Using SOTW with multiple ages

[Roses]

Hi everyone,

 

I have a question about how I go about combining my kids when using SOTW.

 

Here is my situation. Next fall my oldest will be in grade 1. We're planning to use SOTW volume 1. When she is in grade 2, we'll use Volume 2.

 

But when she is in grade 3 and ready for SOTW volume 3, my next child will be in grade 1 -- ready to start SOTW volume 1.

 

Do I do both volumes 1 and 3 at the same time? Or do I toss my then 1st grader into Volume 3 with my 3rd grader?

 

If I put the 1st grader in with the 3rd grader in SOTW Volume 3, will it be too advanced/complex for him? Will it confuse him not to start history with the ancients?

 

Anyone have any advice or info on how they did it or how Wise and Bauer recommend handling this situation in TWTM (I'm waiting for my copy of TWTM to arrive in the mail).

 

Thanks so much!

[Old Dominion Heather]

WTM suggests just folding them in if that works for you. I think lots of people do that. I tried it this year, but I think my guys will do better if I separate them. The fourth year covers lots of modern history that I am not ready to make a six year old deal with... the World Wars, nuclear weapons, etc...

 

I am going to do ancients with my six year old and modern with the oldest next year and we will see how it goes!

[3flowers]

I've been thinking about this too. (and I still have a couple years to decide)

 

When my middle dd should be in 1st gr. my oldest will be doing SOTW4. So do I do I teach Modern and Ancients....OR....

 

Do I do something different for 1st grade...and start the history cycle in 2nd grade? (then they would both be on the Ancients.)

 

Oh, and then I'll have to decide what to do 1-2 years after that when my youngest will be joining in history. :rolleyes:

 

Decisions, decisions!

[whitestavern]

I am currently doing Year 2 with my 2nd grader and Kindergartner. So far so good. You might want to hold off on history until the following year and then start with Year 1 for both of them? I agree that some of the material as you go further is for more mature ages so if you want to start with your first grader next year, I'd do the other one separately.

[3flowers]

You could maybe do something different with your oldest in first. (Geography or Cultures of the world..something like that). Then start SOTW1 when she is in 2nd. Then when your second child gets to 1st grade they would just be on the Middle Ages. It would push back Early Modern/Modern a year.

 

Just an idea to throw out there. :)

[Roses]

Thanks for the feedback so far!

 

Is doing two separate volumes at one time practical? Or would that be overly time-consuming?

 

I will have two more youngers ones to fold in as well eventually.

 

It works out that they all four of them will be 2 grade years apart.

 

So, it goes like this... (A, B, C and D representing my four kids)

 

A, grade 1, Vol. 1; B, preschool

A, grade 2, Vol. 2; B, kindergarten

A, grade 3, Vol. 3; B, grade 1, Vol. 1; C, preschool

A, grade 4, Vol. 4; B, grade 2, Vol. 2; C, kindergarten

A, grade 5, Repeat Vol. 1??; B, grade 3, Vol. 3; C, Grade 1, Vol. 1; D, preschool

A, grade 6, Repeat Vol. 2??; B, grade 4, Vol. 4; C, Grade 2, Vol. 2; D, kindergarten

A, grade 7, Repeat Vol. 3??; B, grade 5, Repeat Vol. 1??; C, grade 3, Vol. 3; D, Grade 1, Vol. 1

.

.

.

 

 

So child A and C would line up and child B and D would line up in the same time periods.

 

It seems simpler to do it in a way so that we're all studying the same time period each year.

 

A, grade 1, Vol. 1; B, preschool

A, grade 2, Vol. 2; B, kindergarten

A, grade 3, Vol. 3; B, grade 1, Vol. 3; C, preschool

A, grade 4, Vol. 4; B, grade 2, Vol. 4; C, kindergarten

A, grade 5, Vol. 1 (?); B, grade 3, Vol. 1; C, grade 1, Vol. 1; D, preschool

A, grade 6, Vol. 2 (?); B, grade 4, Vol. 2; C, grade 2, Vol. 2; D, kindergarten

A, grade 7, Vol. 3 (?); B, grade 5, Vol. 3 (?); C, grade 3, Vol. 3; D, grade 1, vol. 3

 

But doing it this way means that Children B and D would have to start history in Vol. 3 as first graders, Vol. 4 as second graders, and then go back to Volumes 1 and 2 for their 3rd and 4th grade years. Obviously, that's a bit backwards. But is it doable?

