Analytical Grammar - Review

I have to admit that when we got the chance to review something from Analytical Grammar....even I wasn't super excited.  I know that seems sort of mean....but, it is true.  It is summer.  Ugggg.  Grammar?  (You should probably take my homeschool membership card away right now!)



Happily, the product we got to review was actually the book called The Eternal Argument.  That doesn't sound nearly as bad in the summer time, does it?

I will admit right up front the only reason I was interested in taking a look at this book was that a friend of mine read it (outloud) with her kids and they loved it.

This book is recommended for 8th grade and up......but, unfortunately, my big kids weren't interested in doing this during the summer months. Those bums!  So, I was left on my own to read it.  And, as I read, I kept wishing that I had someone....anyone.....to discuss it with....because there was moment after moment of "I have never thought of that like this before...."

So, my recommendation matches the authors......read this aloud with someone.....even if you have to force your kids into it!  And, honestly, once you get them reading it, they won't complain anymore.




The basic premise of this book is that there has been a neverending argument (Eternal Argument) about who should really be in charge, throughout Western literature and culture.  Is it man?  Is it God?  Is there even a God to be in charge?  You know, deep questions like that between Humanism - Man is perfectible, or Theism - Man is flawed.

This book is weird.

Weird, but interesting.

Weird and definitely a bit hard to describe. (Here is a little more information about the book, that explains it better than me.)

Weird, but definitely good.

I am definitely glad I read it.

The author, R. Robin Finley, goes through the chapters walking you through why we should read all of those "classic" books that people talk about, through what the fight has been about, into what the "Western" literature/culture really is and then moves into what the sides have been showing from the Middle Ages to Renaissance, Neo-classical, Romanticism, Realism, to the newest guys on the block, Naturalists and Modernists.

Have I lost you yet?

I told you it was weird.

Weird, but worth it.

I felt like this book was a mini master class in western literature.

She talked about books like Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, 1984, the importance of the King James Version of the Bible, and Greek Mythology.

Her feeling is that the western literature literary platform has 3 pillars and pictures it like a 3 legged stool. The legs are:  Greek and Roman Mythology; King James Version of the Bible, and Aurthurian Legend.....and the top of the stool is all of western literature.

Make sense?

To use a tried and true phrase.....you really just have to read the book.

She walks you through the reasons why the books are important....hopefully you have read them, because there are spoilers in order to make her points.  I have read most of them....the ones I haven't, she made me want to read.  Books like Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, and Brave New World.

I liked the author.  I liked her description of herself from her teaching days as a "benevolent dictator"....because that is what I consider myself as well.  I am in charge, but if you behave how you are supposed to, I am really nice....and fun!

I am just going to give you a few examples of things I found especially interesting and made me really think.

In Chapter 6, What is the Western Literature "Platform"?, she talks about the King James Version of the Bible being woven into our cultural DNA.  Being part of things like Good Samaritan laws, or talk about "the powers that be", "signs of the times" or "the blind leading the blind", and last, but not least, the phrase, "eat, drink, and be merry."  All of those are phrases and concepts found in the Bible....specifically, the King James Version of the Bible.

See?

It is woven into our culture DNA....whether we realize it or not.  Whether you think you are a Bible believer, or not.

The author has a list of Bible passages that she recommends be memorized by the time kids are in high school.  Things like the 23rd Psalm, the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Lord's Prayer.....because they will have meaning and purpose outside of life as a Christian.

I am happy to say that my kids are doing pretty good with her recommendations, but we do have a few to add into our list....and we usually don't read the King James Version.

I really enjoyed Chapter 7, Should We Quarantine Our Kids?,  This chapter talks about quarantining our children from literature that doesn't line up with our own personal worldview.  She says that we, instead, should inoculate our children by exposing them to books that come from a different viewpoint while they are under your roof and you can talk about the issues.

This issue is something that the homeschoolers are often accused of...sheltering our kids from the real world.  I like to think I am sheltering enough to keep them safe and giving them room to develop into the fantastic people that they should be, but showing them/exposing them to enough real world stuff that they don't go out into the world wildly naive.

