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MarilynW
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Posted: May 09 2014 at 10:30am | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

I would love to know how if you use the Great Ideas program or Gateway to the Great Books in your homeschool. Last year my kids got me an entire set of the Great Books of the Western World, the Great Ideas and the Gateway to the Great books at a library sale - a fantastic Mothers Day gift and my husband built bookcases for them!! My high schoolers ure reading the Great Books and use the Great Ideas (they follow Kolbe's schedule) - and I am thinking of starting the Gateway for the middle schoolers.

I am also using the Great Ideas and the Gateway for my "Mama Education Program" - and I am so loving them. I want to mention too that Hillsdale College now has a free Great Books 101 class that I am also really enjoying.


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Posted: May 09 2014 at 10:34am | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

I would also like to know how you incorporate the great ideas in your younger grades. We love all the Yesterday's Classics - and use them for our Greek/Roman/Middle Ages years. I think a lot of the CM living books are a good preparation for reading the Great Books. We love the Lancelyn Greene, Hawthorne, HE Marshall etc.

I would love to get one of the old sets such as the Collier Junior Classics or My Bookhouse - does anyone own them and recommend them? I think my littler ones would just love them.

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Posted: May 10 2014 at 8:46am | IP Logged Quote Mackfam

Hi Marilyn,
We LOVE the Great Books here! I have both series: the Great Books set (I have the 1952 set) and the Gateway to the Great Books set.

I don't use any "program" with the Great Books or with the Gateway Books. And truthfully, I use the Great Books pretty sparingly even in high school. I focus mostly on the Great Ideas which are listed in the series and referenced in the synopticon (index). Just as a little bit of an explanation for those that may not have the set, the Great Ideas are listed on the inside (back) cover of each of the 52 books/volumes in the series. There are 102 Great Ideas listed and these are extensively indexed in two full index volumes - these index volumes are called the Synopticon.   So, for example, you might look up *Justice* in the synopticon and you would find all of the authors and references to the idea of Justice.

We follow a Good before Great philosophy here. So, I mainly stick with the Good Books (these would be the books in the Gateway series, as well as other excellent and worthy living literature) all the way through high school, and I begin to punctuate upper high school reading with more and more Great Ideas focused reading with an introduction to the Synopticon. I have my high schoolers read a few of the Great Books, and then we may focus on one virtue or Great Idea, and we reference that in the index and may read excerpts from a few authors on that Idea.   Honestly, the essays in the beginning of the series (Volume 1 - The Great Conversation) are excellent reading.

High School - Gateway Set
In the Gateway set, I jump around a bit, but honestly this set alone is a treasure and one could build a solid high school curriculum from this set alone!!! The set gives a plan of graded reading which could serve as an excellent jumping point for a high school plan! I love the Critical Essays in Volume 5. I have my students read many of the documents in Man and Society - vol 6 and 7. I really like the Natural History volume, and the Philosophical Essays in vol 10 are excellent for upper level students. I also really appreciate the recommended anthologies of poetry in the back of the synoptical guide (vol 1).

High School - Great Books Set
Here's what my high schoolers do read from the Great Books - these books are read more widely if not completely:

The Great Conversation - Volume 1 of the series
Plutarch
Thomas A'Kempis
Augustine
Aquinas
Iliad/Odyssey
Shakespeare

Then, there are excerpts from others of the Great Books as indexed by Idea.

Our Approach: Good ---> to ---> Great
I intentionally approach these two sets in this way: Good before Great - because I think it prepares the imagination and intellect to receive those BIG ideas that are in the Great Books. I heard an amazing talk by Dr. James Taylor (it was a few years ago, I think), titled Good To Great: Teaching Literature From Grammar to Rhetoric.. The premise of Dr. Taylor's talk was to lay a rich and deep foundation of ideas through the Good Books before approaching the Great Books (Charlotte Mason is mentioned in the Q&A). Dr. Taylor spoke of the consequences/effects of bringing a student to the Great Books before they were ready - it seems that they tend to shift into a skim/look-for-the-theme/moral/outline mode in their reading rather than reading in a wider way - looking for the Great Ideas. Anyway....I"ll see if I can find his talk online so I can link it for you because it's really excellent!!

