TOG (yr 1) and LL7 - too much? Any other suggestions for Ancients (2nd time around?)

[SS in MD]

Hello all!

We plan to start with Ancients again in the fall (my dc are 12,10,7,4). I'll be schooling the 3 older ones and we've already read thru' SOTW 1-4, so I was trying to find a history curriculum that could be used for all kiddos, but that didn't necessarily use SOTW for the older two (7 yo hasn't read SOTW). So, I was considering TOG year 1. I also am eager to try LL7 with my oldest. But last night I realized perhaps with would be overlapping with literature questions in TOG? Would it be too much work? Also, if I did use TOG, I'm not sure I will use their writing. I have heard so much about IEW and CW (12 yo is finishing up Wordsmith and 10 yo is finishing up WT2) that I may try one of those. Again, maybe I'm not being realistic and this is all too much since I still need to teach 7yo (some LDs) and an eager "I want to do school too" 4 yo! LOL!!

Any help or suggestions would be great! Or any other curriculum that you've enjoyed for Ancients? I like that TOG has the discussion questions for my oldes, and of course all the good literature. That's sort of whats drawing me to the program. Would love something planned out. (BTW, we've tried MFW, and while it was nice and planned out. I ended up adding a lot to the curriculum for my older two kids)

Thanks so much!

[momee]

We did LL 7 and TOG classic year 3. It was very doable. Especially since my ds was interested in reading NON historical fiction at the time.
The plan for LL 7 is totally flexible, allowing you to do as much or as little as you'd like.
You can get the LL manuals for fairly cheap on the used boards and get the books from the library. That way you could try it without the big investment. I found it was worthwhile to get an assurance we were covering what we needed to in literature analysis. I wasn't too impressed with the writing instruction _ very little there to help.

Check out the samples for each - Tapestry and LL. They're a great example of what your weeks would be like.
I wonder though if you're using the redesign plan if you'll really need LL. THey've done a great job of redoing alot.
Stephanie

[SS in MD]

Does LL7 come with a suggested schedule?

I don't know if LL7 & TOG yr 1 would be teaching the same things. I guess I should somehow get a scope and sequence of lit analysis for both. Do you know if either has these posted on their websites? (I couldn't find them)

Thanks for your help.

[momee]

Yep, it's all laid out for you. I gave the student guide to my student along with the books and he was good to go. Finished the program in record time.

Here's the link

http://www.hewitthomeschooling.com/book/blight.asp

click on student guide then sample

[SS in MD]

!

[Cinder]

Hi, this is our first year using TOG and we're doing Yr 4 classic. We'll be doing Yr1 redesign next school year. We also used LL7 last year (not with TOG).

Here's the link for TOG Yr1 Scope and Sequence. It's focused primarily on rhetoric students, though:

http://www.tapestryofgrace.com/tog_fast/y1/ScopeAndSequence1.pdf


I've given Yr1 a quick glance, and it looks like dialectic lit is geared more to socratic discussion of historical fiction and some non-fiction. From what I recall of LL7 you start with literary elements via the plot diagram. (You can see this in the sample on their website. It has all of the first lesson posted.) It has a few short answer discussion questions and a longer essay assignment in each lesson. There are also exercises that cover a lot of other literary elements that are learned along the way through biography, short stories, poetry, novels.

Each program offers a weekly schedule. If you prefer a daily schedule then that will be up to you to do. LL7's pace is reasonable--maybe 50-60 pages of reading per week then another week or two to complete the lesson's exercises. TOG's schedule is a little faster--a couple of weeks to read the book and discuss.

For *us* it would have been too much to do both programs at once. My ds would have been overwhelmed at all the lit reading. But if you have a voracious reader it may not be too much. Or you could easily cut out a few of the TOG selections. That might give you the best that both have to offer.

HTH
Cinder

[SS in MD]

Cinder,

Thanks for the post. IYO, if you could only do one program (LL7 or TOG year 1) based on Literary analysis, which one would you choose. I really want to try LL7 (I've heard so many good things about it), but I really want to try TOG too it can incorporate all 3 dds! But, at the same time I don't want to overwhelm oldest dd!!