I do let them read controversial books.  We do read a lot of the classic books mentioned in this book as part of our studies.  But, I have had them all read a book called This Present Darkness, by Frank Peretti first. We talk about it and then I set them loose with books with the parameters set that I don't want purely evil books in the house.

The best thing is that I often will read the books along with the kids so we can discuss them together.

What the book The Eternal Argument has done for me is give me a total whole other side of every book I read.  So, there will be lots of other deeper, hidden meanings to all the book we read.

At my recent family reunion, somehow we got to talking about the movie, The Wizard of Oz.  One of my nephews had just learned that there was a whole series of books surrounding the movie.  Another nephew said that he had read that the books were written as a slam on politics at the time and that characters all represented things.  For example, the scarecrow was the brainless poor man, the tin man was the heartless big business, etc.

Again, just a deeper look into the story that we all know.

That is what The Eternal Argument is about too.....a deeper look into the classic books most of us have read.  A way to give us the much bigger picture going on in the world for years and years.

Towards the end of the book, in Chapter 13, Stuff You Need To Know To Teach This Stuff, she goes into more detail about how to teach this stuff.  I was glad to see that it was okay, especially for younger kids, to just read.  You don't have to dig into deeper meanings all the time.

It is okay to just love a book and create a movie in your head.  But, when you do want to dig deeper and teach and discuss some of these things, she breaks it down into classroom teaching and homeschool teaching.

Chapter 14, Now Let's Apply All This to Books We've Discussed. is one that she suggests not reading with your children.  She talks about a step by step process for doing the literary analysis.  She also goes through the 18 books that she featured in the book and gives more details and digs deeper into them.

The last part of the book I will touch on is Chapter 15, Because It Is All About Me.....What Do I Think? This was really interesting because throughout the book the author has tried to be balanced....to show both sides of the coin...or argument.  This is the chapter where you find out what she actually thinks....and why.  I liked and agreed with her opinions on a conservative Christian attending a secular college and how they will be able to survive in the class.  Again, you will have to read the book to see what we both think.  

You can get your own copy of this weird, but sort of wonderful book, The Eternal Argument for $24.95.


See what other TOS Reviewers thought of all the other Analytical Grammar products.

Science4Us.com Review

Yup.  Review season has started back up again....and this is a review.

But, even if you aren't a homeschooler, please keep reading.  I have gotten some really cool resources to share with you this year, that would be a great supplement to "normal" school too!  :)

This review is for something called Science4Us.com.



It is an on-line science curriculum for K-2.  S-girl is in 1st grade, so she is using it, but I am also having A-man (3rd grade) do it to review stuff he has hopefully already learned!  They say that you could use this program up to 5th grade for this purpose.  There are over 350 lessons included....so they will stay busy for a while. 

Science4Us.com is from the same people that created Vocabulary SpellingCity.com  (I liked that one too!)

I will start off by saying what you really want to know......the kids love, love, love this program.  A-man actually asked if this was a review that we can keep.  That doesn't always happen, even if they like a product we try.  Sometimes they are happy to just use it for the short period of time and then just forget about it.  But, this time was different....they want more!

My kids are usually pretty fond of computer school anyway, since I limit their on-line "screen" time, so any computer school means more screen time for them.

But, this one was different. 

They were excited about it, every time.  They would fight over who got to do their computer school first.  (That part wasn't so fun for me....but, oh well....)

The program itself was really fun and easy.  They have 4 "books" of science.  They are Inquiry, Physical, Life, Earth/Space.  See?  On the right side of the page, under Log Out.  Oops, I typed them in the wrong order....


(No, I do not have any children named, Katie...this is a generic screen shot!)


Now, if S-girl and A-man were part of my first born bunch of children, I would have spent much more time in the Teacher/Admin. section creating assignments for them.  But, since they are children number 4 and 5, I really just let them loose in the program.  They really didn't have any problems with this approach. 

Science4us.com explains what they need to do, as they move along.   There is also a little introductory video they can watch (that is the one in the above screen shot that says "Pinky wants you to watch this video".)  It goes through the books, the modules, the activities, their notebook, etc.

