Much Ado About Nothing is an uproarious comedy (with plenty of dramatic elements) about love and hate. While awaiting the marriage of Hero and Claudio, several plots unfold. One is an incredibly funny conspiracy to set up Beatrice and Benedick, two swift-tongued sworn enemies, to fall in love with each other. The other is nefarious, a plan to ruin Hero by convincing Claudio and company that she has been unfaithful.
My son began this school year with Saxon's Math 76. It was his third year of using Saxon, and while the first year had helped a lot with his accuracy and consistency, he was starting to burn out on it. Math 76 wasn't working so well for him (perhaps just his learning style) so I began looking around for something else. Then I heard that Teaching Textbooks had just come out with Math 7. After some investigation, we got the CDs (the book wasn't yet available, but TT offered free PDF downloads to customers) and my son started on it.
For young Richard, life as a poor Parisian apprentice seems rather grim compared to the glamour of going on a crusade with good King Louis IX. After he hears the impassioned words of a friar preaching in a town square, Richard abandons his unhappy apprenticeship and enthusiastically joins up with King Louis’ Crusade. Little does he realize what he is getting himself into. But, before he runs away to join up, he “instinctively” enters the great cathedral of Notre Dame to pray about his future and a problem that is weighing him down.
A Set of Guides for Four Novels Integrating Composition and Higher Level Thinking
Volume 2 carries on the tradition of excellence described in the review of Volume 1, with many additional features for the middle grade student. The 43-page Teacher's Guide is separate from the 136-page Student Book at this level. This volume includes literature guides for Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliffe, The Tale of Troy by Roger Lancelyn Green, and Caesar's Gallic Wars by Olivia Coolidge.
Robb White brings us an exciting historical fiction tale of life aboard a military submarine in the Pacific in World War II. Someone's been transmitting top-secret plans from the American base in Hawaii to Tokyo. The Americans have learned that transmissions are being sent from Hawaii to an island in the mid-Pacific and from there to Japan. They believe they've located the island where the transmissions are being passed along, but have been unable to break the special code being used there.
This book is sold as a 7th/8th grade history text, but with the addition of some outline maps and a little imagination it could easily serve as an introduction to world geography.
We just finished a great history year, my two middle-schoolers and I. We tackled American History and used as our textbook Catholic School Textbook Project's From Sea to Shining Sea. I divide our school year into four quarters, so we had exactly five chapters per quarter. Every Wednesday afternoon we sat down in the sunny, bright living room and I would begin reading a chapter aloud. My two middle-schoolers would then each a take turn reading and we would have the chapter read in just over an hour. They used an atlas to find and trace the historical routes covered that session.
I came across this little gem of a story from the 19th century while visiting the Paidea Classics website. This is a website with resources for Eastern Orthodox home schooling families. If you are studying the time period of the early Church you will find a lot of primary sources and resources there.
The ad for this book does not do it justice. It is far more than just a reading comprehension workbook and although the ad does list the activities involved, it doesn't express their depth or breadth. This book could be used as a unit study! I plan to have my 12 year old select a saint each quarter to prayerfully study and to immerse himself in the saints life and spirituality. Although Isaiah enjoys reading the lives of the saints, when he's done with a book (usually in a few days) his devotion to the saint usually doesn't last long.