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New to SCM, coming from AO
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I am considering switching to SCM a and have a few questions. Background: I have four kids, 9, 7, 4 & 1. We’ve been using AO, my oldest did AO years 1-2 pretty much as is. This year my oldest is doing AO 3 and my 7yo is doing AO 1 but with year 3 history. To be frank, this year has been rough. A lot of that is me. Having a fourth kid has worn me out. I am just tired. We are getting our basics done- phonics, math, writing; and not getting to the other stuff so much. Its halfway through the school year, and maybe we have the first term done. Finding time to read two different sets of books is just not happening. I was thinking my 9yo could read his own books this year, but he complains they don’t make sense when he reads them. He’s a good reader, loves to read, but I think the content, though enjoyable, of a book like the Jungle Book, is just over his head. When I look ahead to next year, AO 4 includes books like Robinson crusoe, more tough books. I love the AO books, but I’m realizing they just schedule them too young in my opinion. I’ve been thinking a similar thing about the American history book we started this year, This Country of Ours. It’s a great book, but goes into way more detail about history than a 9 and 7 yo care about. I’ve been thinking about replacing it with something else and using this book in our second cycle through. Though maybe it’s too light for high school? Idk… It’s more history than I got in public school. anyway, I’ve been working on tweaking AO even more for next year… Combining my kids in science for starters. Then I started thinking about literature… Why not combine there too? They listen to each other’s books all the time anyway.
So Rather then just make up my own thing, now I’m looking at SCM. I see some similarities in the books, but SCM schedules them in later years, which is what I’m looking for. AO is just too… rigorous? for us I guess. I’m not sure what I think of spending 3 years on ancients though. I’m trying to figure out how it works. Looking over the curriculum guide, it looks like you read a history spine to all your kids four days a week? Geography/bible one day. And do I see it right that you read one chapter per day from a literature book to everybody, with additional individual readings assigned to older kids? Wow history every day. We are doing it twice a week, maybe why I can’t keep up with the schedule. lol. Another question- if you substitute a lot of the book choices, are the guides still worth having? Because I probably will want to use the AO books I’ve collected. And also I school through a charter school and they only purchase secular works. Though I am able to buy a few things myself, if I feel they are worth it.
looking over the SCM modules, time wise we are at the beginning of module 5. So this would be an easy time to switch. I’m trying to look over the book lists and see where the books we have fit and what I’d need to purchase. While this country of ours is not working well, our island story is going ok. And our other history books the kids really like: holling’s book of Indians (this is not an AO book, I added it), Diane Stanley bios. Oh I forgot child’s history of the world. My 9yo dislikes this book, much more so than TCOO a. He actually doesn’t mind TCOO. Though he doesn’t like it either. He thinks history is boring. I’m the one who thinks going into this much detail is overkill at these young ages. So maybe even though I enjoy OIS and TCOO, maybe we need to drop these for a different spine? Maybe I could use them when the kids are older. I looked at SCM 4 years ago and it seems like they used a different history spine? I can’t remember the name at the moment. But I think it was a public domain book. How does the new SCM published history books compare? I need to use my school funds as much as I can, or if SCM books are totally worth it, I will still need to spread out the cost. Or use a public domain book.
Im sure I have more questions, but they’ve slipped my mind. Lol.
After looking again at AO year 4, I realized its just not going to work for us right now. Maybe a few years doing something else then we might go back and pick up where we left off. For the next few years I was considering using SOTW or SCM. But looking at the egypt SCM guide, I can see the schedule won’t really work for us. We have our own family bible reading schedule that we won’t be changing. And to try to line up SCM lessons with that would be too complicated I think. And I don’t want to double up, reading several chapters of the bible each week as part of school and several more chapters as a family. So I’m thinking of using SOTW 1, which I already have, spread over two years, and supplementing that with the SCM book suggestions. I need open and go right now. Not that I’m saying SCM guides aren’t, I think they probably are if used as written. They just wouldn’t be for me, right now.
As far as I can tell from the samples, in SCM module 1 the spine is the bible and everything else is a supplement to that? Or is ancient Egypt and her neighbors also a spine?
i really like the looks of the samples I’ve read. Right now with just two school age kids it’s easy enough for me to plan our lessons, but I’m thinking once we get to modules 4-6 and I have four kids in school, SCM guides may be the way to go. Rather than return to AO.
is it really necessary to do history four days a week? I see all the SCMguides schedule it that way. We have gotten so overwhelmed with AO history, which we had to do every day to keep up with the schedule. This year we do history twice a week and that’s it. Which is why we are so behind. But we were all tired of doing history all the time.