Hope this makes sense! Thanks for the post...

[SS in MD]

bump

[Cinder]

Sorry, I don't check the K8 board very often so I just saw your question. It's a puzzler, since I haven't actually used TOG Yr1. Let me tell you what we've done this year.

We're doing Yr 4 with a co-op. The leaders of the co-op wanted to do some literary analysis. They cut the lit reading list down to about 8-10 selections to give more time for discussion and analysis. The kids were introduced to the plot diagram, how the story was narrated (chronological, which "person" tells it, etc.), types of conflict, etc. All those things you'd want to cover. We didn't do all those things for every book, though we did a plot diagram for each one. One of the ladies had found a book on teaching lit analysis. (It was one of those teacher's helps kind of books. Kind of workbook-ish looking. Sorry I don't know the title.) Anyway she helped us learn it so we could teach it.

If you could do this--develop your own lit analysis--then I'd do just TOG. Although come to think of it you'd have to read the books if you couldn't find Sparksnotes for them. If that wouldn't work out but you'd still like to use TOG you could always spread LL out. Skip a book or two in TOG and replace it with a LL selection. (This might work well since some of the TOG readings are non-fiction.)

FWIW it looks (very brief glance) like TOG does more lit analysis at the rhetoric level.

[WTMindy]

We are using TOG Ancients for our 2nd rotation (we used SOTW 1-4 also) and I am loving it. It is quite a bit of reading, so I don't know that I would add in LL and have another separate subject! One of the things that I like about TOG is that it is all incorporated together. I'm sure it could be done, but I'm not sure why a person would want to do both. We don't use Writing Aids because I wanted our writing to be a bit more directly tied in with our studies and some weeks it is, and some weeks it isn't with Writing Aids. Although, I think the WA book is a great writing reference for whatever writing you use.

We are using IEW this year. I'm finally making it work for us and I really like it. I finally decided that the perfect writing wasn't going to fall into my lap and I was going to have to plan it and IEW seemed the way for us to go. It has been fitting well together. I take the lesson from TOG and decide which unit we'll be working on (right now it is Unit 4-writing from one source) and then I choose the source from which they will write. This has been working well for us this year.

I'm all about combining as much as possible, so I wouldn't want to add CW on top of that. Besides, I a double CW drop-out. Twice I bought and sold the program. :-)

[SS in MD]

Mindy,

Thanks for your post. You're right, I shouldn't add on programs... they all look so good, but then reality kicks in! So are you doing IEW TWSS w/SWI? Or the history based lessons? (sounds like the TWSS, but I'm not that familiar w/IEW (still trying to read everything on the IEW website!)

Thanks again!

[Linda in NM]

We're excited about using Discovering the Ancient World from Trisms--my son will be in 9th grade. He's enjoyed the research approach used by Trism's History Makers. (Trisms includes questionnaires on various topics, as well as map work, vocabulary, time line, and, in DAW, excerpts for literature, as well as book recommendations.

[WTMindy]

Mindy,

Thanks for your post. You're right, I shouldn't add on programs... they all look so good, but then reality kicks in! So are you doing IEW TWSS w/SWI? Or the history based lessons? (sounds like the TWSS, but I'm not that familiar w/IEW (still trying to read everything on the IEW website!)

Thanks again!

I watched the set of DVD's written to the parents (I can't remember what they are called) and then I kept waiting to see the perfect lesson plans that would line up with what I'm doing, but they didn't come.:001_huh:

So, this year I finally just started doing it on my own and it hasn't been nearly as hard as I thought it would. Last year we had done the key word outline and I had taught a few of the dress-ups. So, this year we started with unit 2 and did 4 or 5 weeks of that, and then did a few weeks of unit 3. I'm going to stay camped out at unit 4 for a while until I feel really sure my kids have this one mastered. Each week I added in a dress-up or sentence starter. I don't always make them include all of them because I don't think the always need them. It has gone very smoothly, I just have to plan ahead what source we are going to use to get our info.

If you haven't watched the DVD's they are excellent and give you a great idea how to start with the kids.