As I mentioned previously, I am part of a special review team for a very interesting product for middle and high school students – Philosophy Adventure. I wrote a first post back in May and today I am writing more about it. Life has been crazy over the summer months with us investing in renovations on the second and first floor. You see we have installed laminate flooring on the 2nd floor and hardwood on the 1st floor which required a lot of moving the furniture around and packing temporarily. Though the floors are now complete, I still have boxes to unpack. But this is not the purpose of this post as I need to tell you how amazing the Philosophy Adventure is as a curriculum for homeschoolers.
Written by Stacy Farrell
Published at Homeschool Adventure
The course includes a reader which contains philosopher stories, images relevant to the time the philosophers were alive, writing lessons, critical thinking lessons, public speaking lessons, historical geography, and a biblical worldview analysis. It also contains detailed checklists for the writing exercises as well as numerous writings prompts. The student workbook includes philosopher notebook pages, mapping assignments, quizzes, tests and more. Finally the Teacher’s Resources includes the keys to the quizzes, tests, and mapping assignments, timelines and easy to follow instructions. The CD would contain the digital edition of the Reader and all the resources.
How the material works
This specific curriculum will introduce students to academic content and help them to develop practical skills like writing, presentation of ideas and critical thinking. The lessons are easy to follow and incremental as the child will learn to be more expressive in his writings and organized in the presentation of his words.
In the Reader, the student will learn more about the leaders in the pre-socratic way of thinking. He/she will discover Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Protagoras, as well as Democritus. In each lesson, you will encounter the philosopher and receive assignments in order to develop your writing, thinking and speaking skills. You will also be able to do a bit of geography based on the life of the philosopher, discover during which School of Thoughts the philosopher participated or founded and learn whether the ideas of the philosopher align with a biblical worldview.
The Student workbook contains all your student will need in order to answer the questions, complete the notebook pages, Add details to the maps, and complete your assignments in the write think speak journal section. A checklist helping the student to make sure he/she has thought of everything also complete the document.
In the Teacher Resources documents, you will find memory cards, timeline resources, master maps and keys, as well as quizzes and keys. I think it is absolutely fabulous that the Teacher Resources document is included in the package in order for me to be able to refer to it and correct the work my son has done. Planning this curriculum into your daily work is quite easy. You can easily adapt the schedule into a four or five days week. In the end your student will be able to complete one lesson every two weeks in order to complete le curriculum after 16 weeks. The curriculum is also flexible for your student to complete it in a more advanced intensive program on a 8 weeks period. This specific curriculum will cover English Composition, World History/Geography, Speech and Communications as well as Logic/Critical Thinking and you will be able to assign credits to your high school student.
Now that I have presented the various documents included in this curriculum, I would like to present some of the things I have learned about one of the philosophers included in this curriculum. What do you know about Pythagoras? Your first thought might be the Pythagorean Theorem. But what else do you really know about him? I was quite surprise by the information I read through the pages of this curriculum. From what I understand, he was the leader of what we would call today a sect. He was very strict with his followers to the point of having them obey bizarre requirements like for example not eating beans. This fear of beans that he had brought his life to an end because he refused to cross a bean field while running for his life.
Needless to say we are still exploring this marvelous curriculum and I find it very interesting for any middle school or high school student. I would like to suggest that you make sure that your child is mature enough before going through this material. My oldest son is very mature for his age and we will continue to use it for his grade 7 year. However, I have other children and I suspect that for some of them I will have to wait until they are in grade 9 before I include this curriculum in their lessons. I am very pleased with what we have learned and covered so far. I can’t wait to see how my son will change as the weeks go by.
Now, here’s a great news…. During the month of August, there is a MEGA GIVEAWAY going at Homeschool Adventure. You have the opportunity to win the Philosophy Adventure Pre-Socratic curriculum along with other great products for homeschooling (see image below to see what you can win!).
MEGA GIVEAWAY – OVER 800$ of curriculum
Wondering how much does Philosophy Adventure cost? Well the physical set will be sold for the price of 89.95$ US while the digital set will be available for the price of 39.95$ at Homeschool Adventure.
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