New to SCM….needing help with LA and time period

WhitneyA, I’ll be happy to try to answer your questions.

First, regarding SW, ULW, and AG. (Aren’t initials convenient?)

Analytical Grammar is usually spread out over three years, completing a set number of units during several weeks each year. The final unit during the third year focuses on punctuation as it is tied to grammar.

Using Language Well does cover the basics of punctuation and capitalization in Book 1. Additional punctuation guidelines are introduced in the following books as well. Books 2 and 3 (when released) deal with grammar—parts of speech and analyzing a sentence—but do not go into as much detail as AG and do not teach sentence diagramming; AG goes into more detail and teaches diagramming.

So you can decide whether your student would find his/her best fit with just ULW, just AG, or both. ULW spreads out the teaching and reviewing by doing only two days per week all year long. AG is designed to be used every day for several weeks, but not all year.

If your 11yo is struggling with capitalization and punctuation, ULW and SW Book 1 would probably be a good fit, because AG won’t get to that until the third year of units. Each ULW book is designed to be used over 2 years, so you might do something like this:
11 and 12 yo: SW and ULW Book 1
13 and 14 yo: SW and ULW Book 2 (with AG seasons 1 and 2, optional)
15 and 16 yo: SW and ULW Book 3 (with AG season 3, optional)
17 and 18 yo: SW and UWL Book 4 (which will focus on composition)

For your 13yo, you might go ahead and do AG. That would give you a good idea of what is covered, how it is covered, and how quickly, and you could make a better decision about whether to add it in for your younger daughter when the time comes. Then you could keep a spelling component by adding SW or other prepared dictation a couple of times a week.

Next, regarding history time period.

If your oldest is entering 7th grade, you could start with Genesis through Deuteronomy and Ancient Egypt and get all the way through before graduation. I like to lay out my options in a little list of upcoming grades for all the students, like this:

Students in Grades — time period
6, 7 — Genesis through Deut. & Ancient Egypt
7, 8 — Joshua through Malachi & Ancient Greece
8, 9 — Matthew through Acts & Ancient Rome
9, 10 — Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation & Epistles
10,11 — Early Modern and Epistles (+ 1/2 Government for 11th)
11, 12 — Modern Times and Epistles, Revelation (+ 1/2 Government for 11th)
12 — Government or studies of personal interest

Third, regarding college admission requirements.

In the back of each of our lesson plan books we give suggestions toward calculating high school credits for those subjects based on the assignments given in the lesson plans.

I hope these ideas help a bit.

If you do SW and ULW four days per week, I would not recommend doing all the transcription and dictation portions. That would be a lot of studying and writing each week. You could do four ULW lessons per week, I suppose, if you think moving through them quickly is the best way to help your dd absorb and really understand. Just be careful you don’t subject her brain to grammar overload. 🙂

We recommend that you add a government course either during 11th grade or during 12th grade or split half-and-half over the two years. We don’t know of a truly CM government course, but we recommend Notgrass’s Exploring Government because it goes through the Constitution line by line. Feel free to adapt the study methods to be more CM.

The ULW lesson tells the child how to use SW. So it would not be a separate entity anymore when combined with ULW. You would simply follow the steps in the ULW lesson, which tell your child which SW passage to read, what things to look for and discuss, and then transcribe. Think of ULW as a guide to using and getting the most out of SW.