 

Can I tweak Vol. 3 and 4 enough to make it 1st and 2nd grade friendly?

 

And can I tweak Vol. 1 and 2 enough to make it "enough" for 3rd and 4th grade?

 

And you can see from my little lists above that I don't know what to do when a child gets to the 5th grade and has finished all 4 volumes of SOTW. What do you do then? Repeat them? Use something else?

 

I had been considering using Sonlight for some time, but I just could not come up with a good way to combine my children into one core and doing multiple cores was something that seemed out of our reach both financially and time-wise. I would really like to combine my children into studying the same time periods if at all possible but without comprising their education! Part of what I love about homeschooling is the ability to custom-tailor your child's education to his/her needs and level. Can I combine them without sacrificing too much?

[Roses]

A couple people have suggested holding off SOTW 1 until my oldest is a 2nd grader. I really don't want to do this, however. I've already bought Vol. 1 and the AG and she is so ready for this. I am too! :) Holding her back just doesn't seem right for her...she is really ready. And I doubt that my second child will be ready for SOTW as a kindergartner.

[Mrs Mungo]

My kids are all on their own history cycle. I like the idea of doing history in order and the way our school was cycling the middle child would have been exposed to modern history in 2nd grade. I think it's just as much work to do the same year with everyone because I would feel obligated to add/take away so much to adjust the age levels. It's just as easy *to me* for them all to have their own book and lessons. Now, that said-we don't do a big project each week for all 3, we sort of rotate them.

[coffeegal]

I'm going to weigh in since there was a time I had a 5 yo, 4 yo, 2 yo, and was pregnant with #4. :D All right, 5 1/2 years ago, but still... Congradulations by the way. I love the age spread. :)

 

Now that my children are older (11, 10, 8.5, and 5), it's much easier to have them working together on history and science. I'm able to coordinate family read alouds, science dvds, projects, experiments, field trips, etc. to what we are studying in history and science. We're able to have family discussions on what we're learning. It is much easier and I love the discussions the family has. It's one of the perks to having children so close in age. :rolleyes:

 

I would suggest starting SOTW 1 on schedule with your oldest but have all the children listen in to the read aloud time. Let them have a snack and color while you read. Do fun projects with the children. The narrations and map work can be done with children in the 1st grade and up but keep everything low key and make it a fun family activity. :D The depth will come, later.

 

Best of luck!

[coffeegal]

And you can see from my little lists above that I don't know what to do when a child gets to the 5th grade and has finished all 4 volumes of SOTW. What do you do then? Repeat them? Use something else?

 

 

 

I've ended up switching over the Biblioplan, which uses SOTW, for my family, but there is no reason you have to switch. The SOTW activity guide includes what pages of Kingfisher your logic stage child should read. Your child can then do logic stage studies as per TWTM. Much of it is explained in TWTM and will answer your questions when it arrives. :D

[Lenora in MD]

Another option is to just take longer to cycle through the four books. It can be difficult to get through all 42 chapters in one year and enjoy the journey! You could go a little slower and add in the younger children when they are able. The last book is difficult for younger children because of the content. When you hit book four, you may wish to start a new rotation for the younger children. I just finished book four with my 4th and 6th graders. My 1st and pre-schooler are doing ao year1 this year instead of sitting in with their older siblings. I will now start sotw year 1 again with everyone. For the oldest, I will add in readings from Story of the Greeks, Story of the Romans and outlining from Kingfisher.

 

I would suggest starting sotw 1 and seeing how things go. It is easy to schedule out a plan. But, remember that life happens and you will need to make course corrections as you go along!

 

Lenora

[Lori in MS]

I use My Father's World which incorporates SOTW into their program. They recommend folding in the other children wherever you are in the history cycle, but they do address the issue with SOTW 4. They felt that material was not suitable for children under 4th grade so they designed a 2nd-3rd grade supplement to go along with SOTW 4 along with activity sheets. (I've also heard complaints that SOTW AG doesn't have as many pages for the younger ones to use so this would solve that problem as well).

 

Even if you don't want to do their whole program you might get some ideas from looking at their supplement and the sample of their schedule. They have the schedule for what the older ones and younger ones do on the same page.

 

http://www.mfwbooks.com

 

SOTW 4 is in their 1850 to Modern program.

 

SOTW Volume 1-3 I think are more appropriate for the younger ages and I think it would be fine for everyone to do it together.

