My wife and I have been homeschooling our children informally since the first one was born 7-1/2 years ago. We arrived at a homegrown classical curriculum based loosely on Laura Berquist's Design Your Own Classical Curriculum, but we're finding now that we need more structure than our homegrown system provides. Now we're taking a close look at the Mother of Divine Grace curriculum, also designed by Mrs. Berquist, to provide the daily structure we need.
Why classical education? Dorothy Sayers' essay on The Lost Tools of Learning converted us.
Posted by billw at May 14, 2004 12:55 PMWe've been using Seton, which is structure BIGTIME! So thanks for the link to MODG, and the Sayers essay, which looks like it will be very enlightening (after reading just the first few paragraphs).
Posted by: Walter at May 14, 2004 02:08 PMThe MODG curriculum is really wonderful when you need or want more structure for your children, as it is all set out day to day with assignments following the suggestions she makes in the book. Yes, this IS something one could do oneself in order to save on the expense of the printed and bound curriculum. For example, with the math books, she basically just divided the assignments by 36 weeks and tried to make it as evenly spread over the week as possible. History and language arts are similar. The nice part about the curricula is all that thinking and work is already done for you. All you need to do is open the books and get the kids to work.
Do WE use them? Not right now. I find myself coming back to the MODG ideas at the end of each summer, though, because I'm constantly attracted to all those wonderful learning activities being set out before me. Fortunately, the MODG curricula can be found at Cathswap. That's a list for us Catholic homeschoolers to buy and sell used materials. It's a nice resource to have that helps save money. Here is the link to subscribe: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cathswap/
Posted by: Valerie at May 15, 2004 08:06 AMOOPS! To clarify what *I* was talking about, I was actually referring to the MODG syllabi that are printed and bound. Sorry, I haven't had breakfast yet.
Posted by: Valerie at May 15, 2004 08:39 AMI have used both the MODG curriculum and the enrolled services. I only have two problems with MODG:-) One, no discount on syllibi for enrolled families and secondly, I feel science is downplayed. The suggested science texts--the Challenges and Concepts program, was written for inner-city schools--just to get the basics across. There are far better science programs for these ages. I feel science should ignite an excitment about the natural world--not put the child to sleep. I do like upper level use of Apologia and have used three of their books.
Other than the above, it is a solid program.
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