This is an exciting and fun art supplement that kids are sure to love (makes a great gift for Christmas or a birthday). There are three main parts to the book. First is an introduction which explains a problem the art museum is having with forgeries. Several gangs of artists have copied original works, but made very slight changes to them. The object of the book is to identify who is responsible for the various forgeries by looking carefully for very specific clues.

The rest of the book is split into two books on top of each other. The upper part is composed of the forgeries - which look like real art until you look very closely (and thus the magnifying glass). A small symbol on the forgery will tell you how many changes the forger made to the original work. By studying the lower book - which is an art catalog with prints of the real paintings, the reader will discover the differences and solve the crime. The catalog includes information about the type of painting; the artist and when he lived; and a brief story about the painting and its subject. There are a total of thirty-four paintings and there is a complete answer key in the back of the book.

What a creative way to get kids interested in art and...fear not! You'll find no twaddle here. I was very pleased to see the practice in attention-to-detail that this book requires and encourages. It's enjoyable enough that my daughter has enjoyed working through it with friends on sleep-overs. There is one picture that jumps out at me as being a little on the shocking side. It's a picture of a very ugly old lady in a very low-cut dress. The book explains that it is a caricature of older women who try to dress younger but really make themselves look ridiculous. I don't really like the picture, but I don't think it really detracts from the book (it also offers the idea of additional purpose in art and an unusual way of making a point).

In two formats: CD ROM or workbook with audio tapes

Traditional format includes: Level 1, Books I and II, 15 cassette tapes, Teacher's Manual, Graded Reader, Teacher's Manual for the Graded Reader, Reference Notebook (consumable), Test Booklet (consumable), and Guide to Tests

CD ROM format includes: CD-ROM (Equivalent to Level I, Books I and II and the 15 cassette tapes), Manual, Graded Reader, TM Graded Reader, Reference Notebook (consumable), Test Booklet (consumable), Guide to Unit Tests

Artes Latinae has been called the cadillac of Latin curriculums, and if the quality of the program doesn't convince you of that, the price will. At nearly three hundred dollars for Level 1 (equivalent to one year of college Latin, or two years of high school), it's easily one of the most expensive ways to study Latin. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

If you want a Latin program that's self-paced, self-guiding, accurate, thorough, and which will leave your children in command of Latin rather than just having dabbled in it, and which works well even if you have no Latin background yourself, Artes Latinae may be just the thing. By the end of Level One, the student will be at ease with all the noun cases and verb tenses; relative, interrogative, and personal pronouns; and have committed to memory over a hundred "basic sentences" from classic Latin texts exemplifying the various points of grammar.

Instruction is based on Dr. Sweet's revolutionary structural method of teaching Latin grammar. Instead of memorizing vocabulary and learning rules of grammar which are then applied to the translation of Latin sentences, students learn to read the way real Latin-speakers did. Each sentence is approached as a sequence of empty "slots," and the reader identifies the correct word to fill the slot by recognizing the signal of the word ending.

Thus, for instance, a reader aproaching the sentence "Hilarem datorem diligit Deus" begins with the framework "Someone blanks something"; recognizes the "-m" ending which signals an accusative noun, and thinks "Someone blanks a cheerful giver"; then recognizes the "-t" signal for a present active indicative verb, and thinks "Someone loves a cheerful giver"; and so on. By contrast, the traditional method of reading Latin (as described for instance in the classic Wheelock's Latin text) calls for searching the sentence for the subject and its modifiers, then for the verb and its modifiers, and so on; in other words, forcing the signals of English grammar (i.e. word order) onto a language that does not use them.

One consequence of the structural method of learning Latin is that Artes Latinae does not track any other Latin program in sequence, making it difficult to switch to a different program in midstream. Other programs such as Latina Christiana may however be easily used as supplementation should you want more Christian content such as prayers or hymns. While Artes Latinae teaches classical Latin, the CD-ROM version offers a choice of classical or ecclesiastical pronunciations, and the voluminous supplementary readings in the accompanying reader include medieval as well as classical selections. The reader also provides supplementary vocabulary, as the basic program (CD-ROM, or workbooks plus tapes) focuses more on mastering grammar than memorizing vocabulary.

Offering "Exciting ideas, project, and activities for schools, science fairs, and just plain fun," this book is one in a series that is very popular with homeschoolers (and understandably so). The book covers seven major topics - Planets, Space Movement, The Sun, The Moon, The Stars, Space Instruments and Space/Space Travel. Each experiment uses simple experiments and explains (briefly) the purpose, the procedure, the expected result and a brief but very understandable explanation of why it happened. Black and white sketches illustrate each experiment as well. To give you an idea of the kind of material that is covered, here are a few of the experiment descriptions/purposes (out of 101 total):

• "To determine how color affects a planet's surface temperature"
• "To demonstrate a method of proving that the Earth rotates"
• "To determine why planets move smoothly around the Sun"
• "To simulate aiming a spacecraft for the Moon"
• "To determine why stars appear to rotate"
• "To determine why radio wave receivers are curved"

I found the "why" segments of each experiment helpful background reading for me to brush up on my science knowledge.