Mammy5 Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 Okay, so I bought the Christian studies I by memoria press and LOVE IT! I want to switch over to more mastery base learning. Buuut, I also loove the Sonlight Read-alouds and their choice of books (missionary stories and learning about people around the world through historic fiction. My children are 8,7,6 and 5. Does anyone here mix these two programs? How do you make it work? and with different ages? thanks! I know this is mixing philosophies. I would love the best of both worlds. Thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mumto2 Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 We have used both so I will try and answer. Christian Studies is what we used for Bible when we left SL for a while and I did my own British and European history. Christian studies is time consuming if done properly. There is a lot of great stuff there. We did it a bit light-- if I had it to do over again I think I would try more for as written but my son could not handle the writing. With your age range the bigs do everything and littles by ability. I would run SL or at least SL style with that for history etc. Move slowly through the books. We did the first history core when ds was 5. He loved it. Dd was 7 and had covered much of it previously but still learned tons. If you are able to make it work for all it would make a really special year or years depending on how long it takes. It won't coordinate well time period wise. I would not even try. Run them both separately. The main thing is a good history spine which can be used frequently. We like the Usbourne ones. That ties things together well and keeps the time line moving. I like a more in depth illustrated book like the time traveler Usbourne one for major time periods(Egypt, Greece, vikings, etc). There is also a Time Travel Agency series used by VP that we loved. Fill in a historical fiction book for each time period. Some myths or short stories. You have the basics covered. For the older children they can read off WTM lists, read other SL books if you can't do them all, maybe even a bit of VP list. See what you library has. Magic Tree house books and guides are great. When I was just starting this journey I had to coordinate every single thing. Frequently I ended up buying way too much. Frequently I stalled and did nothing because I could not decide. I have come to understand that children do learn even if everything isn't perfectly lined up. Out of order slightly makes for great review. I hope you have a wonderful year! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunnylady303 Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 We use MP and love it. We are finding our groove and tweaking this and that. DD8 uses MUS instead of R&S and we are using Phonetic Zoo for spelling for DD8 and AAS for DD6. I am considering trading out history in the next couple of years for TOG or SL because I feel like it touches a broader range than MP. But for now we are doing most of the SL read-alouds in Core C along with all our MP stuff. That's easy to work in. Also we do a silent reading choice time where SL readers are basically the choices for each girl. If we did trade out the history completely, I think it would work fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoo Keeper Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 Hello from another Mainer! You've gotten some good advice already; with the ages of you kids, I would just let MP be the main course, and let SL be the sides and dessert. (OR let SL drive the action, and do a few pieces of Memoria--we're doing that now for this year) :001_smile: You DON'T have to co-ordinate it all and make it match up all pretty. You will go nuts trying to do so. If you really want SL lit, well ax out MP's selections--or only do half--only use one lit guide from Memoria instead of three per year... You might find Latin Centered Curriculum (LCC) an interesting read.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunnylady303 Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 Hello from another Mainer! You've gotten some good advice already; with the ages of you kids, I would just let MP be the main course, and let SL be the sides and dessert. (OR let SL drive the action, and do a few pieces of Memoria--we're doing that now for this year) :001_smile: You DON'T have to co-ordinate it all and make it match up all pretty. You will go nuts trying to do so. If you really want SL lit, well ax out MP's selections--or only do half--only use one lit guide from Memoria instead of three per year... You might find Latin Centered Curriculum (LCC) an interesting read.... Yes. This. And I've found that the MP Lit suggestions are good but my girls but need a bit more reading. The level is the high level reading that I think they need, but we are going through it faster because...well, because we just are. ;) They aren't really strong readers and so the daily practice is good for them and doesn't take very long. Then we add in daily silent choice reading time (SL readers) and read-aloud time (SL and other stuff.) I guess what I am saying is that while it doesn't need to be coordinated we aren't really doing any history with MP - just Greek myths - this year and so adding would be fine. Next year I'm considering ditching the men of Rome for TOG. And if we do, our other reading will dovetail with that. What is it about MP besides the Christian Studies that appeals to you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abbeygurl4 Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 I used SL for a few years and loved all the books, but I tweaked it way too much. I'm using MP's full 4th grade with dd9 and she is thriving! We don't use R&S, but we use ALL the MP stuff. Your dc are pretty young and I think doing all MP with them would be time consuming unless you can combine them in a few subjects. Tanya at MP is great at helping you combine dc! That being said, I'm not sure how long MP would take you so I'll just share what our experience is. My dd does a lot of MP on her own. We do the first lesson of Latin together so I know she has a good grasp of it and I do daily reviews with her. She does all her own reading for Famous Men, Christian Studies, Lit, Science and Geography and we do most of the questions together orally and I do daily reviews of "facts to know" and recitations. She is usually done with all subjects by 2:00 so she has plenty of time for reading. I've got a lot of SL books that I assign her in the afternoon. So, I think I would pick either SL or MP to be your main curriculum and just add in components of the other one. I think MP and SL complement each other pretty well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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