Classical Academic Press Logic Review

 Classical Academy Press offers many different curricula for today's homeschooling families.  They offer Logic, Poetry and Bible as well as the languages Latin, Greek, Spanish and French.  We recently reviewed their Logic course, The Discovery of Deduction: An Introduction to Formal Logic ($26.95) along with The Discovery of Deduction Teacher's Edition ($29.95).  The Discovery of Deduction is an introduction to formal, deductive logic which is a study of how an argument is put together.  It is for eighth grade through high school students.  The Art of Argument: An Introduction to the Informal Fallacies is recommended before using The Discovery of Deduction, but isn't required.  The Discovery of Deduction is split into four units which are separated into 9 chapters.  There is a suggested schedule to follow, either a full semester or a full year.  You can check those schedules out here.  There is an area on the Classical Academic Press website that covers Frequently Asked Questions.

Each Lesson starts with Points to Remember which then begins the reading material for that lesson.  After the reading they then define the important terms for their reading and answer any questions.  Lastly, they will do the Deduction in Action portion which helps them understand what they just read.  

This book is available as an e-book in both the Amazon Kindle and Apple iBook formats

How we used The Discovery of Deduction: An Introduction to Formal Logic:

Once we got started into the books we knew, from the very beginning, that we had a lot of work to do.  I had never taught logic so I was a bit lost at first myself.  My daughter was completely over her head with the material so we continued to work on it together.  We knew from the beginning that we would need to use the year long schedule so we had more time to understand the material. We read through the lesson together, I used the Teacher's Edition which was exactly like the student book just with the answers. :) We read through the lesson and discussed what it and worked on the questions together.  We really enjoyed the Monty Python bit!!!

What I thought of The Discovery of Deduction: An Introduction to Formal Logic:
I'm sure for those who are familiar with logic this is a great addition to their curriculum, but for us because we haven't ever used logic before it seemed too much.  It was quite overwhelming.  I'm guessing because The Art of Argument: An Introduction to the Informal Fallacies was recommended to be done before the Discovery of Deduction had we done that we could have possibly enjoyed it more.  So I would suggest if you are new to logic, start with the recommended The Art of Argument: An Introduction to the Informal Fallacies then move on to the The Discovery of Deduction: An Introduction to Formal Logic.