Selling CW, is CC my only progym alternative?

[dragons in the flower bed]

I've studied the Aesop & Homer manuals, I mean, I took them to bed with me at 8 every night for weeks and sipped hot cocoa and studied them until I was exhausted and fell asleep. I'm giving myself permission to give up. I'm selling the workbooks (not the manuals yet, just in case). So now I need a different progym program. There's Classical Composition. Anything else? Is anyone here using CC?

[cajun.classical]

Well, I used CC before switching to CW. THe first 2 levels (fable and narrative) are well done and easy to implement. It was when I got the book on chreia and maxims that I sort of flipped. There just wasn't very much guidance at all. I had no idea what I was trying to teach. Then I looked at CW Diogenes and realized that the level of instruction was so much better. You could always do CC and then switch to Diogenes if it came down to it. I guess I figured that for the effort it would take for me to teach CC Maxim, I could just as easily do CW. And Diogenes really is easy.

Food for thought...

ps even though I am a big CW cheerleader, I think it's okay to decide it's not for you, not right now. I often think that if my family circumstance was a little different, I just wouldn't be able to do it.

[dragons in the flower bed]

Then I looked at CW Diogenes and realized that the level of instruction was so much better. You could always do CC and then switch to Diogenes if it came down to it.

Yes, right now I'm looking for a way to get my 11yo through the fable and narrative steps. I'll cross chreia when I come to it. I'll keep your words in mind, though, and be sure to look closely again when we get there.

I often think that if my family circumstance was a little different, I just wouldn't be able to do it.

I'm almost ready to sell a kid to gypsies, if that's what it will take to get a progym program working around here.

[OhElizabeth]

Is this for the 8 yo or the 11 yo? Writing Tales would be fabulous and easy to implement for the 8 yo. By the time you do WT1 and 2, CW makes a lot more sense.

[OhElizabeth]

You could put your 11 yo through WT2 at double pace, doing both weeks of work on the model in 1 week. Then you could decide from there whether to go on to Homer or what.

[scrapbabe]

I bought CW over two years ago. I read through it over and over and could not wrap my mind around it at all. I wanted to like it soooo much! I sold it, but still get pangs of regret because I really wanted to like it! That's why I've been considering taking her online class - or joining the student forum (not a forum like this one) where we could ask questions and get feedback as we work through the course.

My heart tells me it's a great curriculum, but my mind just gets stuck in the mud!

Smiles,
Shalynn:iagree:

[dragons in the flower bed]

Is this for the 8 yo or the 11 yo? Writing Tales would be fabulous and easy to implement for the 8 yo. By the time you do WT1 and 2, CW makes a lot more sense.

The 11yo is coming home from his public school experiment in about 10 days. It's for him, and it's in a hurry. That is to say, I need to decide fast so I can get his curriculum plan out to the school district, plus I want to get him through these steps 'cause he's in sixth grade already.

[PollyOR]

I sent you a PM.

[sted]

I too am working on CW Homer and am trying hard to like it but it is really hard to wrap one's mind around! They need to do a teacher orientation video for the teacher at least! I find the Core books confusingly laid out, kind of spiralling..... I'm still with it but it's getting harder to stick to! My poor daughter used to love writing but is hating it this year! We previously did CW Aesop and then Writing Tales 2. She loves re-writing the stories but the rest of Homer frustrates her. One thing I don't get is that the Analysis is not really being applied to the Imitation in a purposeful way yet. eg) Six sentence shuffle is not required in the re-writes, so far they are just for practice. Maybe I don't understand it quite right. I think I need to take the online class too if I can.
:glare:
Shannon

[Peela]

Another alternative might be to get Composition in the Classical Tradition, by Frank D'Angelo. I haven't seen it but I hear it is fairly easy to understand. Its not a curriculum, but it lays out the progym.
And another possibility is, for your younger kids anyway, is to wait for SWB's highschool writing course, which I believe will be based on the progym. It's not necessary to start the progym young.

I really feel its such a shame CW ended up so difficult to teach for us homescxhool parents ( I am a CW dropout too, but I hung in there for a good couple of years). There are so many wonderful things about it- I hope they keep improving it and making it easier to use so that future generations of kids can benefit from it.

[Trivium Academy]

You could use Writing Tales 1 and 2, pick something for the in-between and use The Lost Tools of Writing (http://www.circeinstitute.org/l_lostoolsofwriting.shtml). Our planned sequence was:

2nd-3rd: Primary Language Lessons, Writing Tales 1
4th: Finish Writing Tales 1, start Intermediate Language Lessons
5th: Intermediate Language Lessons
6th: Intermediate Language Lessons and Analytical Grammar
7th: Lost Tools of Writing and Analytical Grammar

We're also doing Latin so we get grammar from there as well as informally in our lessons. This is just what I had planned, it's another option.

