Is TOG or Biblioplan better for younger sibling?

[arlingbound]

I am considering using a curriculum such as TOG or Biblioplan this year, after having used SOTW in the past. This year I will be teaching a 6th grader and a kindergartener.

 

I think either TOG or Biblioplan might be a good fit for my older child, who is a voracious reader (and loves history). I would like to be able to have both kids learning about the same time period, however, and I am wondering which curriculum does a better job with the young ones -- which offers more for their level?

[ByGrace3]

This is a great question, one I have not seen before. I am interested in the responses. I have often heard TOG is not as coherent with lower grammar, that the book lists are it as comprehensive or that that at that level they are "tacked on" but I imagine that is quite subjective. We don't use TOG but I have a copy of my sisters TOG yr 2 here that I have bee perusing. We use BP. A few main differences. BP uses a spine and has several choices for that.TOG just uses nonfiction and fiction books, no spne. Tough SOTW is scheduled as an alternate reading for UG. TOG has lit worksheets and art/projects, but I know my sister and many others use SOTW alongside it with the AG for the coloring pages, maps, and projects. I love how BP has you really on the same schedule with older kids as in some of the class time work is done together and there is a "family read aloud" together, whereas in TOG you are only in the same topic and while there are some read alouds, it is not every week like BP. I don't think you can go wrong with either, it is really preference. BP schedules everything on 1 grid and you just pick and choose what you want. TOG has booklists you choose from. I like the grid of BPbut it is busy with all the choices so I made my own grid to separate out what we were choosing. So my planning with BP or tOG would be similar. Also, BP usually only has 1 or 2 books scheduled for lower grammar. It is plenty of reading, but their choices are more in spines, and that could make it more difficult if you are using the library. Bt it is easy to substitute books in BP bc the information is more topic/spine specific whereas in tog it is more book specific especially with lit.

 

Ok that was a lot of rambling, hope something made sense! :001_smile:

[Amy M]

When I was going through this decision a couple of months ago, I came across My Father's World, MFW, which also might be a good choice for you. The benefits of TOG, I believe, would be the dialectic discussions for your 6th grader, if you wanted them--not so much for the kindergartner. With any of these, I would guess that you might have the little one "tag along" as you do the SOTW reading together, and maybe a couple of extra picture books from the library or bought for the little one, an extra hands-on project or coloring page with the little one, but you could do that with any of them. If you wanted to save money, you could do BP, and just use a couple of the TOG books for the little one. MFW is nice, because you could just get it mainly for your older one, and much of the teacher's manual is an annotated list with several of the best books per week to go along with the topics (including science). They have several nice choices for picture books for little ones, but it's much more flexible and up to you. An alternative is to buy TOG or MFW and then just get the e-version of BP's papers for the little ones--coloring sheets, etc. I really liked BP's maps and cool histories as well.

 

So I guess it's what suits your personality the most, and what you want the most--do you want the discussions or literature sheets for your older student from TOG, and you handle the scheduling? Do you want the flexibility of the book list along with the smaller spine list of MFW--all scheduled out for you? Do you want the cheaper BP with it's smaller book lists and cool histories/maps/littles packages? Or you could just do SOTW with its AG and add in TOG's book lists. :)

[arlingbound]

Thank you for these helpful responses! We've never used a pre-planned curriculum before, so we are treading carefully. We would like one that allows students of different levels to be studying the same period, which is why we are considering only TOG and Biblioplan. I don't think MFW offers this same option, and we do want something more for our little guy this year than just tagging along (which is the story of his life so far :).

 

I didn't understand what you meant about using book lists from TOG. Is there a way to use the book lists without buying the curriculum? Also, do the book lists provide descriptions of the books that are helpful in choosing among them?

 

Any further input on distinguishing these two programs would be greatly appreciated!

[edeemarie]

I really looked into TOG also, but because my kids are young I am just going to use a history spine (probably Mystery of History for my oldest with Story of the World for the youngers) and add in age appropriate books. If you go on TOGs website you can view the books they use, but they are in alphabetical order and not chronological. They are separated by age group and what they are used for, whether that be history, literature, or read alouds. I am using that list and others from places like Sonlight, MFW, HOD, Memoria Press, Veritas Press, http://www.abookintime.com/, http://bookgirl3.tripod.com/historicalfiction.html. If you are interested in how to match up different history spines to help keep ages together you can look at things like Paula's Archives, and I have found a lot of information in the files of the Mystery of History Yahoo group. This will be the first time we venture out on our own with curriculum that isn't in a box but there are so many resources out there I think it is very easy to do.

 

ETA: I forgot to add in my list of resources: GuestHollow.

Edited August 25, 2012 by edeemarie

[Tracy]

I think that TOG can work for K, but you have to go into it understanding that they will not be able to do very much of it, and some of the reading will be over his head. I started using TOG when my dd was 5yo. The things that made it doable for us were (1) dd loves history and (2) dd loves to be read to, regardless of the subject or reading level. With those two elements, we were able to do quite a bit and have a very enjoyable time. My ds is 4.5yo, and there is no way I am doing TOG with him at 5yo. He doesn't have the same love of history and really needs lower level reading to enjoy it.