Kolbe Reviews: Voyages in English (Grammar)

Voyages in English is a vintage Catholic-school grammar book series. My mother-in-law used it growing up, and I love this because whenever my kids complain it’s so hard, Grandma is there to remind them she did just fine with it.  And went on to have a story published in Redbook Magazine, no less.

Originally published in the late ’50’s and early ’60’s, it is available as a reprint from Lepanto Press.  There is an modern version of Voyages in English still being published by Loyola Press, and I am told that Lepanto’s vintage reprint will soon be re-named Lepanto English to avoid confusion.

What I love about the old Voyages:

  • I like using vintage and historic textbooks, because they double as primary sources for history.
  • The grammar is rigorous.  Studied well, students will learn to write clearly and edit effectively.

What other people hate about the old Voyages:

  • It’s so old-fashioned.
  • Not everybody wants to grow up to be an editor.

Realistically, some of the material in the sixth grade book was new to me, and is understandably overwhelming to parents who aren’t word-geeks. (Fourth grade is no problem.)  The teacher’s manual has explanations and answers, but could make your eyes swim if you don’t already know roughly what the book is talking about.  Also, I giggle every time I see the word “copulative”.

The Kolbe Course Plans

The course plans assign the exercises, and every now and again tell you to diagram some sentences, or write a letter, or something like that.  There are quarterly exams and answer keys in the course plans.  If you aren’t enrolled with Kolbe I’d skip the plans and just type up your own list of dates and assignment numbers at the beginning of the school year.

I would encourage you, if you do follow the Kolbe plans, to blackline assignments that cover topics your child has clearly mastered, and generally avoid anything that smacks of busy work.  The plans, like the text, cover every possible grammar need, allowing you to be the Benevolent Dictator, mercifully skipping over long exercises training students out of bad habits they had no idea existed until seeing them in the book.

What if you can’t stand VOE?

You’re not alone.  A popular alternative used by Kolbe and Mother of Divine Grace families is Easy Grammar.

I picked up an older edition at a used book sale, and I like having it on hand as a resource for extra practice pages.  The edition I have (1994) has reproducible worksheets and then the filled-in worksheet on the facing page.  It seems to cover all the topics normal people cover in English grammar.

Another option that comes highly recommended  is the free online K.I.S.S. Grammar Books by Dr. Ed Vavra.  Worth a look.

Do you even need a formal grammar program?

Sooner or later, sure.  But if standard English is the language spoken in your home, I’m not persuaded students need to do a rigorous study of grammar every single year.   And note that if you are studying a foreign language of any kind, then the kids are getting quite a lot of grammar education that way.

Having largely unschooled grammar until 4th grade, I had no difficulty transitioning both kids to Voyages this year.  I looked through the Kolbe Placement Exams early last summer, and used a selection of worksheets from the Super Teacher Worksheets to give the kids an introduction to the concepts they’d be seeing in the fall.

So although I happen to like the Kolbe selection on this one, and I find that using it this year was well-timed for us, I wouldn’t make your child’s love of Voyages in English the make-or-break on your choice of programs.  I would be very comfortable with giving any student a year off of hardcore grammar study here or there, if that seemed like a better way to manage time and energy and avoid frustration.

3.5 Time Outs: Try Not to Think About It

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who lives with a teenage driver.

Click for the whole story.

1.

When my big kids were little, they played Mass in the bathroom. The necessary accessories were:

  • Holy Water
  • Bible
  • Crackers for Communion

They said the Lord’s Prayer, and read from the Bible, and it was all very heartwarming.

Now my current 5-year-old has taken to setting up a church for the hippos and bunnies.  The required items are:

  • Drum Set
  • Offering Envelopes
  • Collection Basket
  • Bulletins

She makes sure there’s a nursery in her pillow-fort church building.

2.

She also likes to play pirates.  I tried to serve her hardtack and sauerkraut for lunch today, but she wasn’t convinced it was real pirate food.  She voted for fish sticks.

3.

A friend is keeping the kids for us this weekend so we can get away for a couple vacation together.  We priced hotels in one town (expensive, yikes), looked at the time required to go down to our favorite patron’s free beach house (too long a drive), decided camping was too much bother to count as R&R,  and now are trying to decide . . . which room of the house?  We keep telling the kids we’re gonna sleep in their bunkbeds while they’re gone.  They think we are joking.

