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Biblioplan/Story of the World or SCM Mod 1
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I have looked at so many different Bible/Ancients history curriculums lately but can’t decide what I want to do. My boys don’t want to spend a whole year in Ancient Eygpt, they feel that would get boring after a while. They would prefer to move a little quicker. A friend of mine has Mystery of History Vol 1 which I’ve looked at, but I’m not sure that’s the way to go either. I like the thought of SCM myself, but I am also looking closely at Biblioplan, too. Our boys will be in 3rd and 6th grades. Has anyone used Biblioplan Ancients? I understand it uses Story of the World as the spine. What is your opinion of it? Would I be likely to use all the additional stuff with Biblioplan — Cool History, Time Line Figures, etc? Also, anyone using SCM Mod 1, how are you finding the year long concentration on Eygpt? Or is it more heavy on Biblical history?
We are doing Module 1. Three out of five days are Bible history, one day is geography, and one day is ancient history. At first you cover Mesopotamia. My DD7 has not become bored with Egypt at all, but, on the contrary, has grown a love for that area.
If you want to move quicker then do more than one lesson a day. I myself choose to do Bible and History every day so we move more quickly through the guides. This way you can cover a guide in about half the time. At only $10.95 per download of a guide I consider them a major bargain and don’t mind ordering more than one a year. My daughter is in high school and we are going through three a year. But we have covered a lot of this information previously with other programs so sometimes it is just review for us. With younger children it may be necessary to go slower. We only had two years left when we decided to use the modules so we are doing Modules 3, 4, & 5 this year and 1, 2, & 6 next year.
Thanks, Ladies. Sun in MN, how much time do you spend on a daily lessons going at that pace? I don’t think I’d want to do three a year, but 2 a year would allow me to get through the rotation twice with my older son and 3 times with my younger with an opportunity for an elective during the oldest’s grade 12 year which would correspond with the younger’s grade 9 year — so we could either do the elective as a family study or start the 3 rotation then and allow him an elective in his grade 12 year. In our province only 2 highschool history credits are required, neither at the grade 12 level. That seems to be the rotation that would line everything up neatly. A six year rotation wouldn’t get my younger his required Canadian history in highschool.
I do agree that the price for the SCM modules is very nice. Two a year wouldn’t be a hardship at all. Still, I’d love to hear from anyone who has used Biblioplan, just for the advice/opinion.
Thanks again!
We love Biblioplan Ancients, but we did it with older kids so used a different book than SOTW. I am impressed with the whole Biblioplan package and I can recommend it, we used the companion, guide, timeline and maps, just did not do the craft pages as the kids were older. We liked the books that were chosen to go with the course and the content was fantastic. If I was doing my time again and wanted to use a solid program, I would pick this. My daughter’s found it very interesting. We have all the Biblioplan courses right up to modern, and have used bits and pieces of it throughout the years, however Ancients we did in full and it is really good.
How much time do we spend? We spend an hour in the morning reading the Bible and doing some History reading. We discuss it and other things as we go along. Then Christy goes up to the public school for Choir and lunch. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons we have another hour of school together. Then she gets a printout from the SCM online organizer of her homework. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I have a college class so she works on homework all afternoon. Christy likes to read so I add in other books also and we are doing this along with Sonlight’s Core 200 History of God’s Kingdom and Core 530 Brit Lit. We watch a lot of movies from Netflix or the library also. We are using the DK books Story of Christianity, Story of Philosophy, Story of Painting, and Story of Architecture. Christy is doing Apologia Physical Science on her own. We’re starting a new Math program next week. We use Lightning Lit for literature analysis and writing. We were learning Latin but may switch to French. A lot going on but we like it. Usually Christy reads both the 7-9 & 10-12 books if she hasn’t read them before.
By the way I don’t know what Biblioplan is but Christy used SOTW with the Activity Guides and tests when she was younger. I highly recommend them but they are too young for her now. SCM works well along with Sonlight for this age which is what we do. Really my book choice compares to Tapestry of Grace but I don’t like their plan, I just like their books. SCM gives me just enough structure but not restricting me.
I’ve been curious about Biblioplan as well. Could anyone tell me if Biblioplan schedules in Bible throughout all their guides? Thanks,
Bible is throughout the whole of the Ancients, and thereafter I think they assume you will be reading the Bible to the children. A lot of the books they use are what I would consider books of faith, Sower Series etc, and within the companions they cover missionaries and they have a Biblical worldview throughout. Obviously the Ancients lends itself best to scheduling the Bible as part of the course, thereafter, we just continued to study our Bible and devotionals. It is a very thorough course of study, and we liked it a lot.
WOW — an hour is definately more than I want to spend on one subject with my boys who will only be 8 and 12. Sue in MN, you are trying to do one Mod per term with a HS student, though, right?
Thanks, missingtheshire for your insight. Has anyone with elementary students done Biblioplan ancients?
Those of you doing SCM Mod 1 how long do you spend on a lesson? Can lessons be doubled up without going over the 40 min mark between the 3 subjects? For example, would it be possible to (comfortably) cover 6 Bible lessons, 2 history lessons and 2 Geography lessons per week? I realize we may have to leave out some books or require more history for independant reading, but I’m not entirely opposed to that. It seems to me that Story of the World and Mystery of History and Biblioplan all cover Eygpt through Rome in one year, and I’m only considering trying to cover 2 thirds of that in one year by using SCM Mod 1 and 2.
Biblioplan by the way is done over 3 days then the other 2 days we did extra reading, any writing we wanted to do extra to the course etc. I think if you look at one of their samples it may help answer the questions you have.
I need to clarify, I don’t spend an hour on one subject. I spend one hour with my daughter in the morning and on M, W, F, I spend an additional hour. This is the time I spend for all her subjects. But like I said we are high school level and in any other school she would spend at least 45 minutes in class for each subject and homework in the evening. Students in my town have school from 8:15 AM to 3PM. I spend about 8 hours total for the week conducting class discussion and then she gets a homework sheet. As I also stated we are doing a lot more than just SCM History Modules.
I down loaded the 3 sample weeks for Biblioplan. Now I have to go back and look at the samples for SCM Mod 1 again and see how they compare.
It’s unbelievable how many hours of research can be spent on finding the right curriculum!
4myboys, I have not used Biblioplan with an elementary student, but it’s one of my choices for next year since I own the guide already. Biblioplan has a very active yahoo group and they are happy to answer any questions you have. I agree with Linda, check out the 3 week sample, it will help you decide.
Des — Thanks for the yahoo group tip. Do you have elementary students you are planning to use it with?
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