For the first two weeks of school I’ve left off Science and History.
For one thing my oldest has so much to do right now (he’s a piddler) that adding that would completely overwhelm him.
But as I’ve been thinking I’m not sure if it wouldn’t be better to do a Unit Study and then have work for each of the three boy’s (grades 4,3,1) for them to do.
What do you think?
Any help???
Any great curriculum where I can kill three birds boys with one stone??
I need help.
Hi Julie!
A couple of suggestions for ya. You asked what we're using this year & we're using Winter Promise's Quest for the Middle Ages history program. http://www.winterpromise.com Are you familiar with Sonlight? We used Sonlight for years and it is similar to Winter Promise (WP), except that WP is easier to combine with multiple age students and it also includes hands-on activities.
On WP's website, they suggest this program for 4-6 graders, but I used Mystery of History (same book WP uses as their spine) with my older 3 last year, grades 1-5, and it worked out great. Gabe (grade 1) learned a ton & loved a lot of the stories we read. It definitely wasn't over his head.
One of the HUGE reasons we switched to WP is *because* they use Mystery of History as their spine (main history book). That and because of how easy it was to use with multiple ages. We used Mystery of History (MOH) on our own last year AND LOVED IT!!!!!!!
I made up my own schedule (only because I wasn't aware of WP at the time). I posted it on my blog last year. If you're interested, I'll find the link & you can download it if you want. We used MOH Volume 1 last year, which covers Creation to Christ. This year we're doing Volume 2- Middle Ages. So my second suggestion, instead of buying WP's full program, is to look at Mystery of History and supplement as you go.
With MOH, you do 3 lessons per week and the lessons are short but very interesting. If you only use MOH, which plenty of people do, I'm sure you'll want to follow lots of rabbit trails and learn more about the people/events in the lessons. At the end of each lesson there are activities your children can do, and they're divided into 3 age groups. You can pick and choose what activities they do each week, or if you want to do them at all!
There are timeline and mapping activities, pretests, quizzes, semester tests, and you can decide if you want to do those are not too.
And for science… have you ever looked at the Apologia elementary science books? We've used all but 1 that they have put out. They are WONDERFUL! Another program that you can use with all of your children together- even your little girl would enjoy those books. Lots of suggestions for activities and hands-on stuff in those books too.
https://apologia.securesites.net/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1
The astronomy book is fascinating! They're all great, really. And the older children can do notebooking pages or the suggested activities to make it more challenging for them.
Sorry that got so long! I was interrupted 500 times so it probably doesn't make sense.
Love, Alyssa
my mom is a great mom. she fixes me lunch and breakfast before school.
my mom is a great mom. she fixes me lunch and breakfast before school.
If you don't want anything too overwhelming look into Christian Cottage Unit studies — every other unit is history/science — so you aren't doing both at the same time. 🙂 Have a good school year!
We're using Sonlight. It may or may not work for you. It is literature based, so they would have to love books. There's also KONOS as long as you promise not to try and do everything with it! THey also have an online co-op group in KONOS. If you are interested in it, that might be the way to start out. Or the KONOS in a Box sets. There's also Christian Cottage Unit Studies that lays out for the different age groups. Unit studies abound everywhere! Let me know if you need more links.