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Anyone use My Father's world? or what? help
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Sorry to keep asking questions but i am pretty overwhelmed right now with my life and getting things together for this coming year. I am curious if anyone has used or is using My father’s world-or even used my father’s world for high school. i want my kids to have the freedom to learn and enjoy learning about things they are interested in, but trying to put that all together for four children seems overwhelming. My 9 year old have had very little history, my 12 year old likes the middle ages, my 14 year old is starting high school and wants to use Susan Wise Bauer Story of the Middle ages. It would be so nice to have even the younger three together, but jumping in to the middle ages when the 9 year olds don’t know much about ancient history doesn’t feel right. I had thought about and own MY father’s world ECC but there seems to be a lot of worksheets and such. I know my expectations are so highthat i burn myself out before i even start school!!!! Can anyone help?
pam
Hi Pam,
I remember chatting with you over on the MFW board a few years back. (waving 🙂
I think it is great to allow the kids to pursue some areas of personal interest but I wouldn’t let that stand in the way of doing a family study. It would be so hard on you for them to all be going different directions in their studies. So I guess I am saying if it were me I would keep them all together and just assign books at each kid’s own level.
As far as ECC, you are right, there are a lot of worksheets. Some of them are a lot of fun, like the flags and such. Some of them are necessary and can be done in a light way so as not to be overwhelming, like the maps. The geography worksheets — they were too much for my dc at that age. We skipped them, or only did a little bit at a time. And a lot of it could be done out loud, together. That would help.
We had a lot of fun with ECC, you just have to tweak to make it more CM.
Can’t answer your question about MFW high school, but most kids are interested in the middle ages. Maybe you could do that this year for all your kids, even for your 9yo, and then next year start into early modern/modern? The SCM guides are great for helping you figure out how to cover a certain time period for all the ages in your home.
Hope you find your answer! ~Jenn (Jenn in NC on the MFW board)
I have friends that have used MFW High School and REALLY like it! They have seen incredible growth in their children. I also have a friend that works for MFW. The whole reason she loves it is because it allows them to do other things (service) in the afternoons. It is a program that gets it done and really does a good job of teaching Bible. I don’t always like their literature choices but it works. If you are burnt out, I’d do it. Most my friends that use it are done around 12-1.
I use it – I enjoy it – I just finished ECC and must say that I tweaked quite a bit. Some of it just didn’t fit us. However – having the general overview of what direction we were going seemed to give me the freedom of choosing something that worked better in their book…or one that I had on hand – without totally trying to throw my own plans together in the midst of what can be busy times (I know you know what those are like). It can be crazy when one child is filling out college apps, one has a fever, hubby needs me to take car for an oil change, and one is needing more down time to focus on math skills!!! You know those weeks – right!!??!! Either way – I enjoyed it – I’m actually more excited to have ECC done – I was really ready to get into the history more – but ECC was still tons of fun. It was pretty easy to tweak and make it a little more CM – but it was also really nice to have their planning to fall back on when I barely had time to take a shower!! Hope it helps…also their board has tons of great ideas @ mfwbooks.com…
I have a blog and list my curriculum there with some pics – and I have a link which takes you to another blogger that has been doing it for a number of years. Check it out – the link is a blog roll down the sidebar:
http://texashomeschooler.blogspot.com/
Hope it is some help…and I love being done early too – though there are days we go later when there is a project too – but it is nice to get done and leave time for volunteering, co-op, other activities….and a nap….yeah right – just trying to get a chuckle!!! Wishing you the best! ash
We used MFW Ancient History and Lit for high school this past year and had a positive experience. I’ve posted about MFW high school a couple of times, but can’t seem to locate the post right now.
I originally bought the Notgrass World History set first, but upon further investigation decided to add the pieces to complete the MFW Ancient History and Lit. One of the main reasons was the complete study of the Old Testament. I’m using this with one of our adopted children who had not had an in depth study of this nature in the past. Another reason was the way the MFW lesson plans were totally laid out and written to the student. This has freed up my time to spend with our two younger children, who are beginning readers.
In addtion, I liked the writing piece that MFW incorporates along with a scoring rubric for ease of grading the writing. I tend to be very critical when grading writing, which ends up in frustration for both our daughter and I. MFW provided a 14 point check list to use when critiquing the writing. I have seen great improvemnts in her writing since the beginning of the year. We both feel good about that.
We plan to continue with MFW World History this year as it incorporates a complete study of the New Testament. And again, I like the fact that everything’s laid out for us. I’m not sure if this dd is college bound, but it’s a possibility. I want to make sure I have all the bases covered just in case and I feel MFW will do that. I also appreciate the biblically based world view the curriculum is offering. In additon, our dd has stated on several occasions that she really liked her curriculum and wants to continue with it.
