Tiffini,
This has been a great thread full of helpful advice and wise ponderings. As we all travel this high school path together, it is wonderful that we can come together and try to find a fit for our highschoolers within HOD.
I will share that with my own high school sophomore in mind, I have found the HOD guides (that are already completed) to be richer and more thorough in their coverage of all areas than the patched together plan I have had to use with my oldest son this year. While I did have him use CTC and RTR, I was unable to have him use Rev2Rev because he had already read ALL of the history spines we used with that program (along with listening repeatedly to DIana Waring) and had read many of the titles in the Basic and Extension Pack.
I must admit that I have sorely missed the HOD guides for him and have felt that his education is not nearly as rich as the one my next son in line is currently getting. Yet, when I looked at the other available high school options out there as possibilities for my oldest son, I didn't find them to have the richness I was used to giving him through the HOD guides in the past (even if he was just testing them for me as I was writing them)! It also almost seemed like we would either be going backward skill-wise in a switch to a whole curriculum provider or that we would be missing the heart part that I really wanted to focus on in some of the other programs we pondered using. So, we continue to patch together and have my oldest son test various areas for us as we go.
I share this to say that there is much more to Rev2Rev than it may first appear! The level of classic poetry matched with the history and the primary source document discussions alone are a huge step up in critical thinking. High schoolers will actually get the most out of these areas as they are very challenging. The historical mapping is also very extensive and the rotation of oral, written narrations, matching historical paintings, drawing, audios, timeline, projects, readings, etc. covers a terrific amount of skills in a highly effective way.
As far as government goes, the ladies have shared some great options to consider for use with Rev2Rev. As far as the signers and the state go, I wouldn't hesitate to use either one with a high school student. If preferred, you could use a more difficult resource for researching the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Yet, you could still use the plans as written with your own resource. There are many out there.
Since the creative writing book is only once weekly, you could decide whether to include it or not in your yearly plan for your highschooler. I do think it has much to offer in training kiddos to write for God's glory, and this is often a neglected area of writing instruction.
For those of you who may be choosing to go the Smarr route for lit., I will share that we are returning to Smarr this upcoming year when my son is a junior. We have discovered that we prefer the ease of use of Smarr, the strong vocabulary emphasis, the great literature selections, the pacing of the readings, and the good discussion/critical thinking questions.
We have had to overlook some Southern Agrarianism in odd places in the commentary within SMARR, but the author (Watson) does make you think outside the box in this area, which has resulted in good discussions here with our son.
We did much of LLATL Gold this year but found we had to supplement quite a bit in the number of full books read and in the area of writing. The poetry emphasis in LLATL Gold Brit. Lit. was great and there was a lot of it! That was its strength.
We did mix in some SMARR and some Covenant Home guides too with the LLATL for our oldest in lit. this year.
If you do decide to try SMARR, you will want to preview the books to see which fit your family goals. While we are heavily leaning toward scheduling SMARR in our high school guides, we will be looking to put together our own courses from SMARR's available book units. So, this is something you could consider too. You could consider doing "most" of one of SMARR's courses, and just substituting some of SMARR's other titles in place of those that are not your favorite.
We did use SMARR's writing portion for my son's freshman year, and we thought it was very good.
This year, for my son's sophomore year, we did writing through LLATL Gold and through Write with the Best Vol. II.
Next year, we are considering going back to SMARR's composition or else doing a portion of Wordsmith Craftsman. These may be options you could consider as well.
For Bible, you could use Balancing the Sword or possibly one of the Quest Explorer's Guides (although not all are equally well-written). We are looking to schedule Deeper Roots in one of our high school guides, possibly the geography guide (and this is a terrific study that we did with our son last year when he was a freshman).
Another option we are pondering for Bible is Starr Meade's The Most Important Thing You'll Ever Study. We are considering using it over two years as an Old Testament and New Testament survey course, doing Old Testament one year and New Testament the next. Meade also does give students the option to read all of the Old and New Testament while going through the course too.
Starr Meade is the author of Grandpa's Box, which we carry and deeply love as part of the Preparing Heart's guide.
I would also recommend looking at doing AIG's Pilgrim's Progress study sometime before your child graduates. We will be scheduling this in our world history guide for high school, as it matches well there time period-wise.
Last, you may wish to consider scheduling Understanding the Times by Summit Ministries for Biblical Worldview. We are leaning toward including something like this in our high school guides as well, probably in the final guide in the history cycle for high school.
I hope this helps a bit as you're pondering.
We will eventually be listing suggestions for MTMM too, for high school students.
Blessings,
Carrie
