Traditional Logic I from Memoria Press ~ a Crew review

As high school approaches (wait! it is here!), additional thoughts crowd my mind about classes that would be beneficial to my daughter to experience. Public speaking and critical and logical thinking are a couple of those classes. Memoria Press has a Traditional Logic course that we have been working with, using Traditional Logic I Complete Set, and I can already see her reasoning skills getting stronger, coming up in discussions at times.

Memoria Press is a classical Christian education company that publishes high quality materials. The company was founded in 1994. They are a family run company.

Traditional Logic I Complete Set, for approximately grade 7 through adults, includes:

• Student Text
• Student Workbook (compatible with the second and third editions of the Student Text)
• Teacher Key (for Student Workbook and Quizzes & Final Exam)
• Quizzes & Final Exam
• DVD

The DVD is a set of two discs. They are instructional discs, giving the lecture portion of the lesson. The discs follow the same topic structure as the student text and workbook. The presenter is Martin Cothran and he very clearly walks the students through the lesson concepts and examples. The lessons contain no fluff; they are straightforward and high level thinking. The instructor refers to the topics in the text but it is not necessary to try to follow along with the text. We did find that the page numbers he referred to did not match with our workbook but it was very easy to locate the area he was talking about.

The student text is a softback book of approximately 100 pages. There are 13 lessons plus and introduction. Each lesson is less than 10 pages, averaging about 5. These lessons are well written and easy to read. Sometimes the concepts are a bit difficult to grasp but reading over it a second time and/or using the video definitely helps in the understanding. The concepts are actually described pretty clearly and concisely. The back of the text contains a glossary and a list of important people to know.

The student workbook is a softback book that is about 8 1/2 x 11 inches. It is  92 pages in length and is a consumable product. Each student will need their own book. The book is intended to be the practice and application of the lesson information from the DVD and the text. There are exercises for four days in each lesson. The student will likely need to refer to the text to work some of the exercises.

The Quizzes & Tests book contains a quiz for each chapter and a final exam. These are not simple answer questions; they require thought and writing from the student to truly explore their understanding of the lesson information.

The Teacher Key is the answers for the student workbook and for the quizzes and tests. Each page is an exact replication of the student workbook, the quiz, or the test. It has the correct answers typed into the answer space for that page. This makes it very easy to be certain you are grading the correct question. Having the answer key is really helpful in guiding the students toward the correct answers when they are struggling with the workbook.

Side by side comparison of the workbook and the key

How We Used It:

On the first day of a lesson, Miss E would watch the video. Then she would read the text. The rest of the week, she would do one set of lesson exercises per day, refreshing the topic through the text as needed. We did not use the weekly lesson quizzes, as we spent quite a bit of time discussing the information as she went along so I knew how she was doing with it. I do plan to administer the final exam at the end of the course.

The first day of a lesson always took about 30 minutes. The other days seldom took that long, as the information was pretty easy for her to understand.

Our Thoughts:

Miss E has actually enjoyed this course more than I thought she would. She has enjoyed the simplicity of the thinking while still noticing that she is getting better at reasoning some things out. This is not a course with a skill that will highly impact daily life but as she is hoping to participate in debate next year, this is a thinking skill that will be beneficial to her.

Miss E has said a couple of times how much she has enjoyed thinking through the processes and learning to understand some of the words used in this course.

I have been very pleased with her progress and her understanding of this style of logic. I will not pretend to understand it easily but I do know that understanding different ways of thinking logically is helpful in the grand scheme of things. This program is easy to use, easy to understand, and has been a pleasant experience. I believe that if we can fit it in, she will be tackling Logic II following this.

I really like Memoria Press and the products that they present. The current Homeschool Review Crew run includes

New American Cursive,
Traditional Logic I Complete Set, 
Traditional Logic II Complete Set
Classical Composition I: Fable Set
Classical Composition II: Narrative Set.

Our past reviews include:

First Form Latin
D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths set
6th Grade Literature set
Famous Men of Rome
New American Cursive

Blessings,
At Home.

Head over to the Homeschool Review Crew to read more reviews on Traditional Logic or any of the other products I listed above that are being used by the Crew families on this Crew run. Just click below.

Tagged: electives, high school, reviews, TOS