3.5

 . . . James Herriot.  Seriously.  Me.  I’d never guessed.

***

It’s Link Day.  Guys you  get your man card punched double if you leave boy links on a girl blog.  Surely you aren’t going to be out-linked by a girl, are you?  One link per comment so you don’t get accidentally stuck in the automated spam dungeon.  Jane-Austen themes purely optional.

Oh and look, I have a link.  I stuck up a post at Amazing Catechists yesterday, on how to teach about the sacrament of marriage when your students’ families are not 100% on board.  I meant to wait a bit before posting it, but then I needed to send it to somebody, so I went ahead and put it up.  One thing that might surprise you — this is a topic where the United State Catholic Catechism for Adults really comes into its own.  It’s as if the bishops have some practice with these situations.

Kolbe Reviews – Latin

Children do not teach themselves Latin.

Children.  Do Not.  Teach. Themselves. Latin.

Okay, now that we have that cleared up:

Kolbe Academy prescribes The New Missal Latin – Book One for upper-elementary Latin — typically grades 5-8.

If you purchase the book set from Kolbe, it comes with the book, a test booklet and separate answer key, a teacher’s manual with answers to the book exercises, and a pronunciation CD.  Easy to overlook is the Supplemental Exercises, which are called for in the course plans, and which you need to purchase separately.  It will not surprise you to learn that I have no idea what is in the Supplemental Exercises.

The book is a vintage-rescue.  Originally written in 1941, it was republished by St. Mary’s publishing in 1996, and St. Mary’s has written the teacher’s manual and test books as well; together they are designed for the Latin enthusiast hoping to learn enough Latin to follow the Mass with ease.  The teacher’s manual provides explanations and encouragement for how to teach yourself the language.

The text drops you straight into depths of Latin grammar with a minimum of warm-up.  It was originally written for students who were hearing and praying the language weekly if not daily; therefore the text centers on helping students make sense of, and use intelligently, a language with which they are already familiar.  I like the book, but I’d recommend it to others only if:

1. You actually want to learn Ecclesiastical Latin.  We do, so this is great for us.

If you prefer to study classical Latin complete with Siege of Troy and all the best monster stories, consider using the Oxford Latin Course, which the boy and I have used and we both liked.  It is fun.  I like fun.  Here’s a link to professor Robert Cape’s Internet Workbook for that text.   It is not designed to be a self-study course, but you can make it one by supplementing with a few references along the lines of Latin for Dummies and so forth.  [Notice this is supposed to be a college textbook. Except that when I saw it in my public library, I assumed it was a middle-school textbook.  Goofy cartoons.  Thin book.  Anyway, it’s entry-level classical Latin.  If you move slowly, it will work for young students once they can read (English) fluently at a middle-school level.  Read the historical notes yourself before having your children read them, so you can provide any necessary parental guidance.]

2. You can provide some amount of “Latin Immersion” to go with the program.  That could be your conversation, the memorization of select prayers in Latin, or the singing of Latin prayers or hymns.  We do a little bit of Latin-fun, but not as much as we really need to.  It shows.

3. You have time to learn with and teach your child. This is the part that is kicking my rear this year. Even with the teacher’s manual and course plans, you may need to do a little researching around to get all your questions answered.  I’m a firm believer in picking up bargain-table texts so that if I have a question I can go see how someone else explains it.

4. Your child has studied a foreign language before, or has an incredibly sound grasp of the analysis of English grammar.

Kolbe suggests Latina Christiana as a possible supplement in 4th grade, and that would make a good warm-up program.  (I’ve looked at bits of Latina Christiana and I did not fall in love; I prefer the monster stories and goofy cartoons at Oxford Latin.) But there are any number of  early-years Latin choices, including just doing some memorization work.  Studying a different language would work as well.

The important thing is to be able to accept foreign languages as something other than merely English Re-Coded, and be able to understand how words sometimes work as objects, sometimes as subjects, sometimes show possession, etc.  If you’ve mastered Seton-quality English grammar in the early years, that would be sufficient.

The Kolbe Course Plans.   The course plans provide instruction and explanations for each chapter.  I find them very helpful to have on hand.  Recommended.

