Separate Curriculum for different grades?

It is very possible that an individual curriculum would work well for some families.  We started with SCM from the beginning so I can’t say my opinions on that.  We are finishing a K and 2nd this year on module 2 and did module 1 last year with pre-K and 1st.  We combine Bible, Scripture Memory, Character Traits, History, Geography, Science, Nature Study, Spanish, Sign Language, Shakespeare, Poetry, Hymns, Artist, Composer, and Literature.  The only individual subjects really are math and reading.  It works wonderfully for us.  I think school would take all day otherwise.  I just have different expectations for their narrations.  In Geography, my K daughter (just 6 now) has kept up with her older sister (now 8 1/2) fine for Africa last year and Middle East/Asia this year and that is the only non-narration exercise really.  I am finding my younger dd keeping up so well I now feel not having her hear the same information would be foolish of me.  As the kids do get older, you can add more advanced information and readings for the older child only as directed in the SCM curriculum guide.  I would try the way that makes the most sense to you and your family and if you find it not working out the way you thought, you can try the other way – the beauty of homeschooling!

We’ve done age separated curriculum before (not AO but another one) and didn’t like it.

First off, it was a lot of work for me. Even with my oldest two being fairly independent, it took longer since I had to keep track of two different subjects, etc.

Second, and the one that bugged me the most, is my kids had nothing connecting them. The school books we read together give them something to talk about, something to act out, something to have in common and enjoy together. I really notice a difference in their play and talk when we do it together.

Now, they do have things at their level. Math and such is, of course, individual as their grades differ a lot (10th down to PK). But we keep our history, Bible, music appreciation, poetry, picture appreciation and such together. With history and Bible, the olders do extra to cover it more indepth adn at a higher level but we enjoy many books together too.

HTH, Rebecca

We have always done history, Bible and read-alouds together, and have loved the family togetherness. That said, I realized at the end of last year that I had, for years, gone longer in my readings than I should have, to accomodate the older child’s incredible interest level and attention span. Last spring, I saw that the three youngest children had retained very little; I think I was just throwing too much at them. So this year we made changes: we still did Bible and read-alouds together, and we studied the same time period, but ds13 had his own history books that he read and we met and discussed. The two ds10 did history with me, and ds8 did parts of AO Year 1. He has auditory processing issues and language delays, and school and the process of narration became a sort of therapy for him – AMAZING, the results of continued, consistent narration, even though we had to start a sentence at a time. Shortening the lessons gave me the time I needed to work with each of these kiddos individually and it really worked well this year.

In any case, because of these things, I am looking at separate history for these three groups for next year. They each really need their own thing – ds 13 because he is really at a different level of thinking; the middles as they develop their habits of concentration and attention need something geared for them; and littlest because each lesson has to be specifically geared to his attention level and broken into chunks he can process. 

In my earlier years of homeschooling I really couldn’t do different time periods; I wasn’t familiar enough with the history and found it too muddling. I’ve now covered each year at least once, and so feel a bit more comfortable with it.

Some families may not have any of these issues and be able to continue all their studies together; that is great too.

To do history together, the idea isn’t that ALL books be done together, but simply the same SUBJECT/TIME PERIOD be studied together. 

For example, we’re studying Module 4 Middle Ages and…

• I read aloud Famous Men of Rome to ALL ages.
• DD10 reads to herself, Adam of the Road, and narrates (orally/written) to me.
• I read aloud Viking Adventure to ds7 and he narrates orally to me.
• This works for older kids, too. Pick books for them to read to themselves on the topic and have them narrate to you.

The same holds for other subjects as well.

HTH,

Christie

Michelle,

You put that very well. I can certainly see that I wouldn’t need to read aloud to high schoolers from something they’ve already read. I was trying to convey that studying the same time period with a variety of ages can be done without everyone reading the same books. I didn’t mean to sound like one should read Physics aloud or anything like that, but simply that by combining where possible, with each child at their own level, we save work for ourselves and help foster connections for siblings who are studying some of the same topics.

Personally, my goal is to produce independent learners and I have dd10 doing quite a bit on her own already. Even ds7 does a significant amount of work on his own. By the time they are in high school, I envision myself more as a facilitator, though I plan to continue with the same time period for history for everyone unless someone has a BIG interest in a different topic.

Hope that makes better sense. 

Christie