[Laura in STL]

My oldest is doing SOTW 2 in 2nd grade right now. Next year dd will join in on SOTW 3 for her 1st grade year. As was mentioned read alouds, craft projects, art, and music can all relate to history if the kids are together. As for starting in the middle, I have found that my daughter has picked up a lot about ancients and the middle ages just from overhearing us. When we do a craft from the AG she often wants to join in. Younger sibs often have an advantage this way. SWB talks specifically about this concern in TWTM, so reading that may help you as well.

[Roses]

Thanks everyone for continuing to chime in with your ideas and experiences! This is very helpful to me!

[sagira]

My ds and dd are 4 years apart.

 

Here's what ds will be doing at each age:

 

7-8 SOTW 1

8-9 SOTW 2

9-10 An Island Story

10-11 This Country of Ours

11-12 SOTW 3

12-13 SOTW 4

 

Then in 8th grade, from 13-14, we'll be starting with the Ancients again. Dd will be 6 when she really participates with American History. Then when she's 7 we'll be doing the Renaissance, and 8 SOTW 4 with ds. She's already more advanced and mature than ds, so I'm banking on the fact that she can handle it by then, with age-appropriate activities in the AG for her.

 

At 3, she can be happily doing Kumon workbooks (hopefully) while ds is in first year, and at 4 listening in and doing her own version of the stories of SOTW 1, at 5 for the Middle Ages (and playing dress up, etc.), until she can really dig in.

 

Originally I wanted ds to start SOTW 1 at 6, but I'm not sure anymore, especially after a couple of threads here. He's a tad immature. And I started history in 3rd grade. Gives me some perspective.

 

In addition, according to public school dates here, he wouldn't be starting first grade until he's turned 7 the next day (6 by September 1 -- his birthday is September 2).

[ubermomto5]

in my opinion you are asking for a big headache if you put them all on a separate schedule! mine are similar distance - as of now, 6th, 4th, 2nd, prek (and baby). we do it together, and amazingly my prek sometimes remembers more than the others what we read. if a read aloud is appropriate for my 2nd grader, the prek enjoys it - in fact, the olders do too, though they also burn through their own reading. they do maps together, the little ones color pictures and the older ones love to draw. it all works very well, in fact is one of the smoothest portions of our homeschool day. everyone loves history time!

as for the 'being confused', from my experience the younger ages they don't grasp much of the difference in history before the 1800s. it was a long time ago, before cars and running water!

[Laura Corin]

I also do extended rotations and don't worry too much how long things take. We use SOTW with Our Island Story and This Country of Ours, plus Usborne, Oxford History of Britain, Kingfisher and a lot of historical fiction

 

Calvin has been studying his first cycle since be was six, with a year taken out to study Chinese history. The cycle is likely to be further extended by adding in a lot of Scottish history after our move. I can see it lasting until he's at least 13.

 

Hobbes is half way through the late medieval period. I'd like him to get through his first cycle by the time he's eleven, then he can do one year of Chinese history, then one of Scottish, before preparing to enter school.

 

I like having them separate. There are 3 1/2 years between them, plus an extra year of acceleration. I think it would be a waste of time, in our case, to try teaching on the two levels at once: I tried it with the Chinese history year, and finally dropped Hobbes' participation.

 

Laura

[jennyt]

Hi, I'm doing what you're talking about after much deliberation last year. dd8 is up to SOTW4 and dd6 is doing it with her. We've been doing it for 6 months and dd6 is doing great. I just don't expect her to answer all the review questions - I ask her the easier ones and dd8 the harder ones, and we do her narrations with prompting, while dd8 writes her outlines etc. They do their map work together - dd6 does beautiful maps. She misses the illustrations she knows dd8 did in past years and is looking forward to doing SOTW 1 next year. I am too - because we get to go around again and do different activities from last time and cement it in heaps more.

 

I have ds4 and ds2 and I'm just going to join them in wherever we're up to (should end up being in SOTW2 for ds4 and SOTW4 again for ds2). I really think my kids treat everything as "facts" - people are greedy, violent, selfish - but they have no concept of real suffering on a mass scale yet and I don't think they're finding any of the material really disturbing at all. We've been listening on ahead with the CDs too in the car, and I get lots of "that's terrible" and "oh no, isn't that sad that that man got into power" comments but nothing to suggest that they're really worried by it all or anything.

