MBtP or Oak Meadow for middle school? Need help deciding.

[Upward Journey]

My youngest and oldest are both using Oak Meadow next year (gr.3 & 7), which looks perfect for both of them. I'm stuck trying to decide for middle child (starting grade 6). Is there anyone here, by chance, that's used both of these programs and can do a comparison for me? It looks like they'll both end up covering the same topics by the start of 9th grade so that isn't so much the issue. Besides the price difference, what's the biggest difference between these two programs, and why do YOU like one over the other?

 

I've been homeschooling for many years now, going on 17, but we've always used SL & TOG, and a bit of WP. These two programs are completely different animals :) I'm excited about a new direction, but unsure of myself.

[winoelle]

I have used both. I think that a major difference is that MBtP alternates between units of social studies and science and jumps around a lot more. Oak Meadow has history and science concurrently all year. This year, for 5th grade, I used OM for history and science and MBtP for language arts. I really like both, but didn't like the flow of social studies and science in MBtP. It was too disjointed for us and I felt like we didn't end up covering anything in depth enough for it to be our whole curriculum. My dd really likes Oak Meadow. She loves the projects, even the writing assignments are appealing for her. We will use OM again next year, the English and History portion. For science I am doing my own thing, and then I will add in a few lit units from MBtP. We really like the reading selections from OM for 6th grade so I won't need as many from MBtP as I did this year.

[Upward Journey]

I have used both. I think that a major difference is that MBtP alternates between units of social studies and science and jumps around a lot more. Oak Meadow has history and science concurrently all year. This year, for 5th grade, I used OM for history and science and MBtP for language arts. I really like both, but didn't like the flow of social studies and science in MBtP. It was too disjointed for us and I felt like we didn't end up covering anything in depth enough for it to be our whole curriculum. My dd really likes Oak Meadow. She loves the projects, even the writing assignments are appealing for her. We will use OM again next year, the English and History portion. For science I am doing my own thing, and then I will add in a few lit units from MBtP. We really like the reading selections from OM for 6th grade so I won't need as many from MBtP as I did this year.

 

 

Thank you so much! This is exactly the kind of information that I needed to make an informed decision. If I'm going to be ordering another level OM I need to do it before the 31st :)