Marilyn wrote:
I would also like to know how you incorporate the great ideas in your younger grades.

I think this is one of the excellent benefits of a Charlotte Mason education. In consistently following a plan of excellent and worthy reading each year, we lay a foundation through a CM/liberal education which thoroughly prepares the imagination to receive the Great Ideas. But the preparation doesn't lie in the reading alone - since the Great Ideas are meant to assist one in entering the Great Conversation, narrations and the other CM methods perfectly prepare a child for moving into the Great Conversation. So the simple answer to your question is: we follow a structured CM education and the Great Ideas are naturally introduced.

Marilyn wrote:
I am also using the Great Ideas and the Gateway for my "Mama Education Program" - and I am so loving them. I want to mention too that Hillsdale College now has a free Great Books 101 class that I am also really enjoying.

Excellent!! I want to really encourage you in this! My reading of the Great Books has done nothing but build my own intellect and understanding and this in turn nurtures the atmosphere of our home and my ability to converse in the Great Ideas with my children. If you did nothing but your own reading, I think there could be rich benefits in the home!

I'll see if I can look around for Dr. Taylor's talk....

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Posted: May 10 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

Thanks Jen. I think we have the same editions. I actually have a set of Great Ideas books too - but you can find the readings online.

My guys chose the Great Books when we were discussing high school plans for them - I was a bit concerned at the fairly difficult readings, but they are doing well. Obviously they will have different layers of understanding than my dd in college who is also reading them, but it is really going well.

I like the Great Ideas for myself because the readings are shorter. So right now my guys are doing Plato and I am doing shorter readings. Yesterday I was reading the trial of Socrates again - and I got quite emotional...and really understood again the timeless relevance of the Great Books.

Yes - we read through the Good Books too - most are on CM reading lists.

As I am thinking about next year's plans, I am trying to build in lots of good reading/read aloud and discussion time.

Jen - do you own any of the vintage sets such as the the Young Folks Book Shelf or My Book House or Childcraft? I am going to look for these in library sales etc.

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 9:23am | IP Logged Quote CrunchyMom

I'm still early on in this journey and so far tend to be of the good to great persuasion that Jen describes, but I really like browsing the Angelicum Academy booklists for elementary.

I had Childcraft books I enjoyed growing up that were my dad's. I think they were nice, but I find my boys don't gravitate to anthologies like that so much. I have a few of The Children's Hour books I picked up cheaply at sales, and I barely see them touched. I think my focus will be on building a library including the books recommended by Ambleside, Angelicum, and Kolbe's literature lists. (and Mater Amabilis, but I primarily follow their list for assigned work anyway).

One anthology I do see used are the two volumes of National Review Treasury of Classic Literature (volume two is still in print). They are short stories taken from St. Nicholas Magazine. Disclaimer: I worked for the publisher pre-children and got them for free. I do think it is a worthy collection though, in the public domain, most can likely be found archived online.

I have the Gateway set, copyright 1963, which we got from dh's parents' basement. I have not explored it much as yet, and I am glad to hear how others are using it!

Our next door neighbor is a semi-retired college professor who studied at St. John's College, so I am willing him to have a long, healthy retirement and the desire to tutor my boys in high school

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 9:37am | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

I like your thoughts Lindsay. I was really wanting to get one of the out of print sets - but it would really kill my budget right now.

I agree with the Angelicum lists. I have a binder with various reading lists in (including copies of my older children's lifetime reading lists with comments) Here are some of the other reading lists we use when buying books, making gift lists, going to used book sales etc

Here are some good books lists that we use:

1000 Good Books
Ambleside Reading Lists
Good Books List
Great Books Readings
101 Books for College Bound Readers ( I am a little wary of some of these!!)
Another Good Books List
School of Abraham reading lists (caveat there are many Mormon sites on this list - but also many other excellent ones)
The Well Educated Mind Booklist
The Great Books of Western Civilization
100 Recommended books

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 9:38am | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

Sorry I am having trouble adding hyperlinks - I will try again this evening.