A light bulb just went off! I read to the kids from a children’s bible story book most days, I could just read that on schedule with SCM module 1. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?
Since i already have SOTW 1, would it work to replace the readings from ancient Egypt and her neighbors with that?
🙂 I think you’re answering your own questions, and very well I might add. (The forum is pretty quiet lately with the updates to the forum that have been happening along with the holidays.) I’ve never used SCM or AO, though many of my library families do. But no matter what you use or your family dynamic, everyone must make their education their own and do what works best for them. Education is not a book list or curriculum. They are merely tools that you use (or not) to instill truth, beauty and goodness into the lives of our children…and in ours. Keep working through it and don’t be afraid to make changes or throw things out altogether. As I’m known for saying to moms in my library, “It’ll be alright.”
It will work.
I think that I would simply sit down and go through the SOTW chapters and make a list of those pertinent to Ancient Egypt, and just use that instead of buying more stuff. Don’t tack on a bunch of busy-work projects or activities. Continue to use CM methods and principles like narration.
My bottom line advice is make it easy for you to accomplish. In reality, if you know that the guide schedules Bible history 3 times a week, Ancient Egypt 1 time per week and geography 1 time per week, you can totally use what you have already, assuming you have a geography resource. If not, SCM’s Visits to Africa is great. It has map drills already laid out for you, plus additional living books for the “people and culture” aspect.
I’m trying to decide whether it will be easier to use the SCM guide as a starting point or SOTW as a starting point…
if if I start with the SCM guide, I would need to sub in my bible story book for the bible readings, easy. I would also need to sub in SOTW for ancient Egypt and her neighbors, less easy. But after subbing in those two, it would be easy enough to do a weeks worth of history in two days I stead of four, since those readings would be shorter. The guide would tell me when to read the great pyramid, pharoahs boat and boy and the pyramid. Also when to have my oldest read golden goblet and cat of bubastes. I have uncle Josh’s outline maps that I can use with it. I might, might, add ancient civilizations history pockets occasionally for my craft loving girl. If I want to use my history encyclopedia, which my kids love but we never get to cause it isn’t scheduled, I would have to add it to the schedule myself. But I’m pretty sure using SOTW we will finish egypt in half a year… Which would throw the schedule of those supplement books off so I’d have to adjust it myself.
OR if I start with SOTW, I would need to make a list correlating SOTW and my bible story book, and possibly child’s history of the world (which I already have); that wouldn’t be hard. but when to fit in the supplement books? Looking at SOTW and the way the chapters are divided into subheadings, I think if twice a week we read one subheading from there plus a few minutes of something else… Bible story or supplement book, whatever fit with our reading… we would get through it all. It might not be necessary to specifically schedule it. Or if I loosely follow the schedule in the activity guide, I could plug those books in instead of their suggestions. Using the SOTW guide would schedule in the history encyclopedia for me. SOTW activity guide would have some hands on stuff that I could pick a couple to do from, then no need to buy history pockets.
either way would work… Hmm… I think starting with SOTW might be simpler? If we do end up reading the first half of sotw, that covers egypt and greece, so I would then have to do it again with SCM module 2 guide… Whereas if I’m using SOTW as my starting point, then I will just keep on with what I’m already doing.
when do you have your child read the independent books? My oldest will be 10yo/4th grade, and I thought he could read the cat of bubastes and/or golden goblet himself.
I guess again, I’m just wondering if the guides are useful when you know you will be substituting out a lot of the books?
Let me see if I understand the SCM curriculum guide correctly…
we have family history/bible/geography… With added readings for the 4th grader?
we have enrichments done as a family: poetry, Shakespeare, artist and music study, scripture memory, hymns
And literature… For my kids 4/2/K I would read one chapter a day out of one lit book at a time to all of them. Aprox. 6 books for the year. And no narrating? Would the 4th grader have assigned additional readings too?
and lastly we have individual subjects: math, language arts and science? I’m not sure why science is individual? Or is that just that older kids, middle and high school age, need their own? Cause I see a few science books on SCM that say can use for Family 1-6 science.
Wow that is different than AO. I can see having time to do history 5days a week with that schedule. So different than having individual readings for history and geography and bible and poetry and literature and science. It will be more peaceful even then the simplified AO schedule were doing this year.
So initially you said you would start with Early Modern then changed to ancient Egypt. Why was that?
