
Again, if she needs a place to go…if she decides she doesn’t love you anymore, she can come live with me,
I might weigh in at some point here but I just wanted to say thanks to Sonya for her wisdom. We definitely don’t have it figured out in our household, but at this point, I’m not stressing out about my ignorance. As long as H. is making good progress, which he is, and I do research and thinking now and then, I figure I’ve done my due diligence, so to speak. Charlotte Mason, yes, I’ll have to read her sooner rather than later.
I"m not a Charlotte Mason groupie, she just has a whole lot of really good things to say.
For those who are unfamiliar, the Trivium applies to two things: the stages of child development so it dictates when we teach certain things to children. And also how we teach a subject no matter what age we are. I will still say there are very loose guidelines.
Daddude, I appreciate your perspective as a man. No, I am not an egalitarian. My husband takes the same attitude as you have. We are making progress, he is doing better than either of us hoped…we’ll be fine. I am more high strung about this. :yes: Especially when it comes to math. I have looked at tons of curricula in the last 2 years. But it would be helpful to me if I took some hints from my husband. This is a particularly female issue. All the moms I know worry that they haven’t done the best they could. They see this whole world of things they should have taught their children and they nearly panic that they haven’t done it just the “right” way. Your voice and my husband’s voice and probably many of our husband’s voices bring a bit of sanity to the situation. There is that whole problem of listening…
Sonya, thanks for your insights. I totally agree with you that fathers tend to stress less about doing everything perfectly than mothers; at least it’s true in my family. Like you said, it’s the listening that’s hard…
I only have intermittant internet, so this is a bit behind, but corkers4life, thank you for asking about classical vs unit studies; that is exactly the question I was struggling with, and I had never put it into words! I read that post just before I got off the internet last week, and I’ve been thinking about it as I read WTM this week.
As I reread WTM with two years of EL behind me, I’m reading it as much less of a prescriptive list of curricula (which is a totally valid interpretation!) and more as ideas. I like the basic division of the trivium, but I agree EL kids will do it faster. My guess with my oldest is grammar 4-8 years old, logic 8-12, and rhetoric 12-16. And not using those as absolutes; just generalities, mostly to ogranize the four years of history cycle and maybe four years of math. But we’ll see. Someone suggested a 3 year cycle; maybe I’ll go for that and do it four times.
And I see now that the grammar stage can be taught (as someone said) in any way that works for my family: music, activities, unit studies, even dance if that’s what it takes! Bauer says something about how the grammar years are for mental pegs to hang later information on; let them meet great people, exciting stories, and foreign cultures for the first time and enjoy them so that they will remember them. So you can combine the “classical” basics with any teaching method.
So having read that… Now I have to research the progymnasmata! Thanks a lot, sonya. 
I’m sure it’ll be useful and I’m excited. But for now, I’m sticking with the plan I posted earlier: Charlotte Mason/classical grammar until age 8. It’s actually fairly close to my loose interpretation of WTM. I just have to add grammar and Latin, which are both subjects I like, so I’ll do that.
Sonya,
Thank you for the reviews on the writing programs. I spent the last couple of weeks doing some more reading and research, and for now I have settled on using Writing With Ease/Skill to begin with. I will see if she enjoys it and will reassess her progress in a year or so. She will be 5 at that point and my options will be either IEW + progym OR Classical Writing. Do you think IEW and CW-Aesop will be accessible to a 5-year-old or will be too advanced for her?
As for Ella being gifted, it has been brought up a few times by people who have had a chance to work with her, but we don’t dwell on it. My main focus is to meet her at her current level and provide suitably challenging work so as to instill a strong work ethic and maximize her potential at the same time. Thanks to homeschooling, I have been able to keep comments from other people like “You’re so smart” and comparisons to her age-peers at a minimum… so far!
aangeles,
I think either IEW or CW Aesop will be fine for her and not above her head.
Here are my warnings about CW and this may or may not really be in the curriculum. It may have been the teacher. Since English is a second language for you, it is something to think about:
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Be careful with taking apart the essentials and non-essentials of a story. You cannot take a story down to five points and it still be the same story. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy loses girl. Everyone dies. is not the same as Romeo and Juliet.
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You cannot just take words look them up in the Thesaurus and pluck them into a sentence at will. This is not how language works.
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Copying endless amounts of information, by hand, into a book is not the same as learning to write.
