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Best way to do a 4 year cycle with SCM Modules
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I need some help planning the next five years. I have never used the SCM history modules but they appeal to me very much. We have used MFW mostly and now my oldest is nearly in high school and I do not want to give up our family learning adventure. My plan was to use the Early Modern guide next year with Beautiful Feet Inter for the American readings. I already bought all the BF books and cannot buy much more so that is my reason for not going with the full SCM plan. I really want to try the SCM next year to get a good feel before I commit to using it through high school. So here is my problem, I want to go through all six history modules in four years, and I want to do them slowly and have time for soaking it in, but I cant have it both ways. I love the Bible aspect of the first three so I do not want to give that up. Doing 1 1/2 per year seems too fast. Should I skip two modules? Just do the Bible in modules 1-2, concurrently working through history in 3-6. I LOVE weaving Bible and history together so this is such a dilemma. The other option would be to just plug through the cycle, however getting our full American history credit would take some extra reading I think since he would do Modern in 9 th and then start with Ancients in 10th, missing MIddle Ages and Early Modern. I have younger children also so they would still benefit from doing one per year. How do you make the modules work with your credit requirements? Is 3 terms a year doable? Without making mommy crazy? Please help.
My plan is to cover 1/4 of American history each year. To accomplish this, we’ll either have 1 term of American history and 2 of world…or we could have 1-2 days per week of American history and 3-4 days of world. I will assign 1 AH credit, 3 world history credits, and 1 geography credit over the 4 years. We’ll also add in economics & government at some point.
My plan is:
Year 1: early explorers/colonial days & Ancient Greece
Year 2: Revolutionary War/post Rev. war & Ancient Rome
Year 3: 1800’s (Lewis & Clark, Civil War, etc.) & Middle Ages
Year 4: 20th Century & modern world history (1600’s & beyond)
We’ll cover ancient Egypt and other early civilizations alongside our Bible studies. Since we are only covering world history over 2 terms, we may have to cut back on some of the readings, which I don’t think will be a big deal.
I am adding in some Memoria Press teacher guides for discussion questions, and using the SCM books for our family & individual readings. So, we will likely be replacing books like The Story of the Greeks with Famous Men of Greece, since that is the spine MP uses.
To keep things simple, each day we will have one history/geography lesson. So I divided our readings & map drills into 180 lessons (60 per term). Whatever didn’t fit into these plans was left out. I didn’t double up on readings to fit everything in.
For the individual history & living science books, I’ll just have them read 30 minutes or so each day. Some DC will get through more books than others. A couple of the family history readings are scheduled in our literature time slot, as is a Shakespeare play.
Beautiful Feet sounds like a great program, and I think several moms here use it. I think the key to combining is not to do everything from both programs! Start filling readings into your schedule and stop when you run out of time slots…doubling up on lessons is never a good idea!
Holly your plan is amazing, it made me think of something I never considered, American over four years. What do you think of doing SCM modules 1-4 as is, but adding in the BF HS American readings over four years? It is sort of doubling up, but most of the SCM stuff I would read aloud…I want a great education too. One of my big issues is doing all the planning and making my own lesson plans. I am a total planner, but I am overly ambitious and dont want to miss anything. Its hard for me to pull it together myself from various resources, I envy your ability to do that.
Oh I am getting excited, it just occurred to me that I could add in some BF stuff along with grammar and writing as needed for his English/Lit credit. He would still only be reading from 2 books at a time. Both relating to the general time period we are studying. He would still get to be with is for a lot of the read alouds, Bible, enrichments, etc. you are a blessing Holly! Sometimes it takes another brain to get us out of our thinking rut.
This is helpful for me, too, because we started using SCM last year when my oldest was in the 8th grade which means that we won’t get to the 6th module until after he graduates. I want to be sure that he gets a good American History education and I’ve considering breaking it up over four years. I did take him to Washington D.C. in May following his 7th grade year and we did study American History using Classical Conversations’ American History cycle so maybe those things could “count” for something?? Thanks for any suggestions!
You would have to check with someone in your state who has worked through creating a high school transcript for a homeschooler, but our co-op held a transcript workshop with a dvd we watched together, and it was mentioned that you could include high school level work completed in 8th grade on the high school transcript. You might just have to note when it was completed.
If your 8th grader was ready for algebra and completed that, you wouldn’t want the transcript to look as though he/she never took algebra, so you would include that. So for your 8th grader, I would consider including the Early Modern Times period of American and World History as high school work.
Also, we were particularly interested in Ancient Roman history, but not so much with Egypt and Greece. So we lightened up on some of the reading for those and were done with them over one year plus the first month of the next school year. That way, we were able to spend nearly a full school year on Ancient Rome, covering the first 3 modules in 2 years.
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