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 9:51am | IP Logged Quote Mackfam

MarilynW wrote:

Jen - do you own any of the vintage sets such as the the Young Folks Book Shelf or My Book House or Childcraft? I am going to look for these in library sales etc.

No, I don't. I had a compilation anthology of children's literature and my kids never go to it, and I honestly don't think of it as much either. But, stand alone books we all gravitate toward. So, I don't purchase anthologies of literature. Another reason for that is that I tend to organize and shelve books by genre/topic/historical period - and I can't do that with an anthology. Which means...I don't think of the anthology when I'm looking for something to read or planning a booklist.

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 9:57am | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

Thanks Jen. I think my kids would be the same - we have a couple of more modern compilations - and I used them as read alouds for little ones, but my kids do not usually pick them up to read.

On the subject of "good to great" - my older kids who read a lot of the Hawthorne, Alfred Church, Guerber, Tappan, Baldwin, Weston etc books in Elementary/Middle - have definitely found it easier when reading the actual Homer, Plutarch, Virgil etc in high school.

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 10:01am | IP Logged Quote Mackfam

I like Angelicum as well. Dr. James Taylor, whom I referred to a bit in my first post, writes the study guides for Angelicum Academy.

Glad you mentioned the St. Nicholas magazines, Lindsay! We have several of the issues which are available free through archive.org.

The thing about anthologies is that I always try to think of ways to somehow index them by genre or topic or historical period so that I can make better use of them. I did that with a couple of anthologies I have and that does help me make use of them. I keep my compiled indexes with my books about books so I can consider the anthologies as I plan booklists.

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 10:09am | IP Logged Quote Mackfam

MarilynW wrote:
On the subject of "good to great" - my older kids who read a lot of the Hawthorne, Alfred Church, Guerber, Tappan, Baldwin, Weston etc books in Elementary/Middle - have definitely found it easier when reading the actual Homer, Plutarch, Virgil etc in high school.

Completely agree!

We use children's adaptations of Plutarch in upper elem/middle and then I find my child is ready for the Dryden translation.

This Good --> to --> Great walk is a good reason to stretch the kids with books that are meaty and challenging to read in the earlier years (even if you have to read those books aloud) - books that require a slower pace and solid narrations - because having laid those habits down earlier children are accustomed to beautiful language, well written prose, and by high school, will narrate to themselves silently after they read. It prepares their intellectual ability to deal with the book, and it also primes the imagination for the Great Ideas.

So, I guess I'm just really nodding my head in agreement, Marilyn.

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 10:25am | IP Logged Quote MarilynW

It is a greater investment in the time of the mama teacher in the younger grades - lots of reading aloud and discussing. But when we do this it makes workbooks etc seem so inadequate and unnecessary. I just pray that I will have the time and energy and good health enough to do this until my younger children are older.

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Posted: May 12 2014 at 10:41am | IP Logged Quote CrunchyMom

MarilynW wrote:
It is a greater investment in the time of the mama teacher in the younger grades - lots of reading aloud and discussing. But when we do this it makes workbooks etc seem so inadequate and unnecessary. I just pray that I will have the time and energy and good health enough to do this until my younger children are older.


Librivox is a great resource for this as well. So many of these good books are available or are in the process of becoming available, and the readers are generally good for these titles. I am trying to be more organized in using this resource so that the children can access them independently and regularly, like a modified morning basket of sorts. My goal is to be present, but my baby is so distracted and my toddler so volatile, every (every) read aloud is interrupted!!

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Posted: May 14 2014 at 1:22am | IP Logged Quote Kelly

I love the Gateway to the Great Book Series! We use it as our Sustained Silent Reading (SSR sounds impressive but is just daily reading) along w whatever fun books-or course oriented texts- the kids are reading. My 6th grader keeps a list of the suggested reading plan for her age, as does my 9th grader, and we cherry pick titles that tie into our history studies. EG as we studied Ancient Egypt, the girls read Francis bacon's "The Sphinx", or for Ancient Greece, Xenophon's " On the Character of Socrates". We don't do this every day but several times/week, anyway-I also incorporate stories from The Jr Classics set in a similar fashion, EG the story of Leonidas for our Ancient Greek period etc. --- as well as tried and true children's adaptations of some of the Great Books... But the list from Gateway series is our lodestone. It is a wonderful resource.

