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Considering SCM: Substitution Q
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Hi,
I am a mother of several boys. I am on the fence for our curriculum choices going forward. I have strongly considered using either Ambleside Online or SCM. I would jump into Early Modern as one of my kids will be a 9th grader and needs that and Modern for high school. My question is about a book substitution. Would I easily be able to substitute George Washington’s World by Foster for The World of William Penn by the same author? Would it be much trouble? I ask because I already own the Washington book. I am sure the Penn book is equally good. I would just like to use what I have. How easy is it to sub books? I want laid out lessons but wonder if I am defeating the purpose of that by using what I have instead of what is there. Oh! Are there term exam questions in the guide? That would also make a difference for the ease of subbing a book!
Hi there! While we always encourage families to use the curriculum as your servant and make substitutions where needed, that particular substitution would be difficult. The World of William Penn covers the years 1660-1718 which is earlier than The World of George Washington which covers 1732-1799. The World of William Penn is 188 pages (my copy) while The World of George Washington is 349 pages.
We always like to recommend that substitutions be made of a similar length and content/subject when possible. That said, you are the Momma and know your kiddo’s reading ability best.
While there are exam questions at the end of each term, they are not necessarily book specific however in the upper levels, we do take into consideration everything the child has read over the course of the term. As an example, in Early Modern, term 2, one of our exam questions for kiddos in grades 1-3 is “What is a colonist” What colonists have you heard of? Tell about one.” The same day kiddos in grades 7-9 are asked, “Tell all you know about the Revolutionary War, including how it affected citizens-both loyalists and patriots.” While all kiddos will likely pull from the family spines that were read, older students are asked more in depth questions that will require them to pull from all they’ve read over the term.
That is helpful to know! Thank you. It sounds like I’d have to rewrite things too much to make that work. It would be worth spending the $14 for the book to save me the headache of trying to figure that out!
Ambleside Online has the book already scheduled for a 36-week school year in year 4. You could just use their schedule along with the SCM guide for the other books.
totheskydear, That is a worthy thought. Have your done this before? If so, did you just not worry about the differences with content covered and allow whatever overlap of ideas there are to happen? I have never used an SCM guide before so I don’t have previous experience with the curriculum to have an idea about how easy it would be to make it work. I have used AO year 1 and My Father’s World (which is the curriculum that required George Washington’s World). I am leaning toward SCM to keep all my kids including high schoolers together on the same cycle, but I’ve never used it before. We are doing Classical Conversations this year in the interest of providing older boys a class to be part of (the desperately wanted this), and we simply won’t be doing it again. It is WAY too much. We will be returning to CM next year.
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