Question from my husband

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  • September 5, 2008 at 6:30 pm
    ChristyH
    Participant

    DH and I were talking last night and I said I don’t want to teach the children in seperate levels for history anymore. We use MFW currently and they learn a bunch together but seperate math and LA. Anyway he asked if they listen to the same books and narrate either oral for the younger ones or written for the older one, do they all graduate at the same time as the older one because they has listened to the same books. I was wondering what answer I could have given him besides it is a matter of skills that seperates them, LA, Math. What do you guys think?

    September 5, 2008 at 11:40 pm
    Rachel White
    Participant

    I think I understandthe question; if not please clarify. No, they do not graduate at the same time. The smaller children pick up different things in their listening as do the older ones, plus they have picture books about that time period that they can read or you read together. Not to mention, you have higher expectations of the older ones and the older one usually has additional independant reading on the time period, too. When the younger goes thru the same time period when he/she is older, they will pick up additional info. missed the first time around and read higher level books on the time period, too. And depending on how ‘older’ your ‘older’ is, they may go thru that time period a 2nd time as well, with very in depth personal study.

    Does that make sense?

    Rachel

    Rachel

    September 6, 2008 at 3:18 am
    Sonya Shafer
    Moderator

    You’re right that the difference is skills v. topics. School subjects like history, geography, Bible, etc. are topic based, and topics can be studied in about any order. So the children can be combined to study the topic-based subjects.

    Other school subjects are skill based — subjects like math, spelling, grammar, etc. Those subjects build on basic skills and progress in a certain sequence. Those subjects are more individually tailored as each child develops and becomes able to comprehend the next skill.

    As Rachel pointed out, the subjects that the children study all together are topic based but you can customize aspects of them to incorporate skills. For example, all the children can study the Renaissance time period together, but the older ones will read more difficult books and be required to do more difficult narrations than the younger children.

    So just because a child has learned about a certain time period doesn’t mean he’s ready to graduate. There are still skills that need to be progressively taught. And come to think of it, there are always new topics to learn about no matter how old you grow. 🙂

    Hope this helps some.

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