We have the Great Books set(1952) too-fab for its sheer content tho the format of using Double columns puts off some. Still-u can always provide ur own more eye-friendly editions or better translations if u want, instead. I totally ascribe to the Good to Great approach too-bravo! Gateway series is perfect for that. Have I said how much I love this set!

U don't have to break the bank for these sets. I think we paid $60 for the whole gateway series-not cheap but keep ur eyes open for deals-they r out there. Like wise the Great Books set-prices average @$200 for the entire set of 56-60 books (still reasonable when u consider what ur getting!) but u can pick up partial sets cheaply and individual volumes at Goodwill for pennies and slowly build your library. We also have the aforementioned Junior Classics which someone gave us, and a My Book House set which is lovely-recently spotted at Goodwill for $12 for the whole set.

Did I mention I love these books?

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Posted: May 15 2014 at 12:51am | IP Logged Quote Kelly

One more thing about Gateway to the Great Books AND the Great Books series. For some reason, they often use translations that aren't the best-not sure why Of course, if u know what u need you can easily pick up a different translation that u like better. However, as Lindsay pointed out, Librivox has many many of these classics recorded & u can listen to them for free.. Sometimes u have to do a little research to find where the excerpt in GTTGB matches up with the recording, but it just takes a little sleuthing , and most of the Librivox I've heard have been good translations. My girls like to sketch or paint while we listen
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Posted: May 24 2014 at 5:49pm | IP Logged Quote Kelly

hi Jen Mackfam- were u ever able to find the link to Dr James Taylor's lecture on Good Books/ Great books? I would really like to access it if you have!

One more "rave" about the gateway to the Classics set- and the Great Books series, too, for that matter. I used to hear complaints from my "peanut gallery" that something or other I assigned them was "too long" or " too hard" quack quack quack. But ever since we started slowly tackling the Gateway series (with some side trips into a few of the Great Books) I've noticed MUCH less complaining from the gang.

Back in the day I remember assigning "famous men of Ancient Greece"-not part of the GTTGB but a nice little resource-and witnessing an inordinate amount of gnashing of teeth and tearing by my kids over this simple assignment. But now that they are really being challenged to cut their teeth on the real McCoy stuff in the gateway series, I think their reading maturity has increased dramatically. After reading Plato's Crito, Famous Men of Ancient Greece is a walk in the park:-)

I also think it appeals to the kids that much of what they are reading is primary documentation. We are all looking forward to reading Pliny's account of the eruption of Vesuvius (or listening to it on librivox-what a great free resource!)

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Posted: May 27 2014 at 4:48pm | IP Logged Quote Trill

MarilynW wrote:

On the subject of "good to great" - my older kids who read a lot of the Hawthorne, Alfred Church, Guerber, Tappan, Baldwin, Weston etc books in Elementary/Middle - have definitely found it easier when reading the actual Homer, Plutarch, Virgil etc in high school.


Thank you for this recommendation. I would like to read more great books myself (engineer-by-training so avoided them in my earlier education) but I don't really feel like I have the brainpower in this season with infant twins. I'm trying to find more of these meaty elementary/middle school books and you've just given me a really nice list. That should keep me busy for a while!

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Posted: July 14 2014 at 8:30pm | IP Logged Quote CrunchyMom

I finally picked up the first Gateway book today and read the introduction and first chapter and skimmed the index and planned reading lists.

