Great Books Academy (Gr. K-12)

/Home/Curriculum Options for Homeschool Studies/"Complete" Homeschool Curricula

The Great Books Homeschool Program is a nursery-though-12th-grade curriculum for home education. It is complete – including all subjects, books, guides and tests needed, for all grades. Optional services for enrolled students include grading, transcript maintenance, online literature discussion classes and the finest online resources (such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, Britannica Original Sources, Britannica’s Annals of American History).

The Great Books Homeschool Program is easy to follow. Because it is complete, it is a one-stop home education provider. The 12 courses (subjects) allow parents to offer their children more than any private school offers. Because it is flexible, it allows parents to select only those courses they wish, when they wish, and to take as long (or as little) as they wish to complete a course. Most of our students are doing 6 or 7 subjects, in two or three different grade levels – they have excelled in some, taken more time in others – this is a common sense approach to education, not a one-pace-fits-all approach to unique human beings.

LESS EXPENSIVE PER COURSE THAN OTHER HOMESCHOOL PROGRAMS

We offer a lot of course options - 12 - more than any other program (most programs offer only six). This is because some parents want to emphasize, for example, art instead of music, or science instead of philosophy, etc. That is a parental decision. But we do not recommend that any student take more than six or seven subjects at any one time. If one compares costs for any six of our courses with other homeschool programs, one will find that the Great Books Homeschool Program is either less expensive or comparable in cost, and, we believe, far superior in content and quality. We strive to offer only the very best educational books and materials.

Our entire curriculum - consisting of books, lesson plans and tests for each course, and Great Books study guides [for high school levels] - are organized in our bookstore by subject, and grade level. Only books used in our courses are carried by our bookstore. What one sees in the bookstore is our entire curriculum. We have available free placement tests we can email, for optional guidance in selecting grade levels, for each course. Testing may be done using our optional quarterly tests, or parents may grade as they wish (parentally-provided grading is accepted, and is simply footnoted as such on the transcript).

Our nursery through 8th grade curriculum is conventionally organized, with a superb classics literature base (such as Aesop's Fables, Mother Goose, the Little House books, Little Women, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield, etc.), but is far more challenging than the public school curricula and exceeds the academic standards of private schools as well. Being oriented to home education, it allows the parents to set the pace. The literature component was carefully selected for integration with the entire curriculum, good moral example in the natural virtues, and to prepare students, in graduated steps, to read the world’s finest and most influential literature in several fields collected in our Great Books program.

Our 9th-12th grade integrated-literature program was designed primarily by the late Dr. Mortimer Adler (with minor changes) who called these works the Great Books. Having learned the arts of learning (i.e., the liberal arts: grammar, reading, writing, calculating, etc.) in the elementary levels, students here begin to study the substance of a liberal education – the works of the great authors of Western civilization – masterpieces by Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and many others, in literature, poetry, drama, history, science and philosophy. These works constitute an on-going dialogue about the truths of man's nature and his relationship with the rest of reality, called the Great Conversation. In giving your children the opportunity to grasp this wisdom from the past, they cannot help but be led to a greater appreciation and understanding of virtue and the wonder and beauty of life, and the ability to participate in the intellectual life of our culture. The American Council on Education’s College Credit Recommendation Service (ACE CREDIT) has evaluated and recommended college credit for 8 courses (totaling 48 credit hours - 6 per semester) of the Western Civilization Foundations's Great Books Program. The American Council on Education, the major coordinating body for all the nation's higher education institutions, seeks to provide leadership and a unifying voice on key higher education issues and to influence public policy through advocacy, research, and program initiatives. For more information, visit the ACE CREDIT website at http://www.acenet.edu/acecredit.

Our view is that we are here to help parents and students by reviewing, selecting, organizing, assembling and in some cases publishing, the very best materials and curriculum organization for the finest educational experience possible. This program allows parents and students to establish their own individuals schedules and course selections. This website has hundreds of pages of additional information, and articles to view, then enjoy your visit to our Bookstore/Curriculum. All you need to begin is to select the books and materials you wish. Anyone may purchase our materials. Enrollment, online classes and enrollment services are optional. Welcome to the Great Books Homeschool Program!