SCM history guides — thoughts?

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  • I should add that the Lacey Book here is kind of bite sized nuggets of stories but we still found it valuable as an extra rounding out of our other history reads. I have the 3 volume set where these stories were taken from – but I wanted to say it is not all one long narrative….it does cover a lot though.

    HiddenJewel
    Participant

    I don’t know about Modules 1-4, but Module 5 appears meaty enough that I am comfortable at least trying the first term as is for a 10th grader. I was going to add books and other writing assignments but when I went to do that it was going to be way too much. The exam questions at the end of the terms were enough to stop me from adding material until I see how it works as scheduled.

    JennNC
    Participant

    Ok now you guys have gone and gotten me all confused! 🙂 My3boys, I’m right there with you… a little discouraged with trying to make the best choice for my whole family, but not marginalize my high schooler in the process.

    What I am trying to say is, I want my high schooler to have a really solid education. To be conversant with the great ideas, to know the great literature and the sweep of history and to understand cause and effect… to be able to speak intelligently about the news of the day and how it is we got here to this point in history.

    BUT. I also have 6 other kids! And a house to run! And a husband! My goodness, school can just really take up ALL my time if I let it. And I have to admit that the simplicity of the SCM guide is *very* appealing to me. I look at AO and I just about croak with despair. Who has time to pull all of that together for this many kids?

    So…I guess I’m having a little rant. And you guys don’t even know me! Sorry. Embarassed Well, Linda, you do know me a little. And you know how crazy things have been. I really want to do this right. But I also need it to be doable.

    So the only solution I can see is that Linda, you will come live by me and teach my high schooler. Or even better, I’ll go back to England with you. Deal? Laughing

    ~Jenn

    Evergreen
    Member

    Jenn, I don’t know if this helps any, but I’m thinking about the same things, and one of my considerations is having the younger three use the SCM guide and using the AO Year 7 with my 9th grader. I’ve been told that any of the AO HOE (year 7 and up) years are hefty enough for any high schooler. That way, I’d only have ato pull together his year, and they do have a weekly schedule, and the guide would cover the other three.

    Blessings,

    Aimee

    Jenn that is a deal, lol. I should clarify, I chose my books from HEO ie., the Churchill books and the recommended original sources, but I did not follow their plan. I worked out how to read the Churchill books over 2 years, and then for US History I used A Patriot’s History of the United States, though Bill Bennett’s books would work equally well. In this final year I am using Sir Martin Gilbert’s A History of the Twentieth Century and Bill Bennett’s Vol III to bring us bang up to date. We are studying the holocaust and communism as well in some depth, because these things are important and of concern even today. One other book we are reading this year for history is Sir Martin Gilber’s book Israel a History which is another important book. Apart from that we are doing some biographies, and a few other books covering specific times in the modern era. Throughout the high school years, the girls worked independently – they had their schedule, knew what to do, and they did written narrations, and we had discussions. I think you could start having your high schooler start some independent work now if they are not doing that already, it would be good for him/her and would be a good example for your other children. I can imagine that 6 other children keep you super busy, so even more reason for the high school student to have more independent study. I made sure that I touched base with them regularly, we sat down together at least 3 times a week to go over issues and for me to see they were really doing what they were supposed to do – and then every week I would make sure that everything was checked and that we were on track. It worked well and is still working well, do you think that might work for you. There are books out there of varying difficulty, and not every book has to be super meaty. we had our main meaty books and then read some others as well. My daughter who enjoys astronomy and space this year will read some books on the space race, nothing complicated but interesting to her…I like to make time for those things as well – so I don’t go overboard with difficulty – but we do have things that are brain stretching. Does that make sense at all….if not we will have a sabbatical in England and do it all together, I wish….Linda

    binky
    Participant

    Ok, so I am bringing my 10th grader home and really nervous about it. Y’all are making me feel quite inadequate! But of course this post will go in my favorites lol. Hidden jewel- you have made me feel good about my choice of mod 5 for her first year home as it seems you have a very good understanding of what is needed for college. My BIG question though is how do y’all know what topics to require for essay writing or a research paper as I assume this is in addition to written narration( which is going to be very different for my dd coming home from ps). To the comment made about AO, I feel it very daunting as well. But i like Evergreens suggestion And missingtheshire could you clarify what HEO is. This is also my first year using CM.

    Thanks All,

    Binky

    HiddenJewel
    Participant

    Binky – I don’t know if I have a handle on what is required for college. But I do feel that I hold a decent standard of the level of work that is required for a high school course. We also have done the read – discuss – write cycle before and my girls learned so much that year. The exam questions at the end of the terms in the SCM Guide give great material for essays.

     

     

    Binky, HEO is House of Education, which is the high school part of Ambleside. I must stress that I chose books from their list as well as some from here, and some of my own, but I did not follow Ambleside/HEO or SCM we used CM but using Sonya’s excellent planning tool (book) we made our own plan and it worked great. I agree that AO looks daunting and some of the things I think are over the top and not necessary, so we picked and chose the things we thought would encourage and challenge us, without going overboard. There are books on module 5 and 6 that we are/have used like 7 Men Who Rule the World From the Grave, A Tale of Two Cities, Red Badge of Courage, American Voices and How Should We Then Live book and DVD, however a lot of the others we had read in earlier years, I have two voracious history readers – so I needed to come up with other things and more advanced things for them. As far as essays go, I would have them compare and contrast leaders, I would have them think and write about how a certain historical situation would work out if the another point of view had prevailed. Example would be, what would life have been like if Hitler had won the war? or What would have happened if we had not had the atom bomb? things like that to make them think. I wanted the girls to be thinkers and think out of the box, so that kind of work is important to me, but maybe not to you. At the end of the day, the choice has to be individual and how you plan it is to a large extent your own comfort zone and that of your children – there really is no right or wrong way…my only caveat is that I want the girls to not be overwhelmed with college classes if and when they take them – so I want them familar with more challenging subject matter and more difficult readings.

    binky
    Participant

    Thanks, those were very helpful comments. I guess being my first year with CM we will just have to give it a try and see how it works. (I am working on oral narration with our bible story readings this summer) I am just worried about making sure my kids get enough writing in to be able to write well. ( plan on using IEW along with written narration) and considering I am not any good at history I will have to follow someone’s plan at least for a while. I am actually trying to put together my own program to teach the history of the Constitution for elementary years( something for each year with increasing difficulty) so that when my kids get to high school they already have a really good understanding of the formation of the US. This is not my forte but a desire I have. If anyone would like to suggest good living books that they have used and liked please feel free to comment.

    Thanks again for all the help and encouragement!

    Evergreen
    Member

    Missingtheshire, have you looked at the single volume condensed History of the English Speaking Peoples? I wonder if that might be an option if we need to do the reading over the course of two years. May I ask, what was the reading load like without the condensed version, doing it over two years?

    Thanks,

    Aimee

    JennNC
    Participant

    Linda,

    Coming back to this helpful thread again as I’m at the beginning planning stage for next school year, and I have a question about Biblioplan…

    I’m assuming you used the older version, before they had written their own history text for each level? 

    And it seems like from what you said here on this thread that you put together your own years for your girls using the CM Planning book by Sonya, which is what I’m planning to do. How did you incorporate Biblioplan into that? I’ve never really given Biblioplan much of a look because I don’t prefer the spines they use (Story of the World, etc). But since you mentioned them as perhaps providing more rigor at the upper levels, I wanted to ask how you meshed them with the rest of what you were doing.

    Thanks for always being so willing to help me think this through. 🙂

    Jenn

Viewing 11 posts - 16 through 26 (of 26 total)
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