I am not trying to "pick on" Angelicum, but I have been skimming more of their upper lelementary stuff than I did before now that my oldest is 10, and it is very heavy on some sort of obscure authors. Like Henty. In a single year, they'll have many Henty titles included in the literature. Well, when you read the intro to Gateway, the author lumps Henty in with adventure novel type books that he feels we're a waste of his time (unless I am misunderstanding him). Anyway, I had been thinking about how much of this one author would be listed while other worthy authors are not included at all, and then to hear him referenced specifically as fun boy adventure but not much substance (perhaps outside of the historical insight?) was strange. The same with Edgar Rice Burroughs. I have not read him myself, but I had sort of viewed those books as better than average popcorn--like the novel equivalent of the TinTin comics. To see both his series IN FULL as required reading threw me.

Now, my son is currently reading the Tarzan books, so I'm not a snob, but it feels like there are some other worthy authors left out. And regarding Henty, there is a lot of really excellent historical fiction by a variety of (Catholic) authors like the books published by Bethlehem that would be better than just reading a dozen or more G. A. Henty novels over the course of elementary and middle school.

Obviously, I am not using Angelicum But since it is the curriculum that specifically bills itself as a Good Books/Great Books program, it was strange to have my nagging feeling affirmed just by reading the preface.

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Posted: July 29 2014 at 8:22am | IP Logged Quote Mackfam

Mackfam wrote:
Our Approach: Good ---> to ---> Great
I intentionally approach these two sets in this way: Good before Great - because I think it prepares the imagination and intellect to receive those BIG ideas that are in the Great Books. I heard an amazing talk by Dr. James Taylor (it was a few years ago, I think), titled Good To Great: Teaching Literature From Grammar to Rhetoric.. The premise of Dr. Taylor's talk was to lay a rich and deep foundation of ideas through the Good Books before approaching the Great Books (Charlotte Mason is mentioned in the Q&A). Dr. Taylor spoke of the consequences/effects of bringing a student to the Great Books before they were ready - it seems that they tend to shift into a skim/look-for-the-theme/moral/outline mode in their reading rather than reading in a wider way - looking for the Great Ideas. Anyway....I"ll see if I can find his talk online so I can link it for you because it's really excellent!!

Just wanted to let you all know that after writing to both David Kern of CiRCE and Dr. Taylor, both have generously granted permission for me to share Dr. Taylor's talk -- Good to Great: Teaching Literature from Grammar to Rhetoric -- on my blog. You can find the post with the audio of the Dr. Taylor's talk here. This is such a fantastic talk, and it will cost you nothing but an hour of your time to listen to it!

A technical note - some people are having trouble hearing the audio. It works on an iPad, and seems to work on a laptop/desktop with most browsers. You won't be able to listen to it on the iPhone (I'm researching that!). And some are having issues with Windows. I hope that most that want to hear the talk will be able to!

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Posted: July 30 2014 at 5:40am | IP Logged Quote CrunchyMom

I really enjoyed the talk, Jen. It was terrific.

I am still a little uncertain of which direction to head for high school. I have a few years, but I think I need to start wrapping my head around where I want to go as my oldest approaches middle school.

Right now, my gut says to prepare my children but let them choose, to some extent, what their high school looks like according to their goals. But I would like to figure out where I stand regarding theory. Mortimer Adler, at least according to what I've seen, believed that the future of a liberal arts education was to ensure it was given in high school, given that our high school ages overlap greatly with the ages of those entering Harvard and the like 2 centuries ago, leaving college available for occupational training.

It makes sense to me. Especially since, once one enters the work world and eventually has a family, it is very difficult to pursue self-education. My own father has only just discovered this world and is making his way through the great books at 60! I don't want my sons to have to wait so long.

So, I guess where I am wondering about Dr. Taylor's talk, especially given that he does not pretend to have a perfect formula to prescribe, is what about the high schooler who *has* been formed by the Good Books, in an atmosphere like what he describes? Do you think what he is saying is in conflict with what Adler describes in the Gateway series or the curriculum laid out by Angelicum (to which Adler contributed and consulted).

I do not have a classical education myself, and I feel that it would be prudent of me to have a general idea of what high school will look like for my sons and start reading ahead of them NOW! Perhaps using the list in the Gateway series as a guide?

PS--In searching for some of these answers, I've come across many criticisms of the amount of Henty, etc... in their earlier lists. Good to know I'm not alone

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