A nice thing for your early readers (or just bad readers) is that they have the verbal announcement of the different options to choose....when you hover the mouse over them.  You even have the option to repeat what was said....which comes in really handy around here. If, and when,  a ruckus breaks out.... it is easy to have the program repeat the question or information after the noise has moved to another room!

A few other things that weres helpful, even though at first it was sort of daunting for the kids was the glossary and  mini-explain (little picture of a brain) sections....under the My Tools section.  The glossary is simply that....a glossary.  The mini-explain section is also just what is says...a mini-explanation of different terms or things.  The problem was that sometimes the kids didn't know what the words were in the first place.  For example, there are explanations for Venn diagrams, tally charters, analogies.  See? Sort of hard words for little people.  However, the explanations and the visuals used are phenomenal and do a great job explaining the complicated terms/ideas in an age appropriate way.

I really thought the mini-explain about the importance of note taking to be really good....and, honestly, both A-man and S-girl have taken this advice to heart in other areas of studies outside of Science4us.com.

Okay, so onto a science lesson.

Like I said, I let the kids loose, so they would pick from one of the four books, then they would have the option to pick a unit, then a module.  Here....look at this...

This is the Life science book, the Living Things unit and the module for Animals.  This particular module has a set of 12 activity areas to work through and the 13th area is an evaluation of how well you know the module.

Here is one of the activities:

This is S-girl's cat.  (A little quirk we found with the drawing labeling portions of this program is that they don't work in full screen mode, so you have to make the working screen small to get those parts to work.  I also learned how skilled my kids are when using a mouse to draw pictures! )

These types of activities and drawings can be saved into the student's notebook.  Here is a list of some of the things that S-girl saved into hers....

It shows the Book, Unit/Activity, the date it was added and then a thumbprint picture of it.

This program was very easy for the kids to just jump in and handle mostly on their own.  There are sections in the activities where it specifically asks them to discuss or talk about things they learned....but, the kids just skipped those portions and moved on with the lesson.

There are parts of the lessons that have the kids "show what they know"....like picking a picture of something.  For instance, in the animals section, they asked S-girl to pick the picture that showed one of the "needs" of an animal.  It showed a picture of a panda bear eating bamboo and a cat staring sort of creepily into the camera.  S-girl picked the cat (what can I say?  She likes cats.)  But, obviously that answer was wrong....you don't need to be creepy to live.  :)  So, the little cartoon teacher voice said something like, "Oops, looks like you need a reminder....let's watch again."  It then automatically took her back to the part of the lesson that explained what a need was and the things an animal needs to live.  Just in case you don't know, those things are food, water, air, and shelter.

Again, the kids really liked this program.  A-man hopes we can afford to continue our membership.  S-girl's only complaint is that the "Explain" section of activities takes too long and she gets bored.

I did let them loose to run around Science4us.com, but I could easily monitor what they were doing, how much time they spent doing it and how successful they were by logging into the Teacher/Admin page and looking over all the reports available.

There is a LOT of information available in the Teacher/Admin. section.  If I intended to be more hands on, I could access a sort of cheat sheet or video cram session before teaching the class.  You can really dig into a LOT of detail within the student reports too.  There are even off-line activities that I could have the kids do.


Side note:  I learned something from the kids in the process of quizzing/interviewing them for the review.  Our school has a weak spot. Both of the kids said that they had never heard any of the space stuff before Science4us.com.  So, now I know that I need to tweak things around here and include more information on space at an earlier age than I currently do it.


In case I missed any key points, or you still have questions about how Science4us.com works, take a look at this video.  I don't get into all the "standards" that this program meets, but if that sort of thing is important to you, the details are all in this short clip.

So, to answer A-man's question of whether we can afford to keep this review or not....the cost of Science4Us.com is $7.95 per month/per student.  (There are options available for "normal" schools too.)  I think that makes this program very doable, even with our tight budget!

Take a look at what other TOS Reviewers thought about Science4Us.com.