We used My Father’s World for 1st grade and supplemented with SOTW Vol. 1. We went easy on it, just reading the chapters and doing some of the activities.
For 2nd grade, we want to continue SOTW but then I heard about Simply Charlotte Mason history.
What is the big difference, or which did you choose and why?
We’ve used MFW, SOTW, and SCM guides. I like the SCM guides better for these reasons:
1. They accurately mesh Biblical history, secular history, and geography for you.
2. They schedule the living books to go along with the study for you instead of just listing them for a book basket or for additional reading.
3. They do not add any doctrinal bias in their guides. There is simply book, chapter, and verse listed to read and narrate.
4. It is thorough, yet it does not have too many things scheduled. It’s a perfect amount of work for us.
5. It alerts you to sensitive issues with some historical accounts and mythology. I like to be given a “heads up” like that.
6. It begins with creation and teaches history in chronological order.
7. It’s very “open and go”. I never have to prepare our history lessons.
8. It’s scheduled but flexible. The lessons are numbered, but there is no weekly grid to make you feel like you are bound to the schedule.
9. With the SCM guides, my children and I will basically read through the whole of the Bible in order, and study secular historical events as they line up with the same periods of time. It makes the accounts of the Bible make more sense to the kids.
I also add my own timeline that meshes Biblical history with secular history. We have it on the wall and it helps the kids to understand how all the events fit together.
SOTW is just a history spine. Some curricula, such as Biblioplan, use SOTW as their spine with other resources added in, SCM uses Oxford First Ancient History as their spine with other books added in. If you really liked the way SOTW reads you could probably substitute in the corresponding chapters, and then follow the geography and Bible lessons from SCM. All history spines give you the same basic information and are fairly interchangable if you are willing to do a little adjusting.
One thing I love about SCM is that you’re reading whole books with your children. Yes, there is a spine that is broken up into daily readings all year long. But most days your children are also reading a living book in the time period you’re in, really diving into the life/times and living it for days or weeks at a time.
For example, we read Leif the Lucky, Viking Adventure, and The Vikings with my K-5th grade children this year (The Vikings was the 5th grader, the others were the younger ones but she listened in and sometimes did the day’s reading to them). During that several weeks we were also reading a daily biography from Famous Men of the Middle Ages. They remember, get involved in, and live with the story books, the spine did not make as much of an impact because they only ‘lived’ with a person for one day before moving on to a new person/event, which is very similar to SOTW.
I have combined a little SOW to the full SCM module. I like to pick and choose certain readings to coorelate with our topic. In the beginning of the year I just simply penciled in page numbers of the chapters I wanted my son to read from SOW beside the SCM lesson. I also really like the available color sheets and projects listed with SOW. I didn’t do most of them, but it was there for ideas if I wanted.
HTH!
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