I won't actually get year 3 until a month or two but I was looking and planning for the used book sales and noticed we have read a lot.I’ve just been perusing and planning for next year.. My oldest will be a 9th grade rhetoric. Then I have a 7th grade dialectic (his 3rd year on that level) and a 2nd grader who isn’t a fluent reader (at least not yet)

We will at least finish through unit 3 of year two this year. We may get some of unit 4 done. So I will be picking up from there. Here is the problem. Before we started TOG I did a really intensive study of American history with the boys and we have already read many of the books. Here are the ones we have already studied starting in year3 unit 4 until the end of year 3:


Johnny Tremain, Justin Morgan had a Horse, Witch of Blackbird Pond, America’s Paul Revere, Carry on, Mr. Bowditch, Daniel Boone, Early Thunder, Across Five Aprils, Behind Rebel Lines, Commodore Perry in the Land of Shogun, Hudson Taylor, Island of the blue Dolphins, Moccasin Trail, and William Carey Obliged to Go. During those years that we studied we journeyed to Plimouth, Jamestown, Yorktown, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Valley Forge, Oregon, etc.

We spent at least two months on the Civil War alone and made a giant timeline, used all of my dh’s adult books (he’s a Civil War buff), made a great notebook. Read all of the Civil War books above and more. We visited the actual battlefields of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Gettysburg. We also bought all of those TravelBrains computer/cd about those battles. They still watch and use them. They also have computer strategy games they play from that era. We watched the PBS Civil War documentary, Gods and Generals, Gettysburg . (They also read the Killer Angels series that the movies were based on.) My boys can tell you tons of facts about the Civil War. They know much more than I do.

I’m going to need to condense the year anyway to finish year 3 by the end of May, so I could probably condense some of it. BUT… the literature is going to be TOUGH for my oldest. He is a math/science guy although he does love history. But the literary analysis is going to be tough. So I don’t know what I could condense for him… I think the history will be fine for him. On the other hand, history will be EASY for my 7th grader. He’s been to a lot of these places. History is his favorite subject, but I do not think he is ready for the rhetoric level work. He is only now really getting pretty good at the dialectic level questions as a 6th grader. So I’m not sure how to handle it. It is looking like he has already read ½ of the literature selections… That said, the 7th grade year is going to be tough in math and science for him as he will be doing REAL science with a textbook. So do I just let him coast with history so he can concentrate on those areas??

Christine

Christine,

First, I think you may be surprised about how much of year 3 is new to you. You've done American history, and I know with what program, because I've done it too. And we learned a lot. The rhetoric level, in particular - but dialectic too - will cover political developments in a way you haven't seen. Your focus has been on culture and war in the US, I would imagine; now you'll be learning also the politics, and in Europe as well. (Did you study Napoleon? The revolutions of 1848? Victoria? Congress of Vienna? The war of 1812? The unification of Italy? The development of the political parties in the US? Economic crises? We hadn't.) Some of it will indeed be review, of course. But especially at the R level, students will honestly learn much more if they enter with some level of good understanding. And I think you're right not to put a 7th grader in R. Some of this stuff is tough even for me. Let him do D this time - and learn it well - and then he'll learn so much, so easily, when he's in 11th grade doing R!

On the other hand, you have read some of the literature selections, and so will have time to take a break on that if you want, for your D student. I think he'll be fine if you do that.

Obviously I can't answer your questions about literature for your 9th grader. Year 3 literature is much more accessible to kids than year 2 is, especially as you get farther into the year. Don't expect too much of him - ease him into it at his own pace, even though I know you're concerned with whether he's "up to par" in that way - because it's not possible to hurry someone. Doing what's reasonable for him, but doing it well, will get you farther than expecting something that he can't do. No matter what the local schools are doing. That's my advice for the day: in the end, we can only teach our kids where they're at, even if we wish they were somewhere else.

Edited to add: My D daughter was very upset about studying the Revolution again last year, because she'd studied it once with our previous program, then twice in other ways (including traveling), and didn't want to do it again. I promised her that if things got too repetitious, she should tell me and I would modify her assignments. To her surprise, she never found it boring - she discovered that there was a lot more to American history than she had realized.

Next year my R and D daughters will be doing year 4 - on exactly the same levels they used on our last abortive effort. That doesn't bother me (or them, I believe) at all. They know that everything will make more sense to them now. There's plenty of depth there for another run-through!