Name: CHEC Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-06-12T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-06-14T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Denver, CO

Tagged: History

This topic has 20 replies, 11 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 12 months ago by Tristan.

Viewing 6 posts - 16 through 21 (of 21 total)

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April 26, 2016 at 5:03 pm
Regan
Participant
I am interested in if any of you have combined any of the Ancients in the younger years? I’m also wondering if any of the BF activities would be good to use with the SCM history? What do you order to get the activities?
April 28, 2016 at 11:23 am
cdm2kk
Participant
I used this with my kids and they were 3rd &4th grade and it was tough. The books are great but several were hard to get through and my kids could not read on their own. I read everything just about. They were lost with the galileo book, archimedes, and great inventor’s, which is a little comic booky to me. I had to do quite a bit of discussing and we had to slow it down too. My version came with experiments book and that didn’t work out too well either. I bought the book how it works by Mccauley and it is more for junior high and up ages. So, basically, I would do this with older kids if I was to do it again, but some of the other books are very easy to get through, so your call because you know your children best. We did BF’s early american history and loved it! Also I;m doing the BF’s Geography with hollings books paddle to the sea and Minn of the Mississippi and we are loving it too. I haven’t done SCM’s history, but I did do Sonlight my first year and it about killed me. It was a tiptoe through history and they have some nice books for younger kids for ancient times. I now pretty much pick which books I want to do and use CM’s method of planning and so I rarely use anyone’s guide any more. Hope this helps.
April 28, 2016 at 11:59 am
Amy
Participant
I used BF Early American with my youngers this year (10, 7) and we loved it. That said, I mostly used the book selections, and ended up changing almost everything in the guides to my own schedule for a couple of different reasons. First was that I had one in Primary and one in Intermediate. While there are similar books, they don’t follow the same schedule, so I had to adjust that to let both kids use the same subject/book at the same time. And also, I had a struggling reader this year, so I probably could have just used the primary, and that’s what I pretty much ended up doing. Except I added in some of the discussion from the intermediate guide.
As for activities, I didn’t feel like there was really much in there. A few coloring pages copied from the D’ulaire books, and a few notebooking pages. But no crafts, etc that I found. But as I said, I pretty much used the literature and made my own schedule.
I am planning to use SCM this coming year with all of my kids (14, 10, 7). I love that it has everyone in the same subject at the same time. And the literature that I have bought so far has been top-notch! I love the focus on missions and Christian heros in history. I plan to add some notebooking pages, and a craft here and there. (That is my thing! I love crafts.) I might also add in some of the books from BF as free reading, depending on time.
I loved BF, but I felt like Modern America would have been too high for my youngest, and I feel like SCM will be a perfect fit.
April 28, 2016 at 12:03 pm
Regan
Participant
Yes, I think I will stay with SCM for now because all my kiddos would be 3rd grade and under! As I looked through the SCM for Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, I really like it! I can easily sprinkle in a few activities and more living books if we want to camp out in a topic! I am interested in sprinkling in Beautiful Feet in the future! Thank you for sharing your experience, Amy!
June 13, 2017 at 2:07 am
Angie Cole
Participant
I would love an update from the original poster or Tristan – or any of you that used BF this past year. We have been using My Father’s World the past 4 years and are scheduled to start Creation to Greeks (I was given the curric) but I am highly interested in both Beautiful Feet and SCM’s Ancient History. I’ll have a 5th, 3rd, K’er and tag along 3 y/o. We have already covered American History (over 2 years) and I feel have a good grasp on that. I think my first preference would be either BF Ancient History or BF History of Science … unless it’s feasible to do both at the same time? Thanks!
Oh and I’m only interested in doing family/group subjects, not multiple history curric for multiple ages.
June 13, 2017 at 6:00 am
Tristan
Participant
Great question! I wouldn’t do both at one time (Ancients and History of Science). My best suggestion is to look at the book lists for each and see if you think your kids are up to listening to you read them all. I found that my younger elementary kids really weren’t up for all the reading in an intermediate level, but I already had a large stack of picture books on hand that went along so they enjoyed those.
Unless you have really good/fast readers your 5th and 3rd grader will drown in the reading amounts. You will have to do some of the reading aloud, or a lot of it. (My current 4th grader could handle it, he started reading chapter books at age 3 and enjoys reading, but the brother following him is 3rd grade and still isn’t reading chapter books independently so he would not be able to handle the reading. I really feel that the prime age for the intermediate levels is 6th-8th if you want them to do the reading.
Not sure if that helps!