These daily instructions were written to aid my own children as we used the Apologia courses. During our first year, we weren’t sure how much to read daily to complete the book by year’s end. You can’t simply divide the number of pages by school days because of the experiments, study guides, tests, etc. We also had too many days of labs with no supplies on hand. These lesson plans will direct your student as to exactly what needs to be done each day and will provide reminders of needed lab supplies in advance. Using these guides, it takes 105-170 days to complete a text, depending upon the level and course.

This one-year course spans from Ancient Egypt to the 20th Century. It employs popular titles such as The Gift of Music, The Usborne Story of Music, and The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers. The study consists of 30 lessons and 5 tests, along with solutions. One lesson is assigned weekly (for instance, on Monday). The student does the assigned reading (lesson plans are built in) and completes the lesson during the week. Optional internet activities, as well as suggestions for listening (The Music Masters and Classical Kids) enhance the course. The course is geared to ages 13-15, but suggestions are including for modifying it for both younger and older students.

This course was written several years ago when we were in search of a worldview course for our kids. It is user friendly and contains lesson plans to direct the student. No additional resources are required. For those who would like to pursue a topic further, there is recommended reading given for each chapter. The study is set up to cover 18 weeks, which will serve for 1/2 credit on a transcript (social studies is a possible candidate). The 9th and 18th week are midterm and final exams. In order to encourage effort in the daily homework, we suggest that the overall grade be broken down into 50% from homework and 25% for each exam. Each chapter is designed around five work days. (Needless to say, tailor this course to meet your needs. You can take 10 days per chapter, thus finishing the course over the entire school year.) Day one always begins with the instruction to read the entire chapter through quickly, followed by reading the first assigned section through carefully. Then there are approximately ten study and review questions for each day. The reading assignments are fairly short, trying to get to and keep the point, so the student has time to think and write reasonable answers to the questions (if they finish too soon this is probably a good clue they didn't think nor labor over giving cogent answers; plus, the reading may be short, but certain areas may require reading a sentence or paragraph two or three times to gain understanding). The appendices contain the homework answer key, the tests, and test answer keys. They are under separate cover so the teacher may place them in a binder. Following the introductory chapters, there are two chapters covering the history of philosophy. This gives a broad overview of the development, or digression, of philosophy. After that, the main areas of philosophy are addressed, with a stress on a practical understanding.