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The point of the progym is imitation. You don’t need to worry about copyright infringement. In the beginning Ella’s writing should sound like the original author.
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If at all possible skip the thesaurus entirely and let Ella find words from the storehouse of words she gathered in her head. This is far more effective than using a tool poorly.
She will be fine with either of these and most of the kids on here will be also. Right now, I;d just be asking her to retell, in her own words, stories that she is reading or that you read to her. You are looking to make sure she catches the main idea of the story, sequence of events, character and how they relate and she should be using words/sentences that the author used.
I’m going to recant my statement of “I’m leaning towards a Thomas Jefferson Education”. I generally thought that the idea of studying classics and having mentors sounded great (it is a true principle), and there are a lot of homeschoolers in my local community that do it, so I have been curious about it. Anyway, I’ve done more research on it, and after reading the blog I linked to at the end of this post, a lot of dots started connecting, and I realized that TJed is more of an unschooling movement among LDS homeschoolers Utah. I’m definitely not an unschooler! Come to think of it, most of the negative comments I’ve received about early learning from my local homeschool peers have come from the TJed camp. Now I understand why. Having said that, I have re-read some of the TJed books this week, and there is some great advice in the books. Oliver Demille is a very charismatic teacher! However, I’m going to keep my distance from TJed in the future. I’m going to do “The Well-Trained Mind” classical approach.
Thank you for this post. I know this interjecting comment breaks the flow of this thread, but I wanted vocalize this change, and the e-mail update reminded me to do so.
Thanks for the information about the TJed. I could never really garner much information about it when I was doing research many years ago. And I can see why. It really did strike me as being as vague as unschooling, which I am not a fan of either.
Thank you all so much for your back and forth. It was really helpful in solidifying some curriculum/writing choices for us, or at least defining a good starting point. I love the idea of the progymnastata and looking at all this information, am realizing, I was taught writing all wrong! Maybe, that is why I don’t enjoy it very much.
We are just starting to think about our homeschooling programs and me being the super-planing person I am, I am trying to plan everything to the end of high school (my son is 13months old) I have a whole chart written for each subject-area and a combed chart for general curricula. as I said, thank you all for sharing your ideas
@aangeles, you mentioned AAS. At what age did Ella start it?
@sonya_post, you said your son is doing the omnibus series for literature/history/religion. Can you direct me to their website? I seem to be having trouble finding it. You also mentioned that there are some books that you consider a must-read in elemetary. Can you list those, or link me to a good list? Also, I am not all that comfortable teaching history as math/science were my own strong points. Other than omnibus, which you mentioned, are there any history curricula that you would recommend? Also, if it isn’t too much trouble, can you write a list/provide a link to a list of recommended readings/stories/books to read etc for each stage of the progym if I do end up doing it on my own.
Thank you,
Juli
History = story of the world
My kids love it. And request it often. It is a great place to start. Plus you can add as much as you want to it. for instance when they get to the first Olympics it is pretty light, you could do an extended Olympic study.
A couple of points. Firstly it has been said it has a biblical slant. I found the bible stories within it to be well linked to the time and history. Bearing in mind that history is a perspective thing, it’s pretty easy to find the occasional opposing view of an event to teach your kids that.
Secondly you will get out of it as much as you put in. You could just read the books. I highly recommend you do even if you decide on another curriculum. They are a light read as far as history books go and the stories bring history to life for children. I recommend the audio, it is wonderful! I don’t consider history all that important so we just listen to the audio in the car and discuss each section after. If you consider history more important then add in the PDF activity books. ( don’t have them yet so can’t comment)
Hre is the link But the books are available many places so shop around. http://www.welltrainedmind.com/the-story-of-the-world-history-for-the-classical-child/
Also there are a number of good bloggs showing ways to make lap books etc from this series so do a little looking around.
We love SotW. I was initially concerned because we are a secular family. But I am not at all perturbed by the biblical stories. There are very few. But there are also African Tales like the ones of Anasazi. There are also Greek myths including a whole section about Odysseus.
