Is anyone familiar with both TOG and the SCM curriculum guides?

[lovinmomma]

I'm thinking about what we are going to use for 1st grade for Hist./Geo./Bible. I LOVE the SCM curriculum guides for the younger years. They are gentle, but solid. However, I'm wondering about when they get older if the SCM guides will be meaty enough. Has anyone researched both? If someone is wondering why I would be thinking about the upper grades now, it is quite simple...I'm a planner. No, but seriously, if I were to do the SCM guides (they do a 6 year rotation) and chose to do something like TOG (which is 4 year rotation) after the guides it would throw me off of rotation.

[Blueridge]

Hi Julie. I think a 6 year rotation is a neat idea, and recently wrestled with this idea, too. :) If you are enjoying the SCM guides for 1st-3rd grades, then in 4th go to Middle Ages, 5th to early US and year 6 with modern history, I think you could pretty easily begin a new 6 year rotation using TOG or something similar. Speaking specifically about using TOG in the 7th grade, you could use a little over half of volume 1 and have coverage of Egypt, the Israelites, and perhaps Greece for example. I can't remember how far volume 1 goes (Rome's fall??) so you could do the second half in 8th grade, and perhaps some of volume 2. So you could plan ahead about how many weeks of TOG you wanted to cover each of the 6 years, aiming to complete volume 4 by the 12th grade by dividing the 16 units into six years instead of four. Many TOG users slow down their teaching this way, using 1 1/2 to 2 years for each volume to savor the time periods as they choose. It isn't as complicated as I have described it LOL.

[The Governess]

:iagree: TOG can easily be stretched to a 6 year cycle if you take 1.5 years for each. You would just pick which weeks you want to spend two weeks in rather than one week.

 

Another option would be to condense the other curriculum to 4 years and then do 2 cycles of TOG. Personally I like this idea because it gives you the chance to go through TOG two times and utilize more of the curriculum's books/ideas (plus, you will be more confident with it for the high school years if you have already gone through the full cycle one time).