I am sure this has been asked before, but I am wondering about the SCM history guides. My oldest will be 6.5 next school year and I am wondering if I should buy a SCM history guide. I love the look, the guidance, that Bible is woven in, not to mention geography. However, with such a young crew would it be better to just read living books and skip the guide? Anyone have any advice?
I will have the same age daughter in the fall. I DID buy the guide. I am very comfortable with planning and organizing (more so than teaching ), but having all of the lessons already laid out for me by an author (Sonya Shafer) that I have grown to trust and adore is priceless compared to the cost of guide. We will be doing the American History portion of Module 5, and the geography portion of Module 6 using the Holling books. I can spend my planning time on some other subject. I appreciate the guides so much! They are just wonderful. I have had mine for about two weeks now and everytime I open it to look through it, I am so thankful to have them.
I used the guide when my kids were that young. They give the book list for 1-3 grade and if something of the family books was to long I either skipped it or shortened it or used something else. I figured I had to start somewhere so I may as well use it. We love these guides because it plans everything out so nice for you and has the bible interwoven. Sometimes I hear about other good history curriculum and I look but I always come back to SCM. So I quit looking.
I forgot say how much I LOVE that Bible is woven in as well. We are going to read through The Chiild’s Story Bible by C. Vox so that is why I didn’t mention it. If you need to pause in the guide and read more on a topic the children are interested in, then do it. Just come back to where you left off in the guide. Let the guide work for you, not boss you around. LOL 🙂 For Module 5, SCM released Visits to North America recently, but I already had the Holling books before it was released so I will use those. Visits to North America looks wonderful and I know many moms rave about them here on the forum. We will continue American History again in the 2nd grade and will be able to do Visits to North America then. I hope this helps. Like I stated above, the guides are just great! 🙂