Literature for High School: Smarr, LL, EIL

I love Lightning Lit.  I like the idea of Excellence in Literature, but do go over the booklists carefully.  I decided they wouldn’t work well for my kids.  Don’t know anythin gabout Smarr.

Well, I wanted challenging, but these seemed uber-challenging, KWIM?  I don’t intend to let my kids off easy, but the quantity and depth of the literature left me worried that my boys would really flounder.  It seemed to me that the Lightning Lit guides were a better fit for us–the choices and pace seemed more comparable to a high school class.  Some of the EiL courses were tougher than my college classes in literature.  One has you doing, in one year, the Odyssey, Antigone, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Les Miserables, a Russian lit reader, Goethe’s Faust, then a couple of Dineson books.  The thought sort of staggered me, to tell the truth.  I wasn’t sure *I* could intelligently read and write on all of these in one school year, to be honest.  In TWO college terms, I did the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and the Oedipus cycle.  And I had a whole class on the Divine Comedy alone!  Let alone the other books, some of them quite sizable and intense.  I was afraid my sons would not be quite up to it.  I’ve over my life read all the material here, excepting only the Russian material (I need flowcharts and name cheat-sheets to keep track of Russian novels and I often talk myself out of attempting one since I read in such small bites.) but that’s over a life of 44 years.  LOL

I’m really intrigued by EIL; I’d never heard of it before. Has anyone here used it and enjoyed it? I have one who really wants and needs a challenge and have been considering the Potter’s School English; I’m interested in what else might be out there!

Blessings,

Aimee

I think it really depends on your individual children.  Mine love to read, and read very well, but actually like nonfiction better than novels–they have a limited tolerance for novels, especially ones they are *told* they  have to read.  I can get them to do a number, but I can’t get them to totally throw themselves into a long list. So we compromise–as long as they keep reading, I keep the novels and poetry to a manageable level for them–just at the edge of annoyance, lol.  LL seems to be at about the right level, since I can get them to do most of it without much trouble, but when I propose another novel, they are, um, less than best pleased.  While they’ll happily devour another political or economics or science nonfiction read.  I could have happily managed SOME of the EIL years, I think, but not the World lit year.  But I adore novels.  Except Russian ones.  LOL

I’m curious as well if writing instruction is included in LL.  I am considering LL for 7th and 8th grade — not sure beyond.  What other LA topics would need to be covered? We would be continuing with Spelling Wisdom, but I’ve been looking at Apologia’s Jump In! or Write with the Best for writing (I think they cover different styles in diffrent ways, so I’ll make that choice a little later).  I’ve also been looking at Our Mother Tongue for Grammar.  Thankfully I’ve got one more year before Jr. High!

The Lightning Lit guides we have used have not really covered writing instruction; we do that separately, for the essay in junior high and later on for research papers.  I did not use the 7th or 8th grade LL programs, and won’t with my third son either; we have a formula for middle school that works and we’re sticking with it.  We have only used the high school level guides; they have excellent writing suggestions but little real instruction.