Switching from MFW 2nd to SCM for 3rd

1. Hi all,

We are wrapping up year three of homeschooling in the next couple of weeks. Every year when we get to this point of the school year, just before we attend TTD conference, my mind is frazzled! Decision making is usually not my strong suit, so planning for the next year in curriculum choices is very overwhelming for me. For kindergarten, God led us to the best curriculum and I just finished teaching my second child with those materials (still couldn’t be more pleased with them! SCM Delightful Reading and Delightful Handwriting, as well as Rightstart Math A, and art and Bible lessons). Moving on to 1st and 2nd grade I started with MFW because a dear friend and mentor raved about it and shared many books with me. I didn’t love it :(. I questioned using MFW for 2nd grade because of all of the tweaking that I had made for 1st grade with the curriculum, but then felt the pressure of using what was available to me and not “letting down” my friend somehow. I moved ahead with Adv. in US Hist. to use just for Geography, History, reading, and art, and tweaked away to my hearts content, adding to our third year with RS Math level C, Rod and Staff English and Spelling, Apologia Bible (the first two books in the “Who Am I?” series), , Answers in Genesis for science (Planet Earth, Our Universe, and one other book…),  all of the Ambleside Online year two living books schedule, SCM Print to Cursive, a weekly Community Bible Study class, small group, ballet, and a monthly Ambleside Online Co-op and regular field trips……..wondering how all of that fit in?!! Me too reading back on that list!!!!  Plus, with my dd doing that, I was teaching her brother through the kindergarten cycle I mentioned above!! All of this to say, I do NOT want to put us in that cycle again! We were constantly trying to check boxes and stay ahead and school caused a lot of tears and frustration this year. Thinking of having a first and third grader for the fall, my desire is to strip away MFW (my kids are sad about that :(, I’m feeling relieved thinking about not using it) and so much more. I’m looking at switching my dd from Rightstart Math to the new MasterBooks living math curriculum (level 4 because Rightstart was so advanced and it is so time consuming!), and keeping my son on RS level B (he is very math minded). We are switching from Rod and Staff (teeth pulling curriculum to my dd!) to the SCM spelling and English curriculum (couldn’t be more excited about that switch!). We want to continue the Apologia Bible series with the final two books, and my dd is begging to use their Zoology 1 book as well. I need help figuring out what I will need to co teach my two children with SCM materials for the rest of our subjects. This way they can do everything together except for English and math. My goal is to hugely simplify school, but I need help! My friends either do CC, Ambleside Online only, or MFW, so I need some SCM veterans to walk me through what I will need. Right now I have a huge book list for buying from SCM at TTD this next week, but even with SCM I can see my tendency to buy everything I think I could possibly need coming through in that list ;). Advice and prayers appreciated friends! Thanks 🙂