History Rotation/Epi Kardia

Hi Cheryl,

I had never heard of Epi Kardia, but had a few moments and checked out their site. Here are my thoughts from taking 15 minutes to look it all over:

• PROS: Many of the books do look like good living books.
• CONS:
• It is WAY too complicated for my liking. God has impressed upon me time and again the importance of simplifying. Homeschooling need not be complicated and for us it must be simplified so that we keep our sanity!
• I don’t believe that skimming the surface for 3-6 weeks will result in the same relationship with the time period and the people of the time period that lingering over the material for a year or so will result in.
• I do not think every subject needs to be tied together in unit study fashion. While some people like this, I find that it is limiting in ways that do not work for us.
• I dislike minutely detailed daily lesson plans – it is too inflexible for us.

Now as to teaching American history along side world history, I did do that for 2 years successfully. However, I’m no longer doing both. We study wherever we are in our world history and simply listen to American history on audiobook and read occasional books. Again, I’ve discovered over and over, the beauty and effectiveness of simplicity.

HTH,

Christie

Hello, All!

I appreciate your looking at Epi Kardia and as one of its authors, I just wanted to clarify a few things.  Our original ‘complete curriculum’ components are written to be used for three years each.  Families can either progress through three units in a year, or they can start from Creation and move through all of the units each year for three years.

We all know that learning is most effective when we can connect a new fact with something we have already learned.

When my children were younger elementary, we studied the Ancient period of history for about a year. I LOVED it because I love this period of history.  My kids, on the other hand, were ready to move onto something else way before I did.  And four years later when we rotated back through the Ancients, I was disappointed that they did not remember as much as I had hoped.  Studying the Ancients for six weeks is plenty long enough for the younger set! 

As I used this new method, I found when children revisited a time period a year later, they could more easily make those connections and remember much more of what we had covered the prior year, allowing us to move more deeply into the material with each successive year. 

As my children became older, we moved through history at a slower pace, especially when we reached middle school and the books were so much longer.  And we always have had the freedom to ‘camp out’ in a unit if we wanted to do more projects and/or investigation. Epi Kardia is written such that people can work at their own pace.

Our Daily Lesson Plans came along later because some of our customers prefered to have a more detailed plan to follow with daily history, language arts, fine arts and science lessons integrated and already worked out for them so they could focus more on teaching and less on planning.This also allows, as luvmyfidgets mentioned, all subjects but math and foreign language to be taught using one curriculum.  Can’t get any simpler than that.

We say many times in the curricula to tweak lessons and schedules to make them fit YOUR family.  After all, isn’t this why we homeschool?  We should not let ourselves be enslaved by any curricula, we should always use it as a guide. Each child is different, each year is different. 

Anyway, this is what has worked for our family. 

God’s blessings on your curricula searches and decision making!

Dana

I felt the need to update my above review of EpiKardia’s program even though this post is quite old.

I’ve decided to use EpiKardia’s American History I for 9th grade.  I like the overview, narration and assignment topics, and evaluation rubrics.  I’m in a place where I need a break from putting it all together and EK fits the bill for us for dd14. I will continue to have a free reading list that dd will work through in addition, but I’m looking forward to this study.

In the past, I wrote a negative review here (see above) of Ek’s younger programs based upon evaluation of their online samples. I have since had opportunity to look at all levels of their materials in person. I LOVE the looks of the high school plans – all those helps are perfect for me in this season. I’m still looking at the younger programs (daily lesson plans 3rd and intermediate unit plans) and haven’t come to a conclusion about whether they are right for us for the coming year, but I do change my review to a positive one.  The program is different in its approach to history from AO and SCM and some other CM programs, but it looks to be very solid with the shorter rotation approach. It also isn’t a unit study with all subjects tied to a theme as I originally thought from the online samples. The plans are detailed, but as with most things there are those that prefer the details some, all, or none of the time  and that really is just a preference. The details might contribute to complexity for some while contributing to simplicity for others.

I have used and enjoyed all 6 of the SCM history handbooks and studies, some AO, some CMH, some on my own. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many good programs that fit needs of different families at different times.

The fact is anything with a living book basis is going to top the education I received and prepare my kids for a solid future regardless of the path they choose.  I was accepted to and given an almost full academic scholarship to Vanderbilt with my average public school education. While I chose not to attend for family reasons and went to a state school instead, the fact that I was accepted proves to me that the education my kids are getting will be excellent preparation for their futures because it has already exceeded mine by leaps and bounds and my oldest is in only 8th grade. I’m trusting the process more and realizing that there can be many paths even within the same philosophy.

Blessings as you make your decisions.   (And please excuse typos from my phone entry.)

christie

It took me a bit to figure out the EK Unit program. I didn’t get the full idea from the samples, but only when I ordered it to check out. They recommend reading 1/3 of the books from each unit per year essentially, thus taking 3 years to go through the program repeating creation to modern each year.  Alternatively, it is suggested to go through chronologically one time, using all or most of the books for each unit and taking 3 years to do so. Does that help? I’m still unsure on the program for us, but I do have a much better grasp of it now.

Wondering how EK worked for you @missceegee? Did you use it this past year?

Can you also remind me of the name of your blog?