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Sonlight users: How hard is it to do two cores at the same time?


Nakia
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I was handling 2 okay, but my oldest did a lot of reading himself with good comprehension. We were only doing K and 3 at the time though (1st half of American History - I forget the new letter for it). So note that it was not two full-on cores as K is light. I gave up at the thought of doing 4th grade, 1st grade and pre-K this year with SL. I couldn't handle two separate time periods, and my 4th and 1st are waaayyyy more than 3 years apart intellectually so combining was not going to happen. I probably could keep the 1st and pre-K together, but then I still have a toddler to pull up eventually into it too ...

 

My ability to handle it was not good. This year we are doing our own thing, many selections from SL's 2nd half of American History, many of my own plans for a state study. We will re-enter ancients next year with a plan of TOG with a 5th grade, 2nd grade and K with a toddler.

 

If I were going to attempt it, I would choose B&G over B&F. I have heard of successful combinations of that back when I read the SL forums. B&G both use Usborne. B uses CHOW, but I did SOTW alongside it even with 1 child who was crazy about history (CHOW I read, SOTW audios and AG). I note G uses SOTW also so that is very doable to just pick one. I honestly thing CHOW used in B and SOTW used in G are about the same level difficulty. You could eliminate one. Did you crosspost on SL forums for info?

 

When I considered 2 cores, I was planning to move several of the readalouds to independent reading and narration with my older. He is a very very strong reader, so that was possible. You could also consider your older reading to your younger at times, for practice reading aloud and to give you a bit of a break.

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We are currently doing two SL cores. Core G (formerly 6) and Core D (formerly 3).

 

We have used SL from the beginning, so at first I had one student, then two and so on until now when I have four students and four grades.

 

I combine the older two, and for now am combining the younger two. This year (last fall) I tried to do a lower core with my youngest son who is in first grade, but he really prefers to tag along with his brother who is doing Core D.

 

I also combine for SL science. The older two do a lot of the same LA assignments, while the younger two do different levels. For math, we use Singapore.

 

It does take most of the day. We spend the morning on math and LA, and I read the American History books with the younger two and then do their Science Reading. When they are done, I do the same with the older two. Fridays are generally days when we do the hands-on science stuff. I do use the 5 day schedules, so I do a little extra earlier in the week for each group.

 

Evenings, when the boys go to bed, I read from the Read-Alouds (Literature). My dh and I have a system where one night he reads to the younger two from a book he chooses (not SL) and I read to the older two from their Read-Aloud. The next night we switch rooms and he reads something to the older two and I read to the younger two from their Read-Aloud.

 

We don't ususally begin school until 9:30, we break for a long lunch, and then continue until 4:30 and sometimes 5:00.

 

Does this help?

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I am currently doing 2 and find it easy, the test will be when the bigs start their core this week, that puts me at doing 3 completely and they are doing parts of another, so I will be doing 3.5 cores at once. Already doing P3/4 and A adding in D and the first 1/2 of 100. Because all my kids have 4 yr age gaps and LD I simply can not combine everyone, they all have different learning needs. SO the oldest two are together with 1 core, then ds8 has his own and dd4 has her own. I stagger how I do them, usually I do ds8's first while the bigs do independant work, then do dd4's as her's is simple to do. before this the bigs were doing Time travelers units with added reading so I actually think the amount of work required from the core will be less than that so easier to work with. None of them use the LA, only ds8 uses the sonlight science at this time.

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We did 3 cores for 2 years and it went very well. At the time I had a 4th, 7th and 9th grader doing core 3, 6 and 100, then core 4, 7, and 200. The read alouds are the only thing that could be a handful if doing more then one core. My husband used the core 3 read alouds as bedtime reading for my 4rd grader and I read the core 6 read alouds during lunch. I did right on the spot discussions of the readers and history books with my 4th grader since we shared the history readings together. My core 6 son wrote a narration for the history book each day and we discussed the readings he did at dinner. The 9th grader was very independent and is not a conversationalist so discussions were very low keyed. He did the weeks work and on Fridays I went over the week as a review. Each of the history readers he read though was concluded with a brief written discussion explaining the historical context.

 

I did not personally read every reader from core 6, 7, 100 and 200. I think if I attempted to read all the books from each core I would not have been able to do the 3 cores. Also if I had to hand hold each child through a core it would not have worked. Having one dependent, one independent, and one in between made it possible to do the 3 cores together.

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We are doing two cores -- Core 1/2 (I guess B/C) with my 4th grade twins and Core 6 (G?) with my 7th grade dd. It's going fairly well, but it's a LOT of reading aloud. My dd does her own history reading, so I only do the read aloud with her, but I do the history reading and the read aloud with the twins. I break it up so I read the twins history after they do their math (early morning), then an hour or two later we do their read aloud. After lunch in the afternoon, usually when my youngest is napping I read aloud with dd.

 

I admit, some days we get a little behind on the reading, but it works out in the end. I'm planning on doing core 3 with the twins next year and core 7 with dd, so we'll be doing totally different history, but since I work with them separately, I don't think it'll matter much.

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I am looking at either cores B&F or cores B&G. Would one pair be more doable?

 

I need your honest opinions. Thanks!

Personally I think B and G would be better unless you are not expecting much work to be done on the EHE. My 9th grader is doing core F and finds the EHE very time consuming. A large portion of the EHE is outside the World Book Encyclopedia so internet searches are needed. Not all are cut and dry answers either.

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We're doing B/C and E this year (with a PK'er playing nearby and working around the baby's naps). It's actually going pretty well. We just started the 4th grader on Core E, and we're not to the point yet of getting a full week's work done in one calendar week. But that seems to be the norm for us. We'll spend several weeks out of sync with the calendar, then able to easily make up for it at the end when we get it all figured out.

 

We have a robust program overall with all of the supplements I've added in. If it weren't for (too many??) supplements and being restricted to the baby's nap times for the meaty part of our schooltime, doing 2 Cores would be a breeze, LOL!

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We are doing Cores B and F right now. :) It is actually very surprising how many times these cores have bumped into each other, content wise. Not by much, but enough that when the kids overhear something from the other core, they'll pause what they're doing long enough to check out what is going on.

 

I should add that we're doing an older version of Core F from 2008, and we are not doing the EHE at all. WE are doing the 5-day version though, and it seems that quite a lot of people who do Core F end up switching to the 4 day at some point. Not us, the 5 day is working great. I'm having DD do daily readings in the World Book, and she highlights what she thinks is important. That's good enough for me.

 

Core B is SO light compared to Core F, and I imagine it would be very similar vs.Core G. DS and I get his complete school day (including 3 different math programs) finished before DD is even ready for me to go over her History and RA with her.

 

As far as actually lining up the cores to work together, B & G would probably be your best bet, content-wise, but what I have heard on the SL forums is that actually combining the two cores is a huge load of work. Their timelines don't mesh up very well at all, and you really need to do a lot of adjusting and tweaking to get them to even line up a little bit. That's purely anectdotal though, as I have no personal experience with it.

 

Actually DOING two cores is way easier than I had anticipated it being before we did it. It was much more work for me to make one core work for two children than it has been to run with two cores, where the work is already done for me.

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