Help me plan my history cycle.... please? :)

[WaterLily]

My oldest is beginning 9th and will be doing MFW AHL. With my 3 youngers I'm planning to start our history rotation over and do ancients so we'll all be on the same page - for this year at least. My main concern is my 6th grader. If he does ancient history this year, we won't make it through the 4 year cycle before he starts ancients again in 9th. Also, he doesn't/won't have much American history. I'm interestd in Notgrass America the Beautiful but don't know when I'd squeeze that in. I'm planning to use either SOTW or MOH this year, btw. I'm leaning towards MOH. Could I cram 3 years of history into 2 years an then do America the Beautiful his 8th grade year? I need ideas..... please and thank you! :)

[SonshineLearner]

You could do it like I am kinda suggesting. Do Highschool and the youngers, separately. If you wanted to do a "full curricula" you can do MFW with your youngers, and then when the oldest cycles off to HS.... then they do. OR if you want to do SOTW, then just start it and go through until Vol. 3 and if your youngest isn't ready for 4, then you just cycle off the rest of your children to do start the cycles over.... and whatever student is ready for Vol. 4 does it on their own and then moves on to Highschool... or on to the MFW Explorers.... Seeing that your youngest is 7... you could probably just do either MFW or SOTW and your youngest would be ready for Vol.4 or the Explorers series by the time you get there.... I think it's almost impossible to stay with the same cycle as at least HS with younger children... just my thoughts. :)

[WaterLily]

Thanks for your thoughts! :) I'm not keeping my kids together for history - the oldest is doing his own thing with MFW and it just so happens that the youngers are also ready to start the cycle over. So they're doing ancients but not along with my oldest ds. Like I said, I just don't know how to make sure my 6th grader gets everything before starting over with ancients again in high school (assuming he does MFW in high school...).

 

ETA: I can't afford to do MFW with the youngers so we're doing either MOH or SOTW, which I already have.

[Joyoflearning]

I don't see why you couldn't do 3 years in two years Focusing on American history the last year. You just couldn't go quite as in depth as you may want to go. CC does a 3 year history cycle. You could look at their Scope and Sequence or main points and just expand on those during the year using MOH or SOTW. Otherwise, you could do Ancients this year (6th) with a geography focus or state history focus for 7th which your youngers may need anyways at some point, and then do American History for 8th before starting the cycle at the beginning for 9th.

[Heidi]

Would the rest of your youngers also cram 3 years into 2? That doesn't seem like a good idea for them, imo.

 

What if, for his 8th grade year, he did America the Beautiful instead of SOTW 3. Is America the Beautiful fairly independent?

 

The younger two can stay on track and do SOTW 3 that year.

 

OR

 

Find an american history book on his level that he can read independently. You could spread out the readings over the next three years or begin it in 8th grade in addition to his study of SOTW 3.

 

I guess it just depends on how important American history is before he starts the highschool rotation.

 

Just an idea.