Fix Our History!

[JWallace]

Background:

This school year I am teaching a 5th, 4th, 2nd, and Ker.  I wanted to try my hand at Sonlight and a literature-based history curriculum. I placed my older two students in Core D (Early American History-1850) and combined by younger two in Core A (World Cultures).  We are absolutely loving it and all our school work is getting done. 

**We are only using History/Bible/Lit...we have other curricula for math and LA

 

I was hesitant to make this change so didn't think in terms of long-term planning when I purchased the two cores. I love it and would like to stay with it (or something similar) next school year, however....

 

Problem:

If I stick with Sonlight next year, I'll have two in Modern American History and two in World History.  I think I would much rather have all four children study the same time period in history.  There is too big of an age gap to combine into one core, and I'm not sure I'm ready for my younger ones to study 1850-present...

 

What would you do?  I'm spinning my wheels and not sure where to go at this point...unless I just deal with the fact they won't be studying the same time periods.

[Peaceseeker]

I think you have to really love Sonlight if you are willing to do two cores for the duration. Some people love it that much! It is a lot of reading aloud to do two cores, but perhaps you could get audio books or your older kids can do more independent work. Either way your family will probably feel disconnected in regards to history for a while if you stick with that type of program.

 

An alternative would be to switch to a four year classical cycle and keep everyone together doing something like Story of the world. You can require more of the older kids and less of the younger kids. It cycles every 4 years so they get exposed to the material again at an older age if they were on the young side the first time around. You can still use the sonlight book lists if you like them to supplement.

Edited February 23, 2017 by CaliforniaDreaming

[Dudley]

If you could handle skipping second half of American history I would skip it and go on to eastern hemispheres. For the younger ones for that year I would just add in a couple books and activities at their level, and have fun studying the countries together, while the older ones go deeper with the eastern hemisphere explorer. I've done something like that years ago.(maybe twice?) At first I stole some stuff from mfw ecc, but I didn't like mfw near as much as sonlight! I used some of their books as a jumping off place and I found "People around the world" by kingfisher and usborne "introduction to Asia" that were good resources while the older kids were diving into the encyclopedia. You can involve the little ones in some crafts from the EHE too. The 3rd grader will probably listen in on read alouds, but I would add some or switch some out/in for the 1st grader. I can try to find what I scheduled and send it to you if your interested. This is probably the easiest core to adapt to multiple ages. The tricky thing here will be readers for the 3rd grader...

 

THEN, the Next year I would start the 2 years of world history at both levels, I don't have the time to do two full cores so I either combine them or get the olders to work more independently, The two world history levels don't match up extremely well, I do what I can.

So:

Year 2 Eatern Hemisphere add in for littles

Year 3 world history part 1 B & F

Year 4 world history part 2 C& G

Year 5 American history D or D/E , 100

 

This is usually where I send my kids to high school so don't have experience after that. Forgive me if my letters are off I am more familiar with the old grade number system they had

Edited February 23, 2017 by DudleyS