If you are enrolled with Kolbe, make sure you request the course plans for the year of Latin you are actually studying, which may not be the default for your student’s grade level.

Where to begin? Although the boy and I had done Latin in the past, we opted to start in with New Missal at page 1, and I am happy with that decision. The grammar is intense from the very beginning, much of the vocabulary was new to us, and frankly I needed to be able to coast for a while.

If you are switching into this program after several years with something else, I’d take a look at the book and judge for yourself.  If you are enrolling with Kolbe, call and explain your situation, and ask for some guidance.  Remember that you can request a limited number of extra course plans.  So you could decide to speed through year 1 as a review, and pick up with year 2 (or later) when you reach the point where the material begins to be more difficult for you.

Should you study Latin?

Note that if you like Kolbe overall but are hestitant about the Latin, you can choose to skip it altogether.  For high school, Kolbe does not have a wide variety of foreign language offerings, but you are entirely free to study whatever language you like, using materials from another program or taking a course in your community.

You can also delay starting Latin until 6th grade or later.   If the pace of the course is too intense for your addled mom-brain, you could choose to cover the material more slowly.  There is nothing dumbed-down about this course, and it would be valuable even into high school.

We Catholics have a longterm interest in the language.  Even if you study Latin only lightly during elementary and middle school, this is a handy course to have around for continued use as an adult wishing to dabble and slowly learn more and more over the years.

UPDATES 3/26/2012:

  1. The boy begged me — not a whining beg, but a non-nonsense plea of manly desperation — to please go back to OLC.  So I’m going to let him, even though it means more work for me.  We both like it.  Cartoons, you know?  I made a little sidebar section with various internet helps for that book.  He loves the hangman games at the Internet Workbook.
  2. You’d be remiss not to check out Dr. Peter’s Ecclesiastical Latin Page before making a decision on what Latin program you wanted to use.

Book Review: Doctors of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI

The Doctors of the Church is my latest review book for The Catholic Company, and I’ll tell you up front why it’s taken me so long to get through it: Because it requires peace and quiet.

I don’t mean like holed-up-in-a-monastery-for-three-weeks peace ‘n quiet.  More like, “two to three paragraphs without interruption, and ideally as much as a page or more, all at once, before someone asks you how to spell a word, or where is the milk, or . . .” you know what I mean*.  I say this not to discourage the other housewives out there, but rather to encourage you to not give up just because it’s taking you a little longer than a Hardy Boys mystery, or whatever it is you other people read.

What it is: Pope Benedict did a series of talks at his weekly general audiences on each of the Doctors of the Church, and the text of those talks was put into book form.  (St. Peter Chrytologus is missing — there was no talk as yet at the time the book went to print.  But you get all the others.)  Each person gets his or her own chapter, and certain heavy-hitters have double- or triple-sized chapters if it took two or three sessions to cover the topic.

The focus of the talks is on the development of doctrine.  Sorry, no fun stories about St. Thomas Aquinas’s family’s colorful attempts to dissuade him from his vocation, or St. Therese’s heroic willingness to eat the peas and fake it that she liked them.  You get to be a Doctor of the Church due to your contribution to our understanding of the faith.  So that’s where the book focuses: What did this person contribute to our understanding of Christ and of salvation?  How did this person respond to the needs of his or her time, and re-present the faith in a way that was needed then, and that continues to be valuable today?

–> A brief biography opens each chapter, and there is enough information to give you a clear picture of the life and times of the individual.  There is relatively more biography for lesser-known saints.  If you don’t know the general St. Thomas Aquinas story, you aren’t ready for this book yet; but if you never can keep straight all your St. Cyrils and Gregories, the Holy Father has you covered, no worries.

What are the prerequisites?

Before reading this book, you need to:

  • Know the broad outline of Church history, and of course that means having a decent grasp of world history as well.
  • Be familiar with the who’s who of major saints.
  • Have a clear understanding of Church teaching.
  • Be comfortable with technical language at about the level of The Catechism of the Catholic Church.  This one:

If that’s not you, be patient.  Come back to The Doctors later. Because the focus of the book is specifically on doctrine, and on the development of doctrine, this is a little harder of a book than some of the other collections by the Holy Father.

 

Who is this book for, and what good is it, anyway?  I recommend this book if you . . .

