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ABAng
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| Posted: March 11 2011 at 3:43pm | IP Logged
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Has anyone used this? Care to offer me your review?
I am also wondering if anyone may know of a similar resource from Catholic perspective?
Thanks!! 
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stellamaris
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| Posted: March 12 2011 at 9:00am | IP Logged
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We are using parts of Joshua to Judges this year, and I will review it for you in a few days! Right now, I'm not near my copy and I'd like to look it over again before I give you some details.
I did benefit from using this plan as it helped me develop my own ability to schedule our history reading. Next year, however, I'll just do the scheduling myself because that way I'll have more flexibility. I found, since we are still at the reading aloud stage with some of our children, that the lessons were a little too long. Also, I like to intersperse some hands-on activities into our schedule and we couldn't keep on schedule. We were trying to add in many other subjects, so I think if we used it for all of our religion, history, and reading it would have been easier to maintain the pace. I was using it as a supplement and the children had other religion and reading assignments in addition to the SCM.
Will get back to you early next week!
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In Christ,
Caroline
Wife to  dh 30+ yrs,ds's 83,85,89,dd's 91,95,ds's 01,01,02,grammy to 4
Flowing Streams
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 12 2011 at 9:20am | IP Logged
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Thought I'd link the program Genesis through Deuteronomy which is offered by Simply Charlotte Mason.
It's a program which offers a context for studying ancient history through the first books of the Bible, providing a Christian context for ancient history. I haven't used the program, nor have I seen it, so I'm sorry that I can't offer a thorough review of it. While SCM writes from a lovely Christian perspective (at least that I've seen in their other books), they are not Catholic so I would probably want to pre-read carefully for content in light of our faith. You may have to supplement this program to provide the fullness of the Truth as taught by the Catholic Church.
ABang wrote:
| I am also wondering if anyone may know of a similar resource from Catholic perspective? |
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Yes! We have used RC History over the years and found it a lovely way to approach history with a Catholic understanding and perspective. It was very helpful to me when I first started teaching history; it gave me a foundational understanding to build on both as a teacher of history and a student myself. I really appreciated the guide and the understanding. I use it loosely now, as a reference, allowing it to fit our family, which is to say that we do not follow the program rigidly or even as it is written, but find it to be a very good guide.
The program consists of a guide, and one of its strengths is that the guide is built to fit a variety of ages in the home. Then, for each period of history, there are booklists since the program is built around the idea of using living books to approach history. I don't use all of the books recommended, but have found some/many to become favorites here! Some of the projects are fun, but mostly we just read the books, narrate, and add significant events/people from our reading to our Book of Centuries and then move on.
Hope something here was a help!
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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stellamaris
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| Posted: March 18 2011 at 8:39am | IP Logged
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I'm back home now and looking over my Joshua-Judges notes.
The SCM plans break down the books of the Bible you are studying and intersperse them with additional books on other history topics relevant to that time period. For the Joshua-Judges time period, that is Ancient Greece. They also featured related geography lessons (in our case, it has been A Child's Geography, Vol. 2: Explore the Holy Land. They give a very few additional suggestions, such as making a salt clay map of Greece or a timeline scroll.
Advantages:
1. Everything is laid out for you and scheduled into terms and lessons.
2. It is easy to use the plans with all ages groups together, as there is assigned reading for each major group (Grades 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12 each have separate reading suggestions).
3. An overview of each week by grade is helpful in keeping you on track with a number of children at different levels.
4. The subjects included (history, geography, and bible) are rotated through each week and so are very easy to incorporate in one time period in your general lesson plans.
Disadvantages:
1. The Bible reading sections are sometimes pretty long, as are the geography sections. If you are trying to keep to short daily lessons, you would have to tweak this to divide up the lessons. For instance, one day we read Joshua 10 and 11...which was a bit much for my little boys.
2. The curriculum is based on 5 days a week, which may work well for you, but at this point with my younger children I covered history three days a week and geography one day. This plan is easy to modify, however, to accommodate that kind of schedule.
3. It's really just a breakdown of reading assignments that you are paying for. It is pretty easy to do that on your own for free.
The greatest aspect of this lesson plan is that the work of dividing up the lessons is all done for you, and it does teach you by example how to do that on your own in the future.
It is Christian, not Catholic. So you'd probably want to do some tweaking there, as well.
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In Christ,
Caroline
Wife to dh 30+ yrs,ds's 83,85,89,dd's 91,95,ds's 01,01,02,grammy to 4
Flowing Streams
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 18 2011 at 8:52am | IP Logged
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Caroline,
That was such a helpful review for me! Thank you!!!
So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you don't see anything anti-Catholic in the guide? It is from a Christian perspective, and may need an additional beefing up to bring in the fullness of our faith, but nothing contradictory?
__________________
Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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stellamaris
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| Posted: March 18 2011 at 10:35am | IP Logged
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Mackfam wrote:
| So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you don't see anything anti-Catholic in the guide? It is from a Christian perspective, and may need an additional beefing up to bring in the fullness of our faith, but nothing contradictory? |
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Jennifer, I didn't find anything specifically anti-Catholic, but then it wasJoshua to Judges and Ancient Greece, so I wouldn't vouch for the New Testament studies. However, the SCM series does seem to just emphasize reading the Bible text directly, and doesn't really offer much doctrinal commentary. What she does mention could be easily modified as it is just her ideas for discussion. There are occasional suggestions for identifying specific information from the text (such as graphing a "Sin Cycle" in the first term, which illustrated the process of idolatry->attacked by enemy->turned to God->delivered by God repeatedly described in Judges). Even the questions for discussion are not so much doctrine-based as narration-based.
The biggest problem with these types of non-Catholic OT resources in general is what is missing. For instance, I would think that the Genesis study probably does not mention Mary's role as prophesied in the Protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15. I'm not sure how they handle the creation accounts, but I'm guessing they don't use Catholic magisterial teaching documents to make their point. 
In addition, there could be some incorrect doctrinal teaching (I'm not saying that I encountered any, just that the other lessons plans might have some). For example, there might be a more Protestant slant on Abraham's faith, since this story is often used to defend a "faith alone (sola fide) position ("And he [Abraham] believed the Lord; and He reckoned to him as righteousness." Gen. 15:6). So, as far as the Old Testament studies go, that is the kind of thing you might need to correct/supplement. Again, I am guessing this will be a problem more in Genesis/Exodus than the other OT books which are not quite so foundational to correct Catholic doctrine.
Basically, if you read the Bible 3 times a week at the rate of about a chapter a session, add in a history resource about 1-2 times a week, and do some related geography (related to either the history or the Bible studies) once a week, then add on a timeline or Book of Centuries with a very few hands-on projects, you'd be doing this program.
If you decide to make a salt clay map, here are a few photos of the one we made in a pizza box. It turned out well, is easy to store, and has lasted all year! We did paint it, but I didn't post that. Originally was going to post all we did, but it took too much time to post it!
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In Christ,
Caroline
Wife to dh 30+ yrs,ds's 83,85,89,dd's 91,95,ds's 01,01,02,grammy to 4
Flowing Streams
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Mackfam
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| Posted: March 18 2011 at 10:46am | IP Logged
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Thanks, Caroline!
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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4Real Forums : Across Time and Place
Topic: Genesis through Deuteronomy..SCM
