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Total Language Plus book selections
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I love the selections that both Ambleside Online and SCM have chosen. All the ones that I have read have been very good literaturary quality. This next year I plan on doing one TLP book. We may do one each year if it ends up being something that we enjoy and enriches our schooling. I am a bit concerned that some of the choices might not be up to par with that of AO and SCM.
My oldest will be in 3rd grade. We have read Charlottes Web (AO1 and SCM1) together and listened to Pippi Longstocking in the car. If we enjoy this program I would like to do The Courage of Sarah Noble (SCM hist5) with my oldest two next year (daughter will then be in 3rd). Plus I think that we will be doing History Module 5 then, so it would tie in nicely.
This leaves 1) The Sign of Beaver (AO4) 2) The Whipping Boy 3) Shiloh
I looked at the samples from amazon and the last two seem a bit twaddlish. I am seriously wondering if they are worthy of spending a year of our time digesting. They look as though they may be interesting books though. Has anyone read any of these three books? What were your thoughts? Are they worth reading at all?
-thanks Kalle
Kalle, The Whipping Boy is actually an EXCELLENT book even if the illustrations on the cover look cartoonish. The writing is less twaddley than you might think, and the lessons learned are actually excellent. We really liked that one–yes, we’ve done the TLP guide for it. I am less enthused about Shiloh, although ds begged for it (he is a dog nut) and I did let him do it. I think the writing/language in that book is subpar, myself. I also like The Sign of the Beaver. Remember that you only have to do ones you want to do. We don’t make this ALL of our language arts; I originally started using a few in the upper grades then ds3 wanted to do them too. When someone wants to do something . . . . LOL. So we’ve done a few. But if you aren’t crazy about one of the choices, just don’t do that one. There are plenty. We really liked The Courage of Sarah Noble.
Excellent thank you so much. I am doing AO3 for literature selections. We are also going through PLL and All About Spelling 2. I wasn’t enthused spending 4 years on Greek myths at this age so I thought that it might be fun to substitute one TLP for each year. Then maybe we would read Heroes and Age of Fables more quickly later or not do them at all. I remember reading that your family hated the Age of Fables. What did you think of Heroes? At this point I think that I will have Thomas do the Sign of Beaver and maybe let him choose if he wants the Whipping Boy as a free reader. Somebody told me that Shiloh was an excellent book, but the amazon sample turned me off a bit. Thank you Bookworm, you are a wealth of wisdom.
We definitely did not like the Age of Fable; the only good point in Heroes for us is that it is not so long.
Thanks ladies! You have both been very helpful. After thinking on it a bit more and hearing your praise for the Whipping Boy I think that it might be a better fit. It was the one that I was most interested in doing with him when I first started looking. We just finished the Middle Ages SCM-4 AO-2 combo last year and are jumping into Renaissance and Reformation SCM-4, AO-3 combo this year. The Sign of Beaver would fit better in the next couple of years. That is a small reason, I know that the kids can make connections either way. However, I like that grammar emphasis in the Whipping Boy much better and it is a much shorter book. Thomas is just now really enjoying reading. He has been doing Ginn Readers, Elson Readers and many library early readers. This would be his first real novel to tackle and it would probably be less intimidating for him. I am hoping to ease him into reading all of his literature books by the end of the year. Now back to finishing up my ordering. -Thanks again, Kalle
P.S. Bookworm do you see any benefit to reading in Greek literature early on? I looked at the AO yahoo groups and read why some thought that it was beneficial. I am wondering that if just going through D’Aulaires Greek myths at some point would help my childrens understanding of book and plays that allude to these.
Not a lot. If, when you are covering Greeks/Romans, your kids are really solid in worldview, then something fairly short (ones we like better include the D’Aulaire book and the two by Nathaniel Hawthorne) can be helpful. When we run into an allusion in Latin class or other reading, we just go look it up. That has worked better for us. Those things DO crop up sometimes in later literature of course, and there have been questions on the National Latin Exam on mythology; so my older boys who objected so strongly to the Age of Fable have used it as an occasional look-up resource. You’ll notice that as you use more recent literature there are substantially fewer allusions; you’ll find the heaviest of them in lit from the 17th to middle 19th centuries and then beginning to decrease after that. In fact, a lot of allusions today, especially in journalism, are actually incorrect or inapt. LOL Kind of funny. I do understand some of what the AO board is thinking in pushing so much of it, but I also think that if you happen not to think that 17th-19th century British literature is the only game in town, <g> then you will see the need for tons of the stuff as being not quite so acute. NOT that I do not like British lit from that period—I DO, very much, and I’m a British Romantic poetry fan. So I see lots of allusions. But I see literature from that period as a piece of the pie, and not the whole pie–so perhaps I think the Board makes a wee bit too much of the issue. I do want my kids to have some familiarity with the main myths by the time they are older—but I just don’t see the need to know the name and story of every single illegitimate offspring of Zeus just in case we run into an allusion, either. 🙂 I actually at first followed all the AO suggestions pretty slavishly and my oldest, when he was about 11 or so, decided to write his very first persuasive essay–on why there was TOO much of the mythology stuff in his education. He was so persuasive that I decided prayerfully he was right, and we reduced the emphasis right away.
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