 

It's still trial and error for me and I've been hoping to hear that other people are doing the same thing but I'm happy with what I've decided.

 

Jenny

[Stacey in MA]

I struggled over this too. I finally concluded that they need to have their separate levels so that they each get 3 full cycles of each level. (Yes, this is my OCD rigidity kicking in!). So we did Vol1 w/ DD6 and Vol3 w/ DS9 last year. It was definitely busy for me!

 

I thought I could cut the time committment on my part by using the CD's to let the kids listen to their chapters when I ran low on time, but they were NOT a big here. They didn't like the guy's voice, they didn't absorb as much as when I read it, we missed out on the stopping we normally do to discuss something of interest, and I personally did not always get to read the chapter (I like to keep up so I can discuss with them). So it just wasn't working for us. I began to take the time to make sure to make the time to read to each of them.

 

We did the chapter reading, maps, review questions and coloring page each week. Additionally, each kiddo was responsible for reading some related library reading about their chapter. But when it came to projects, I could only get one together a week (my choice), and so they would have to join in on each other's Volume from time to time.

 

I am also worried about how this will play out when my DD4 gets to Grade1 in 2 years. At that point, I will have a rising 6th grade (so, history cycle #2), a rising 4th grade (history cycle #4), and a rising 1st grader (history cycle #1). This might get very crazy! But by then, hopefully my olders will plenty independent and I will be able to spend enough mommy-time w/ each kiddo. Maybe she will be more willing to listen to the CD's? We'll see....

 

GL! I know this isn't much help, but just thought I'd mention that you're not alone in trying to figure out how to piece it togehter with multiple kids!

 

- Stacey in MA

[momtolgd]

Here's what I ended up deciding...

 

We did Galloping the Globe 2 years ago when my oldest was 6. Last year, I started SOTW 1 with both kids at 7 and 5, but they were doing a community helpers class and a state history class at co-op also. We really needed to concentrate on my oldest's reading skills last year, so we stopped with SOTW after only 5 chapters. I decided that they had enough history/social studies for their ages with the co-op classes.

 

So we are doing SOTW 1 this year with their ages being 8 and 6. This will mean that our oldest probably won't go through the entire cycle 3 times, but we may make adjustments later for him. Doing it this will will start the cycle with dd at age 6, and then will add in the baby at age 6 when we start back at ancients again. So they will both be right on for the 4 year cycle.

 

I'm not sure yet how it will go for my oldest, but I know it will work out ok in the end. (if anyone can suggest how to go about scheduling for him I would appreciate it! feel free to PM me! :D)

[Oakblossoms]

I'm going to just fold the younger ones in to our schedule. I'm teaching to the oldest. We did start SOTW later than some though. We are currently on SOTW 2 after taking almost 2 years to finish SOTW 1. We are going a bit faster through this level though.

 

I'm not worrying about exposing anyone to the harsh realities of History. If they are too young it often flies right over the head. My K boy this year didn't even have the ability to sit through most readings. I'm not expecting for him to sit through everything next year. I'm more concerned that he learns to read next year, not if he understands SOTW 2/3 (depending on where we are at in the cycle).

 

My oldest is 12, but special needs. He is at the end of grammar/start of logic. So, he will get more work next year, but he can do it by himself for the most part. That was his major goal this year...learn to work without a parent.

 

I don't worry about everyone getting a full 3 year rotation. I'm shooting for 2 years with my oldest.

 

We have a baby due in July this year. My children all need guidance still, so giving them different levels is not going to work. We get so much more done if we stay on track together. Plus, it makes the library easier and we do a lot of library supplements. I really think discussions are important, so if we stay on the same level we have similar discussions and interests. Plus, Daddy doesn't have to keep up with different threads. He can just ask away and get involved.

 

So, my motto is to teach to the oldest and fold the other ones in. I think SWB may have said that in TWTM. But, once I finally did that we are running so much more smoothly around here.

[seanana]

I had a similar situation. I combined a 1st grader with a 3rd grader and we went through all 4 years of SOTW. While they both loved it, the 1st grader (now in 7th) admits she did not get as much out of the 1st year or 2 and only vaguely remembers it. The 4th year was also more difficult for her in terms of the tests.

 

So, this time around with my 2nd set of daughters, to maximize the effectiveness, I waited for the younger one to be in 2nd grade and the older one to be in 4th grade.

 

Ana