[mnllj7]

Another alternative would be IEW, it is an excellent program, It teaches the parent first, then the parent teaches the child. Very very enjoyable. nancyt.:)

[Jean in Wisc]

I used CC for a while, but it went to slowly for the age of my children. It was also hard to understand the teacher's portion--written for the author to use in class, not necessarily for the uninitiated homeschool mom. Good program, though.

I moved to using Composition in the Classical Tradition when the kids got to high school. It is written for pre-law students in college, but it is quite easy to read and understand. The examples tend to be a bit dark (pre-law involves all the gross police-type stories), and I pre-read each chapter, deleting some of the readings for my children. We've never totally finished the book, but I thought it was a nice way to get through the progym a bit more quickly. It does not have all the "extra" writing info that CC and CW have--just straight forward teaching of the progym.

[HiddenJewel]

I too am working on CW Homer and am trying hard to like it but it is really hard to wrap one's mind around! They need to do a teacher orientation video for the teacher at least! I find the Core books confusingly laid out, kind of spiralling..... I'm still with it but it's getting harder to stick to! My poor daughter used to love writing but is hating it this year! We previously did CW Aesop and then Writing Tales 2. She loves re-writing the stories but the rest of Homer frustrates her. One thing I don't get is that the Analysis is not really being applied to the Imitation in a purposeful way yet. eg) Six sentence shuffle is not required in the re-writes, so far they are just for practice. Maybe I don't understand it quite right. I think I need to take the online class too if I can.
:glare:
Shannon

The imitation part of Homer (days 2-4) is actually my favorite. The writing tools that are being taught to the student are wonderful. It gives them so many different options to change up their writing. The six sentence shuffle (minus steps 1&6) can be applied in their rewrites as they become comfortable using the different forms of sentences. So even thought the directions don't say to include a certain type of sentence in their rewrite, it should be a natural progression to use the different tools from the six sentence shuffle in their project.

The Homer core is set up by Day. It then goes through each step for that day before it moves onto the next day. So isn't really isn't spiraling, just going through each day from start to finish. For me, once I made some charts it made a whole lot more sense. And the student workbook makes it a whole lot easier to understand.

DAY 1
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Etc.

DAY 2
Step 1
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Etc.

DAY 3
Etc.

[HiddenJewel]

I've studied the Aesop & Homer manuals, I mean, I took them to bed with me at 8 every night for weeks and sipped hot cocoa and studied them until I was exhausted and fell asleep. I'm giving myself permission to give up. I'm selling the workbooks (not the manuals yet, just in case). So now I need a different progym program. There's Classical Composition. Anything else? Is anyone here using CC?

What about Imitations in Writing from Logos?

[dragons in the flower bed]

What about Imitations in Writing from Logos?

Well... in my experience, the hardest part of writing is not coming up with what to write about, but making the form and style suit your purpose for the piece of writing. So something focused entirely around imitation is of limited usefulness. From the samples I've seen, it looks like Imitations in Writing keeps the imitation part of the progym and dumps all of the revision exercises that were the only part of CW I really liked (the six sentence shuffle, for example). Am I wrong?

[dragons in the flower bed]

You could use Writing Tales 1 and 2, pick something for the in-between and use The Lost Tools of Writing (http://www.circeinstitute.org/l_lostoolsofwriting.shtml).


I hadn't realized that is a progym program. Thanks, Jessica. I think WT might be too young in feel for my 11yo, but I will give it a second look, and definitely keep the idea of using The Lost Tools of Writing after something for the in-between. :)

[dragons in the flower bed]

IWe've never totally finished the book, but I thought it was a nice way to get through the progym a bit more quickly. It does not have all the "extra" writing info that CC and CW have--just straight forward teaching of the progym.


Jean, would you mind giving me an example? I'm leaning towards buying this book.

[HiddenJewel]

Well... in my experience, the hardest part of writing is not coming up with what to write about, but making the form and style suit your purpose for the piece of writing. So something focused entirely around imitation is of limited usefulness. From the samples I've seen, it looks like Imitations in Writing keeps the imitation part of the progym and dumps all of the revision exercises that were the only part of CW I really liked (the six sentence shuffle, for example). Am I wrong?

I don't know on that. I was asking a similar question and Imitation in Writing was one suggested to me.

