When I began to write this review, I hemmed and hawed about where to begin. That fact alone is what makes the book highly daunting, and at the same time, refreshingly complete as a curriculum guidebook. The book puts forth a systematic method and suggested curriculum for 12 complete years of study built around the Trivium a 3-staged language intensive approach to Classical Liberal Arts education. Although traditionally Christian, the principles of the Trivium are universal. It is a deliberately hierarchical approach which, indeed, yields independent learners with well-trained minds.
Classical education requires parental involvement, planning, and leadership.
The pattern keeps building from parts to wholes, which in turn become the parts to bigger wholes, and so on in a continuous process of integration. Continuous building upon foundational skills is quite effective for teaching the basics in reading, writing, and arithmetic. History is taught from the ground up starting with the ancients and progressing through the modern day over a span of 4 years. Geography, Literature, and Science are all anchored to the historical period being studied. Latin, Art and Music studies round out the classical curriculum.