Traditional Logic 1 Complete Set -TOS Review

Today's review features the Traditional Logic 1 Complete Set from Memoria Press.  For this review I received Traditional Logic Book 1, and the corresponding instructional DVDs, Quizzes and Tests, and the Teacher Key (Workbook, Quizzes and Test), as shown below.

A funny thing happened when we received this package.   My youngest daughter said "Mom, why did you order THAT?  You are a very logical thinker!"   "It's for your sister", I responded.  Then there was a brief silence,  followed by "Ooooooh!!"   The irony of this conversation appeared to be lost on her, but then a bit later she said "I guess I'll be doing it too, huh?"  Ya think?

The DVD case contains 2 DVDs.   The first holds the lessons for the Introduction through lesson 7, as well as the slide printables.  The second DVD has lessons 8-13.   The text/workbook has an introduction chapter, 13 chapters divided into 3 units (Simple Apprehension, Judgment and Deductive Inference) followed by Chapter 14 which is a review.   There is also a glossary of terms in the back.

This program is written for grades 7 and up.  Olivia is finishing up her 7th grade year, and while she's no rocket scientist, she is a very bright child.  However, after watching the Introduction video I noticed she had a blank expression on her face.   I asked her what she thought "I didn't understand a word he said."    I kind of gathered that, based on the expression on her face, see what I mean?

We've tried the program a couple more times, moving on to lesson 1 and 2.  However, she's still not getting it.    What I did find, is if we bypass the video portion and go straight to the student book and take it slowly we have much better results than we do when watching the video.     The author, Martin Cothran, is obviously a very intelligent man, with a pretty extensive vocabulary.   I think, for the older student this would work well.   For my particular 7th grader it totally just frustrated her as she really didn't understand most of what he was saying.   To be honest, the video portion of the lessons made me glaze over a bit as well.

Questions such as "Why is the sense perception of a chair different from the chair itself?"   Await the student.   This particular question is covered in the video lesson, but I'm telling you, I still don't know what the guy said.

The student book has a 2-3 page lesson, followed by a list of exercises for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.    I had Olivia read the lesson and do the Day 1 exercises.  Each consecutive day then  followed the reading and activities as scheduled.   On Day 5, after doing the lesson for all 4 days, we watched the video portion of the lesson and it made a great deal more sense to everyone.   The teacher key has the answers for the workbook as well as the quizzes and tests, so if you aren't certain of an answer, you can find out!

Each chapter has a quiz, and most of the quizzes are 1 page.   The final exam is three (3) pages long, and while that does sound like a lot, there is a great deal of room for writing answers, so it's not nearly as big as it sounds.

This is a product I'd hoped to use, but for now it'll go on my shelf and we'll revisit it during the sophomore year.

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