I am an ancient history/philosophy major and I have to say I am impressed with SotW. Granted I am reading it to my 2 year old. When he is older the books would need heavy supplementing. But that can be achieved by finding relevant articles and library books.
juliguli,
You can find the Omnibus here: http://www.veritaspress.com/products.asp?dept=1196 NOTE: They are a Christian outfit. Their materials are from a Christian worldview. If that is not suitable for you, then I might use the recommendations at the back of Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book You can also use Modern Scholar’s Odyssey of the West as a spine for the great books. I truly enjoyed that series and we’ve used it with the Omnibus. I am not afraid of my child coming into contact with other worldviews. That is the point of Classical Education/Great Books Education. I want my child to engage the best of what has been said and thought from the beginning of time. And I want him to know what he didn’t show up at the latter part of the 21st century with all these brand new ideas of his own. He is standing on thousands of years of thinking, We call this the “Democracy of the Dead”,
Obviously, all of the above resources are focused on the West. I don’t see that as a problem, but you should add great books from other cultures as well. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War comes to mind.
Whether you are a Christian or not, Veritas Press has wonderful suggestions for books you should read when covering different periods of history. We’ve used the catalog for that purpose and they find some of the neatest books. Since they are assuming a child comes into school a non-reader, the books aren’t always as challenging as I’d like. Our main source for material is http://www.yesterdaysclassics.com/
I will be using many of the recommendations on http://www.amblesideonline.org/curriculum.shtml It is a full online curriculum - free. And lots and lots of help on how to use it and teach. There are several histories for children: Story of the World was already mentioned, Gombrich’s A Little History of the World is a quick read and delightful. I also like the Streams of History series from Yesterday’s Classics.History is a series of stories. Children learn best when they hear about stories. In the beginning, give then as much as they can stand and then just a little more to be sure. Historical fiction, real books, and build a catapult or two and you’ll be fine. We made a historical timeline or what Charlotte Mason calls a books of centuries. This is very helpful. My sisters both use the historical figures here: http://www.homeschoolinthewoods.com/HTTA/timeline.htm and I suspect that we will as well. It saves ton’s of time and there are so many uses for them. We also use Usborn’s [i]Encyclopedia of World History[/i. This is not story based and more like traditional history. The pictures are fantastic.
I will post a list of books later today by grade. I have two lists, one list is must reads and the other is a list of possible free reading books. the free reading books are not the only books my child could read, but we didn’t stray too far from it. My son never read Captain Underpants or many of the other silly books put out for children.
I will have to get back to you on the Progym and how I did it. I must get busy with my day. But I will come back to this and really flesh out how we used it, how we chose the writing etc.
For History, I have definitely decided to start with Story of the World. I am excited to add a timeline to our long learning hallway, and I found this great link that pairs with Story of the World for creating a timeline. http://tendingourlordsgarden.blogspot.com/p/story-of-world-volume-2-resources.html I am going to use just clothes line and pins to display the timeline.
I have also seen a deck of Anki Cards for Story of the World 1. Too bad the rest haven’t been done yet. Looks like another project. I think I am going to create Anki cards using the timeline cards provided at the link above. I am fourth in line for Story of the World at the library. Its a very popular series. Of course this is the audio version. The library oddly enough only has the audio version. I wonder if the book is better?
Sonya_post,
Wow, thank you so very much for the level of detail and thoughtfulness in your response. I really appreciate it! Thank you so much for all the links. We are looking for a Christian history/writing curriculum. However, like you, I am not afraid with my child coming into contact with other worldviews. I believe it will strengthen his logical thinking skills, his love for and ability to interact with others, his ability to articulate his own beliefs, and build his discernment. I also believe that you can find hints or reminders of the one great story in every story. Therefore, I think we will definitely be looking at the omnibus and possibly classical composition (which you mentioned in a previous post), and then seeing what we can add on from there, such as the Odyssey of the West and some great books of the other cultures.
For history, thank you for that link with the curriculum. It is great! I do like Story of the World as well, as it has been mentioned several times in these posts, and so is on my short list.
As far as the timeline, did you break yours up the way they did on the link, and how big did you make it? Did you make a list of books that fit into each time period and then studied those books from there? Did you go in order of the timeline in your teaching? You also said it has many uses. Can you enumerate some for me? Again, sorry for sounding like I don’t know much here, but I really don’t think I studied any history after high school and even then, it was definitely just memorize just enough to get an A, but not really any real depth or understanding with it. Now that I see how other people teach it, such as yourself, I wish that someone would have gotten me excited about it like you seem to be doing with your kids.
Again, thank you so much for your thoroughness and the time you take to write responses. I am looking forward to the lists you mentioned. I don’t know if I have enough posts yet to give karma points, and don’t know how to do it yet, but if I find how, I will give some to you!
@coker4life,
Thanks for that timeline link. I will absolutely be looking into that!