. . . Want an introduction to the topic of Development of Doctrine.  When read cover to cover, in sequence, this is an excellent first look at how the faith has blossomed over the centuries.

or

. . . Need a reference book on hand for all your Doctors of the Church needs. Great resource for catechists and others who need to quick know something intelligent about obscure-but-essential saints.  Each chapter stands on its own, and I found this to be very useful in preparing for class.

or

. . . You want a devotional that is built around reflections on theology and the lives of saints.  (Don’t laugh you Prayer of Jabez people, some of us like this stuff.)  You could either work through it a chapter at a time, or just have it on hand to browse at random when you need a little retreat into that happy place where you get to think about this stuff.

Verdict:  Well of course, it’s excellent.  If you are the target audience, there’s nothing else like it.  Worth the effort to work through it, not because then you’ll get to sit with the cool kids (though you will), but because even if the distractions of your vocation mean you can’t read through it quickly, it’s very meaty and satisfying.  A sure preventative against brain rot, and not so bad for your soul, either.  Great book.

***

Thanks again to the kind people at the Catholic Company, who would like me to tell you that not only do they do a work of mercy providing good books for bloggers in exchange for nothing other than an honest review,  they are also a great source for a baptism gifts or first communion gifts.

*No family members were injured in the writing of this post.

7 Quick Takes: Lucky Women

Where is the brain? The other Jen F. wants to know. Trust me, it's not here.

1.

It’s been a long few days here at the Castle.  I would be very grateful for your prayers.

2.

This is hilarious: “Teach Yourself a New Culture in 100 Easy Lessons”, in which we see how a Haitian man studying English describes the pictures in the reading book.  I want the whole series.

 

3.

Lent report:

1) Yeah, we pretty much stink at prayer-n-fasting.  Especially when housework is supposed to fit in their somewhere.

2) But I did have an Adrian Monk Moment, and clean the yard in a frenzied response to stress and frustration.  It looks really nice.  Or it did 24 hours ago, anyhow.

3) And then here’s what happened: We planned to meet Fr. W for lunch because after six months of trying, dinner just wasn’t happening.  Too busy.  And we decided that ‘at the restuarant’ was smarter than ‘at our house’.  And this morning I thought, “Yes, I’m so glad it’s at the restaurant, because this place is a wreck.”  And then I realized: “This place is waaaaay cleaner then the first time he came over last summer.  For one thing, at this time I would not need to send the children out on an hour-long mission to “get rid of the disgusting things”.

So, yes.  Progress.  Not as stellar of progress as my vivid imagination had envisioned.  But it’s something.

The Fitz House, Now 75% Less Disgusting!

4.

You thought you could just pray for my intention up there in #1. No can do.   Allie Hathaway. Right now. 

. . . Okay good. Thanks!

5.

Helen Alvare e-mailed me (and 18,000 of her closest friends, I’m pretty sure) with the reminder that:

 . . . The Obama Administration has put real accommodation of religious employers, insurers, and individuals off the table. And they have managed to get leading media to continue to claim that women are on the side of shutting down religious witness on the issue of the “free” birth control in employer insurance plans.

If you’re female and you haven’t signed the Women Speak for Themselves letter, do it now, here.

And this the Facebook page:  facebook.com/WomenSpeakForThemselves.

[H/T to the inimitable Mrs. Tollefsen for the head’s up about the letter and the encouragement to sign it.  They let me on, so they’ll take anybody.]

6.

Bearing links to a really cool history article on eugenics, politics, and the Irish in 1940.  Click on her link and read the whole thing — very well-researched and written account of a suspicious marriage certificate, and the man who made it so, 52 years after the wedding took place.  For that matter, if you’re having withdrawal because you don’t like how my 3-D life is interfering with your goofing-off schedule, Bearing’s been pretty much rocking the house lately, so you just go read her for a while.

7.

And that’s it.   Catholic Writer’s Conference starts tomorrow.  My yard is clean.  My blog is sad and lonely.  The weather is beautiful.  My truck is pale yellow from the pine pollen.  My 5 year-old has a new green plaid outfit made by her 10-year-old sister from scrap fabric, just in time to keep the neighbor kid from pinching her tomorrow.   I have given up all hope of predicting the future, and now consider my calendar to be a work of speculative fiction.