One thing I will say, is upon getting the MFW World History for this year, 10th grade, I am disappointed with the history selections. It relies heavily on and Usborne and DK books. With that said, we will be supplementing with other living history books, some are Beautiful Feet recommendations. The teacher’s manual actually suggests this for stronger readers. Apparently, the reasoning behind the lighter schedule is due to the fact that the student will spend several weeks learning how to write a research paper. This dd is an avid reader and is always looking for extra books to read, so I think she’ll do fine with the supplement.
As pollysoup mentioned, we too are done by early afternoon and it allowed our dd time to volunteer in the community.
Let me know if you have more specific questions. We’ve also used the MFW kindergarten and 1st grade programs, but not ECC or any other elementary levels.
Blessings, Melissa
Melissa,
Thanks for your post on high school…you have really helped me to be more excited about the high school curriculum for MFW. I had read it was written a bit to the student, but had not really heard much about that so – thanks for your post. I’m glad to hear your pros and cons! I’m really glad I chose MFW from the start – I also sometimes add another book I have on hand – but their curriculum seems to work well for mom’s that like to supplement and add (or tweak)!!
We too use MFW as of last year and love it. We chose it because as we got to the middle school years, I wanted to be sure that we were prepared to complete a subject w/i the school year and the MFW lesson plans help with that. It was almost all the same curriculum I was using so the switch was easy for us. We LOVED the books for Rome to the Reformation. Also by the time we added in Analytical Grammar, VideoText Algebra and Spanish, we had full days. Usually finished around 2 or 2:30 still though.
Also if you use ECC each child could read books related to their personal interests during book basket time.
For the most part I would agree with Melissa : )
Julie
My only concern with MFW is the cost. My children are 3 years apart and though we currently study MFW together, at some point they will be on different levels. When they reach that level, it is going to cost me about $1,000 just for that curriculum for the one year!!
We are currently using MFW ECC and I do love having the lessons planned out. I am hoping that by next year I will be able to plan my own lessons (lot of hard work) and save some money. I know that sounds horrible, but times are getting tough. I love the idea of using living books and not textbooks. My kids glaze over when textbooks come out. I just worry about high school and how to handle credits/grades/transcripts.
Giving this to God now…he knows what to do
I’ve used MFW all of the Middle grades ECC, Greeks, Rome to Reformation, & the next two also. I’ve also used most of Sonlight. Now I am using the modules from SCM. I much prefer the simplicity, ease of use and cost of SCM. I only have one left that I am homeschooling but I wish I could do it all over again with SCM. I highly encourage you to try SCM History modules especially if you are concerned about cost and wanting to have your family learn together but also meet individual needs. Christy is a junior now doing Module 3 Matthew – Acts & Ancient Rome. We are really excited about this study and enjoy the readings so much. Looking at the resources for younger children in this module I can see that Christy read all the right books with the other programs but now we are happy to be reading these new quality offerings for high school too. We read Gen Fosters books aloud together in MFW & Sonlight but now Christy is rereading them alone as a good review. She is currently reading Ben-Hur as her Lit book. Being she is older we are going through this study more quickly than if we had littles along too but really take a good look at these before you spend a lot more money elsewhere!
$10.95 for a Teacher’s Manual that works for all your dc at once! How can you beat that? By not having to spend $100 for TM for each child look how much you would save already with SCM! With just that savings you can afford to buy the quality books that the module recommends for each age group!
My oldest dd was homeschooled and this year is her first official year to homeschool her dc. Her youngest is in K so she isn’t yet using the modules but I believe that she will eventually because she is just thrilled so far with the Online Organizer and all the other stuff on this website.
Sue, that is really neat that your oldest DD is now homeschooling her child. I also appreciate your encouragement about using the SCM modules. We’re on week three of our school year using SCM module 1 (second year of hs’ing) and used MFW ECC last year. I do keep second guessing myself and hoping that I’m taking a good and complete route for my children. Your post was very encouraging to me – thank you! 🙂
Melissa
((HUGS)) MelissaB. Aren’t homeschool mothers the queens of second-guessing?! I keep falling prey to the idea that if I can just find the “perfect” curriculum, everything will fall into place!
Oh I totally can relate ColoradoMama – I’m definitely queen of second guessing myself. I think that internet helps me continue to do it too. I need to put my blinders on and forge ahead on the path I’m on. 🙂
Um, I do plenty of second guessing myself. In fact I had everyting on hand to do Sonlight with Christy this year and at the last minute we switched to SCM. I’m glad that we are doing SCM so second guessing isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
There were questions about MFW High School on another homeschool forum as well, so today I did a blog post regarding our high school experience thus far for anyone contemplating this route. http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/
Blessings,
Melissa
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