I don't know how to handle this...

[Mimm]

I am going to be homeschooling my children for the first time next year. They will be in second grade and fourth grade. They have both attended a Classical Christian private school for their entire education. We are very happy with the school and are only pulling them out for financial reasons. We hope to spend the year getting our finances back into shape and hopefully send them back the following year. I want to provide continuity and have them ready to reenter their school. Though, to be honest, we may end up homeschooling for two or three years. We'll have to see how it goes.

 

But I don't know how to handle history. They are being taught history chronologically and are obviously in different time periods. Their school divides time into four time periods and starts in first grade and starts over again in fifth and again in ninth, if that makes sense (I think a lot of classical educators do this). Should I just resign myself to teaching two different histories? I want to combine classes as much as possible so for, say, art, I don't want to have to come up with two different projects to relate to two different histories.

 

Also, is there a history curriculum anywhere designed for classical educators that divide up time like this? I am just having trouble with this particular subject.

[Old Dominion Heather]

You should take a look at the curriculum The Story of the World. It is possibly the same one that the classical school is using. Link

[Avila]

Welcome to the boards and to homeschooling! Have you read Well Trained Mind yet? WTM breaks up the history cycle like you describe, and it would be fairly simple to do Story of the World (SOTW) for each child with the activity guide. The link up on the top for Peace Hill Press sells both the book and the AG.

 

Another option is this: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/multiple-children/ This is an article written for using WTM with multiple children. If you look at the article list, there will probably be several other ones there that will help you get started.

 

If you think you are going to have them back in the school, you may want to keep them separate, though, so they are in the right place when they go back.

 

Either way, WTM will provide you with a solid classical education for the time you are homeschooling.

[Mimm]

Thanks for the quick replies!

 

I have not read The Well Trained Mind yet, but it is in my Amazon.com shopping cart right now waiting for me to be sure there's nothing I want to add to the order. (And also for me to dig through my books and make sure that I don't own it already because I could have sworn it was around here somewhere...) :001_huh:

 

I have read that article about multiple children and I could follow that method but I worry that if they go back to school, they'll have missed some content along the way somewhere by skipping back and forth. I guess that's what it boils down to. I guess I need to keep them separate if I want to possibly send them back to their school.

 

I appreciate the curriculum recommendations and will check those out. I grew up being homeschooled, but right now I feel like any brand new homeschooler- overwhelmed with choices and options and a long list of things I feel I need to accomplish over the summer. I have a meeting with both of their teachers sometime over the week so I can get a clear idea of what they just got done doing.

[RoughCollie]

If they miss content, they will pick it up along the way. There are many opportunities, no matter where they go to school, for history lessons to be repeated.

 

Two of my kids are still "learning" what they learned in SOTW books 1-4 in their PS history classes. They are in 9th and 10th grades. If I had skipped history altogether in grades 1-6 (which I heartily do NOT advise), it would not have been the end of the world.

 

Now, if you use SOTW for history, I hope you get the activity books (manuals, whatever they are called) that go along with them. There is no better program for history, IMO.

Edited May 23, 2010 by RoughCollie

[Guest Dulcimeramy]

Thanks for the quick replies!

 

I have not read The Well Trained Mind yet, but it is in my Amazon.com shopping cart right now waiting for me to be sure there's nothing I want to add to the order. (And also for me to dig through my books and make sure that I don't own it already because I could have sworn it was around here somewhere...) :001_huh:

 

I have read that article about multiple children and I could follow that method but I worry that if they go back to school, they'll have missed some content along the way somewhere by skipping back and forth. I guess that's what it boils down to. I guess I need to keep them separate if I want to possibly send them back to their school.

 

I appreciate the curriculum recommendations and will check those out. I grew up being homeschooled, but right now I feel like any brand new homeschooler- overwhelmed with choices and options and a long list of things I feel I need to accomplish over the summer. I have a meeting with both of their teachers sometime over the week so I can get a clear idea of what they just got done doing.

 

It sounds as if they have been going to a very good school! I'm sorry that circumstances are such that they can't continue there. You are to be admired for deciding to carry on in the same style at home.

 

If I were very hopeful about sending them back, I think I would just do history separately. It sounds overwhelming, but in my experience it is quite doable with only two grammar stage children. You could combine them in music, art, and religion to make your day shorter and to give them some special memories of studying together. What was science like at school? Perhaps you could combine them for science, too.

 

Probably WTM suggestions will be the best options for your children, and the simplest for you to implement. Peace Hill Press can fit you out with the Story of the World volumes and Activity guides (you can see at a glance that your second grader will do Vol. 2, the Middle Ages, and your fourth grader will do Vol. 4, Modern).

 

If you also want classical-style language arts, Peace Hill Press also sells Writing With Ease and First Language Lessons. You might want to have a look at those!

 

I wish you well in this adventure. I hope you and your children have a wonderful time homeschooling.

[Mimm]

They were certainly in a good school, and we've been very happy with it. In some ways it's sad to be not going but we're trying to look on the bright side and focus on the freedom we'll have and the extra activities we're going to indulge in. We live in a state that is extremely free with regard to homeschooling law and an area that I hear is very active with homeschoolers, though I really don't know that many.

 

Older Child is remarkably unhelpful about what she learned in history over the past year, but I'm pretty sure she'll be in book four. Younger Child had more information about what she studied and I do remember her coming home with a very strange message written in hieroglyphs.

 

I guess I'll just keep them separate. They could probably survive if I combined them but actually having a history curriculum pointed out that has the time periods already divided up is hard to resist. I was actually eyeballing the Writing with Ease, probably getting that for Older Child.