Oh speaking of saint’s feast days, last night I read the account of St. Abraham Kidunaia.  And I thought as I read, “Gee, his poor fiance, abandoned on the eve of the wedding, when he fled to the desert and locked himself in a cell.”  And then I read a little further, and concluded: “Probably once she learned he was planning to wear the same goatskin coat for the next 50 years, she was okay with it.”

 

3.5 Time Outs: Reading, Writing, Housekeeping

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who didn’t call my parents when I skipped class last week.

Picaken Alert - Viewer discretion advised.

1.

Dorian Speed’s taken up the discussion of Catholic Arts and Letters over at her place.  I’m glad she did, because I was totally stewing over that OSV article.  Rather than be a combox hog, I put my comments into a post at CWG.

(Hint: Anyone who says “there’s too much catechesis out there” is just itching for a fight.)

2.

We’ve got a big fat Lenten FAIL going on here at the castle.  Vomitorium duty sure didn’t help, but let’s be honest, it was already falling apart before ever I was thrust down the black hole.    But if there’s one thing I’m good for, it’s perpetual hopefulness.  Is there any chance Good Housekeeping is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit?  I think a need a mega-novena.  Or probably just to get back on the wagon.

3.

Ah, but look, I do have a special intention for which the grace of Holy Spirit is needed.  If you would please, just go ahead and pray.  You’ll know your prayers were answered if you never, ever, have any idea what it was you prayed for.  That would be so great.  I would love it.

3.5

When I’m sick, I read.  It’s my vice.  So last week I pulled down one yet-untouched book in the rainy-day queue, read half a chapter, was disgusted by the unexpectedly crass language, and threw it away.  Then I picked up selection-in-waiting #2, and wow!  Who knew I’d love . . .

***

Okay that’s all for today.  I’m trying to catch back up on my Kolbe Reviews this week, get the other half the Doctors of the Church review re-written since the internet ate it on Thursday afternoon as part of my need for Jen-mortification, and I’m hoping to have something new up at Amazing Catechists, I know not when, but soon.  Ish.

Meanwhile, It’s Link Day.  Other people than Sandra are allowed to post links, though she’ll always be the leader, since she specializes in finding cool stuff.  One link per comment so you don’t get stuck in the spam dungeon.

Hey look — I wrote something last week. Just not here.

In case you didn’t see it pop up at about 70 places around the internet (okay just four that I know about), here’s my contribution to Chris Weigand’s Lenten devotional series.  In which I accidentally ponder yesterday’s Gospel for year A instead of for year B, despite checking three times to be sure.  Happy accident, though.  I think the woman at the well has been getting more bad press than she deserves.

 

About my sudden disappearance

Our most-frequently used Latin word is also the explanation for why I’ve fallen off the edge of the internet this week: Vomitorium.

–> We use it the modern, historically-inaccurate way.  (Though I love it’s proper meaning, too.)

What you  need to know is:

1) Nobody’s pregnant.

2) I’m slowly digging my way back to civilization.

3) There are other responsible keepers of the internet who can assist you if you’re having an internet-emergency and I haven’t gotten to you yet.

See you soon!

Jen.

 

 

Help! I’m homeschooling a six-year-old! Up at CatholicMom.com

My first article’s up at CatholicMom.com – Yay!.  Go read.  Natural follow-on to Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur’s column on How to Homeschool your Preschool Child, which you can treat as a pre-req. I think people run into trouble by thinking “1st grade” = “High School Lite”, when really it’s more like the final glorious days of preschool in all their imaginative, bigger-than-life power.

Jon & I noticed the other night that several of our kids have gone through a Terribly Tired phase right around six.  So if your junior hiker has just announced, “I was not made for walking”, take a deep breath and just work around it for a couple years.  Sometime in the sevens the big-kid-legs seem to show up, and the stamina returns.

BTW, Lisa Hendey has a nice collection of homeschool links on her homeschooling page.  Worth a look and maybe a bookmark.

Will the House Do what the Senate Wouldn’t?

Here’s where you can see the text of House Bill HR1179.  Basic-model conscience protection — what the constitution promises, it just lays out in general terms as applies to the health care bill.  You can look here to see whether your congressional representative is a sponsor.