TOS REVIEW: Classical Academic Press–Art of Argument

Classical Academic Press (CAP) is well-known to me as a provider of classical education materials (mostly Latin, honestly!). Through the TOS Homeschool Review Crew we’ve been privileged to review their Art of Argument curriculum.

We received:

• The Art of Argument Student Book- $21.95
• The Art of Argument Teacher’s Edition- $24.95
• & Disc #1 of the Art of Argument DVD Set- the entire set $54.95

These can be purchased as a bundle for $88.95

Designed for middle school age students and up (based on the trivium model that Classical Academic Press follows), we used this for my 7th grader (and his mother *wink*). According to CAP, “Logic is a fascinating subject for students in middle school or high school.”

From the website:

"My chief objection to a quarrel," Chesterton wrote, "is that it ends a good argument." Junior high aged students will argue (and sometimes quarrel), but they won't argue well without good training. Young teens are also targeted by advertisers with a vengeance. From billboards to commercials to a walk down the mall, fallacious arguments are everywhere you look. The Art of Argument was designed to teach the argumentative adolescent how to reason with clarity, relevance and purpose at a time when he has a penchant for the "why" and "how". It is designed to equip and sharpen young minds as they live, play, and grow in this highly commercial culture. This course teaches students to recognize and identify twenty-eight informal fallacies, and the eye-catching text includes over sixty slick and clever, “phony advertisements” for items from blue jeans to pick-up trucks, which apply the fallacies to a myriad of real life situations.

Students master 28 fallacies (such as begging the question, the straw man, ad hominen, et al) by studying many pertinent examples. The text features a variety of:

• Dialogues
• Worksheets
• Real-World Applications
• Phony Advertisements
• Dialectic Discussion Questions
• Tests
• Fun extras such as a humorous skit for students to perform, and the famous short story, Love is a Fallacy by Max Shulman

• a resource that will refresh and inspire the teacher
• a classroom resource for modeling and provoking discussion of the logical fallacies
• a substitute teacher when the regular teacher is away
• a resource for creating a summer school course
• a library item helpful to a struggling logic student or a curious parent

The Art of Argument DVD Set contains:

• 5 DVDs containing a total of more than 8 hours of video
• 28 videos—one for each fallacy contained in The Art of Argument text
• Fun outtakes, extras, and “logical” humor

You can see samples of the student book here and the teacher’s edition here. Also at the website you can watch a sample of the videos.

Find Classical Academic Press on Facebook. They offer free resources for parents/educators at their site, some printable, some audio.
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I had high hopes for this curriculum for my 7th grader. We’d started logic studies previous to receiving this through the Crew but it hasn’t been as productive as *I’d* hoped. I based my hopes, I believe, on the opinion I’d formed of Classical Academic Press’s Latin curriculum- which I thought was very well done.

This was scheduled 3-5 times a week depending on how our week was going. At first we watched the video segment and then did the reading, followed by answering questions. But we changed it to read first, watch video, answer questions.

Let’s start with what I do like about this:

• It is somewhat ‘fun’. The student book is interesting to my son; he spends a bit of time just browsing the book. That is almost always a good sign.
• The fallacies presented and the ‘logic’ to counter them are solid (as far as my untrained mind can decipher).
• The questions are open-ended and require thought. Included is the opportunity to research and dig further into the study.
• It is flexible- as far as I can tell. There is no set schedule anywhere.
• The DVDs show real people (teens and adults) discussing the fallacies. This helps students see that they can also tackle these fallacies logically.
• And, perhaps not directly related to this product, I appreciate the free resources at the website; especially the article resources.

And here is what I would liked to have seen different:

• First and foremost: the Teacher’s Edition is ONLY an answer book. It does not give any ideas of how to go about teaching this subject. I can read the answer given in the TE and compare it to my sons answers but some of the answers assume that *I*, the teacher, have this knowledge already.
• There is really no background given to this. If your student –and you! –are unfamiliar with logic, you might be lost when you start this. We were. It assumes a basic knowledge of certain people and ideas.
• I am learning right along with my son- not a bad thing- but I have no real direction. I personally need some more direction with this subject because I have no background to it in order to teach it.

Overall, I think this is a good product but for our family it’s requiring a lot of effort to understand and get it to flow. If you do not have a good logic background (I *never* studied this or covered it in public school) then the DVDs will be very helpful but you’re going to be a student right along with your student. I just feel that I am in over my head!

I’m not tossing in the towel with this product because I feel that it will be a benefit to not only my son but myself as well. It will just take us much longer than I thought it would take to get through. It makes us think and stretch our minds.

Price-wise I think it is reasonable. It might require some budgeting to be able to order the entire package. But if it were to be used for more than one year (as it appears we might be doing) and/or for more than one child, I think it could be considered a good investment.

I would recommend this product to those that have a Classical education background (simply because I assume, ahem, that they have the foundation necessary to use this smoothly) or to those who are determined to improve in this area. I would *not* recommend this to those who are weak in this area and/or are not planning on pursuing this further because I feel that it would be quite discouraging. Of course, I definitely suggest doing research on this before taking my recommendation (either way). You can read the reviews of others who have used this product at the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

***Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned products from Classical Academic Press via TOS Homeschool Crew free in exchange for an honest review. All opinions stated are my own or those of my family. I only recommend products that I feel would be of benefit to other families based on my experiences. See Disclosure/Policies.***

TOS REVIEW: Creek Edge Press Task Cards {Physics}

Creek Edge Press Task Cards-
Physics and Digital Science

“The Task Card Approach draws from the Classical, Charlotte Mason, and Montessori approaches to education and learning.” from the website

Working with the TOS Homeschool Review Crew I am able to review some pretty neat products geared for homeschoolers (and sometimes not!). This post is going to be a review of the Creek Edge Press Task Card system, specifically their Physics and Digital Science Set.