I love the six sentence shuffle in CW.

[OhElizabeth]

The Imitations books are fine, but an 11 yo is ready to do more. If you are looking at Writing Tales, which yes is in the progym family, you would do WT2 at double pace and then go into Homer OB quite nicely. After WT2, Homer and the whole approach would probably make a lot more sense to you. WT spells it out more clearly and has a lovely tm. When I did WT2, I taught the co-op lessons once a week and dd was able to do the rest of the work pretty much independently, which I assume your boy could do also.

[WTMindy]

I have been doing a lot of thinking and researching on this topic lately and here are a few of my conclusions-for whatever they are worth. :-)

1. The pro-gym really requires rhetoric skills to implement in a valuable way. Thus, I have come around to Susan's opinion that pro-gym can wait until high school when it is combined with a more formal rhetoric study. (Why I didn't just believe her in the first place I don't know, but I would have saved myself quite a bit of effort.)

2. I really like the Lost Tools of Writing program because it is not so much focused on writing skills or the specific pro-gym models, but it teaches thinking skills and organizing the thinking, which then in turn leads to organized writing. I haven't used Lost Tools yet, but I have listened to the CDs and I'm pretty sure that I am going to go with this for middle school. I believe it is true to the ideas in WTM of teaching logic stage kids outlining and organizing skills.

3. I have bought and sold CW....twice (Aesop) and yet I still felt drawn to it, wanting to like it. I borrowed Diogenes from a friend and I think I have finally walked away never to look back. As much as I wanted to like it, it just did not resonate with me. I couldn't make it work for our family.

[clwcain]

Imitation of models is the key to the progym. Without that, I'm not sure if you're really doing anything recognizable as the progymnasmata.

And waiting until a child is studying rhetoric to introduce the progym is to miss the point of the progym. They are the preparatory exercises, the warm ups that provide you the strength and flexibility of mind to actually produce good rhetoric and to profit from its study.

Progym is not the only way to get "there", nor even the best, however you define "there".

Might be a waste of time for most people, especially if your goals are limited to original creative writing or simply producing solid contemporary academic essays.

YMMV and all that. If you don't want imitation to be a component of your writing program, I can see why the progym would be frustrating. You can't have one without the other.

[dragons in the flower bed]

YMMV and all that. If you don't want imitation to be a component of your writing program, I can see why the progym would be frustrating. You can't have one without the other.

No, it's not that I don't want imitation to be a component of our writing program. It's that I don't want it to be, itself, the sole writing program. Imitation in Writing looks like it's just imitation, nothing more. That doesn't make sense to me when the entire value of imitation is it's part in the progym.

[TraceyS/FL]

The 11yo is coming home from his public school experiment in about 10 days. It's for him, and it's in a hurry. That is to say, I need to decide fast so I can get his curriculum plan out to the school district, plus I want to get him through these steps 'cause he's in sixth grade already.

I am no help here, but i want to send you a :grouphug: and i'm happy that he is coming home. I know it was hard for you to send him off.

[Emmy]

I have been doing a lot of thinking and researching on this topic lately and here are a few of my conclusions-for whatever they are worth. :-)

1. The pro-gym really requires rhetoric skills to implement in a valuable way. Thus, I have come around to Susan's opinion that pro-gym can wait until high school when it is combined with a more formal rhetoric study. (Why I didn't just believe her in the first place I don't know, but I would have saved myself quite a bit of effort.)

2. I really like the Lost Tools of Writing program because it is not so much focused on writing skills or the specific pro-gym models, but it teaches thinking skills and organizing the thinking, which then in turn leads to organized writing. I haven't used Lost Tools yet, but I have listened to the CDs and I'm pretty sure that I am going to go with this for middle school. I believe it is true to the ideas in WTM of teaching logic stage kids outlining and organizing skills.

3. I have bought and sold CW....twice (Aesop) and yet I still felt drawn to it, wanting to like it. I borrowed Diogenes from a friend and I think I have finally walked away never to look back. As much as I wanted to like it, it just did not resonate with me. I couldn't make it work for our family.

Great post Mindy, I always appreciate your thoughts *and* the fact that your kids are ahead of mine. :) Lucky me. Can I ask what writing you are using for the grammar stage? TOG?

ETA: sorry for hopping on your thread with my own questions Rose! :)

[dragons in the flower bed]

ETA: sorry for hopping on your thread with my own questions Rose! :)

If I'm not asking the same questions as you are right now, I surely will be later (or have), so please, always feel free to hop all over my threads.