I think it is important for us to remember that the “perfect” education doesn’t exist and we need to make decisisions based on what we can actually do and not what we like the idea of doing. Even if you only do history 2x a week, it will be more than you learned in school. (If your history education was anything like mine)
We will be starting with Early Modern for a couple of reasons:
it lets my younger kids jump in in logical areas and that makes my crazy head happy. My second will start with ancient Egypt and my 3rd will start with Renaissance and Reformation.
I like the books for younger years better and want to start history with an area that my kids will be more excited about.
I want to start there and I think that if I am excited for history every day it will be easier to make sure it gets done.
I went back and forth between AO and SCM for a while and in my head the idea of AO and the depth of education I loved. But the thought of doing it with 3 kids stressed me out. SCM just makes more sense for us. I actually ended up sitting down with my husband and going over the pros and cons and his response was “why would you make so much work for yourself by using AO?”
I hope that helps a bit. We are only doing Kindegarten this year with my oldest so I’m by no means a veteran homeschooler but I went back and forth a lot and I wanted to make a decision on that ideally I won’t change. I love to think that I will use SCM my whole homeschooling career but I also know most families change at some point.
>So initially you said you would start with Early Modern then changed to ancient Egypt. Why was that?
Well early modern would be what’s next in AO, so initially I looked at that. But As I look over the AO books for the next few years, I want to use them just they need to wait a few years. So i figured if we began SOTW from the beginning, once we got to the early modern again my oldest two kids would be ready for those books.
Welcome to SCM and this forum, Rebekah. If you have SOTW and a library, you can read the children’s Bible and add in SOTW and any interesting books on Egypt, though we have enjoyed Boy of Pyramid. We are trying to make our way through the audio of Egypt and Her Neighbors. We really are just doing our own thing at this point. I have the SCM model guides for them all, but only wanted to spend one year on ancients, so we read the VOS children’s Bible and I assign readings to my grades 2 and 5 children of ancient times. My 5th grader is reading
many of the Jeanne Bendick titles this year and also Theras and His Town is Greek. My grade 2 is reading the King Tut Step Into Reading book and many Usborne books on Egypt, Greece and Rome, like Time Traveller.
We really enjoyed the modules 5 and 6 books and the guide was helpful, though I did tweak it some.
I wonder if you may be overthinking too many of the details for history. Just pick a time period and pick some good living books to enjoy. You can have a family read aloud going and assign independent reading to older children.
I think you could really benefit from http://www.urthemom.com and her book on The Self-Propelled Advantage. You would benefit greatly by both combing subjects where you see fit and by getting your children more independent in their schoolwork.
My oldest is now of an age where he could be more independent in his school work , but I’m struggling with how much and how to get him there. I like the idea of the Robinson curriculum, but again am struggling with how to go from totally mom dependent, which is just how it is when everyone’s little, to independent learners. Because he still wants to do everything together. It’s more fun to be with the other kids then by himself. The increasing difficulty with each AO Year has also kept his school work at a level above what he could do independently. Which I am now working on changing. My second child would like to do her work independently, but doesn’t read well enough yet. I have recently put together a box with just work my oldest can do himself in it and a list (do 2 pages math, 1 page English, copy work, etc) and have him work on those while I teach the younger kids. I may use the idea from URthemom and have him check his math and English himself.
Why not simplify your readings this way:
Story Bible -decide how far you want to read in it this year then divide the number of pages by number of weeks or days you have to know how much to read each time.
SOTW- divide the number of chapters by the number of weeks you have to know how many chapters to read each week
Grade level history readers- just assign them or read them aloud in order. It’s ok if they don’t match up perfectly with where you are in your history “spine”. I don’t think CM matched up everything perfectly, nor does AO. Keep a family timeline or Book of Centuries if you like for your students to see where everything fits into place. Even if you don’t, it’s ok because the early elementary years are really an introduction to history- hooks to hang their ideas on.
For science, you can separate or keep together based on what works best for your family dynamics. My children prefer their own science courses (and time with Mom), but we have Nature Study time together.
Math and Language Arts usually have to be separate because of the variance in skill levels.
Literature (including Shakespeare and poetry) can easily be together. I don’t remember the ages of your children, but even my 7 year old enjoyed Bruce Coville’s retelling of The Tempest. You may choose to read Shakespeare only with the older elementary students.
Art and music are also easy to combine ages.
My children are 9 and 7. We have always homeschooled using a variety of resources. One thing I’ve learned is to just take a deep breath and do the next thing. I have spent, no wasted would be a better word, planning out detailed schedules that I barely used. I have discovered that what my children really need is my attention not a perfect schedule. As long as the children are progressing in their math and writing, and reading, listening to, and discussing quality books,
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