The program was put together by Amy Hilsman for her own homeschool. You can read more about her experience here. She designed it to be “a simple tool that pulls [these methods] together”.

As many of my readers know, ours is a Charlotte Mason homeschool (as best we can be). We use a lot of good books and assessments are in the form of narrations and ‘showing’ what they’ve learned. I encourage you to read the ‘articles’ page at Creek Edge Press to see how this program can be lined up with the three above mentioned methods of schooling. If you still have questions, search the FAQs at the website.

We received an Introduction book and a set of 30 task cards. The cards, which measure approximately 5.5” by 4.25”,  are non-consumable allowing them to be used over and over. The introduction book is comprised of 5 sections:

1. Introduction and Use
2. Approaching the Tasks
3. Preparing the Environment
4. Book List and Tips
5. Card by Card

The cards are fairly self-explanatory, I feel. They can be used for grades K-8 (younger ages will need assistance and these could possibly be used as a supplement to higher grades). Below is an image of card #12. It gives you an idea of what is on the cards.

One of the best things about these cards {imho} is that the cards are open-ended requiring more thought and attention than a ‘yes/no’ question. It facilitates “investigation and experience of discovery” (Introduction book, page 3). In Approaching the Tasks, she goes through the different tasks on the card and explains what is expected and/or suggestions. For example, Sketch and Label activities can be completed by either drawing the object themselves or if they are not able, tracing an object, and then labeling the features. If they students are younger, she gives the suggestion of working on a coloring page.

The book has a section on suggested books and Amy has a linked list of books on their website (At Creek’s Edge). I did think at first that I would need to purchase some books (or at least hit the library hard) but it turns out that really you can use whatever you have on hand for this. Part of “Preparing the Environment” is to make the books and tools readily available for the students and because of this I did decide to purchase a science encyclopedia. But the library is a great resource if you can’t purchase something. And the internet is full of free resources! *I did purchase a science encyclopedia because I’d been wanting to anyway- it was just the incentive I needed You can see from the photo where our Science books are kept on the shelf –labeled and easy to find.

Specifically, these are the books that we used (the only one I purchased for the purpose this review was the Usborne Internet Linked Science Encyclopedia –and you can see that a few are library books). And the internet was used.

At first I was just having Fox (my 12 yo ds) go through the cards, in order. We started with one card a week. And since he is an independent reader, I had him do 2 tasks each day and I would look over his work (or he would narrate what he found). But after two weeks we discovered that the first few cards we’d gone over quite extensively in previous lessons (not using the cards). In an effort to make sure that my ds did not become ‘bored’ with learning about the same things, I went through the cards to find where we had yet to learn about –meaning we skipped ahead.

The cards cover (followed by the card numbers):

• Simple Machines (1-6)
• More on Machines (7-10)
• Energy (11-13)
• Motion (14-17)
• Light Waves (18-19)
• Sound Waves (20-21)
• Electricity (22)
• Magnetism (23)
• Automation (24)
• Digital (25-28)
• Inventions (29)
• Wrap-Up (30) (looking back at all that has been learned)

I decided to integrate technology early on with this and suggested that he make Power Points instead of posters or booklets. Great idea! He took off with the suggestion and has since made 4 Power Points. He gives his presentation generally on Fridays (if he can contain his excitement that long).

The Power Points are also helping him with written narrations (and summarizing information that he has read). Here are quick screenshots of part of some of his presentations –he really enjoys this part of using the cards.

Anyway, I think I’ve gotten a bit carried away with sharing what we use while working with the cards. We have gone through the Machines cards and will be moving onto Energy next week.

This Physics and Digital Science set is available from Creek Edge Press for $18 (plus shipping).They also offer Geography, Culture and History sets, Science sets, Art and Artists sets, Music and Composer sets, and Grammar sets. Also, if for some reason you need replacement task cards, you can get those as well. See the website for current pricing.

Bottom line:
Love these. Absolutely love these. They have the ‘assignment’ already figured out but in a very straight forward way. The cards are portable; small enough to be out of the way but not get lost. They present a good ‘jumping-off’ point for many of the topics covered if a student wants to explore more- this whets their appetite. And at the same time (if the student isn’t quite so interested) it gives a nice basic knowledge. The number of tasks for each card is manageable.

I appreciate these aspects the most:

• not being fill-in-the-blank
• not yes/no questions
• doesn’t limit learning
• requires research and digging to complete the tasks.

I would like to have these laminated at the time of purchase but I understand that Creek Edge Press is a small family business. In order to use these with more than a few kids, I would think laminating them would be a great idea.

The price of the set is reasonable, in my humble opinion. It gives almost a full years worth of work on Science. Whether or not they are supplemented with other materials is probably going to depend on each family. We found them to be adequate for our science work. And my son really is enjoying them. We hope to have a nice collection of work/projects to show at the end of the year using these cards.

I would most definitely recommend these to other homeschoolers, and even families that have children who are in public school for extra learning activity cards. Great product.

Be sure to read other reviews for Creek Edge Press’s Task Cards at the TOS Homeschool Crew blog- there are reviews for almost all subjects that Creek Edge Press carries.

***Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned items/products from Creek Edge Press via the TOS Homeschool Review Crew for free in exchange for an honest review. All opinions stated are my own or those of my family. I only recommend products that I feel will be of use to other families. See Disclosure/Policies.***