Comparing history programs (again)

[Kathie in VA]

What's the difference between Omnibus and TOG-redesign from a usability issue? I have TOG classic yr 2 and we all found it too confusing. I was wondering if anyone can explain the differences in how these two are actually used.

tia

[OhElizabeth]

There's an entire chapter sample of Omnibus available on VP's website. Omnibus has answers, even to the essays, and is supposed to be pretty straightforward to teach (haven't done it myself). The main stickywickets people are mentioning: whether their kids had enough writing previously to be prepared for the assignments, the sheer quantity of reading, the benefit of a larger group for discussion (consider the online course).

Isn't there a discussion board and yahoo group for TOG? With a program like that (which I've tried but decided to stick to simpler things for now), I think a lot of it rides on figuring out your plan and not getting lost in all the details. Someone who uses it could help you more obviously. A lot of new things get thrown at the wall at first, only to have you come back to them later. So feel free to do that, throw it hard. I've done that with a number of things and came back to them when I realized they really WERE what I wanted, but that I had to conquer them and beat the learning curve. Sometimes you have to give it a chunk of time, say a Friday night and all day Saturday by yourself, where you sit there staring at it till you figure it out. It's probably not one of those things you can just pick up and go.

[Kathie in VA]

May I ask then, what are you using that 'simpler' for now? I'm open to suggestions, I should have mentioned that in my first post.

Kiddos: 13yog, 11yob, 8yob, 3yog
Currently using: Story of the 13 Colonies for 13yo, Story of the RnR for boys.

Other big question that comes up for me is that I don't need to teach writing with the history... as we are doing CW. I gather we will still need to do some writing for history. How else does one re-inforce what they learned? But I don't need another whole writing component.

Thanks for the feedback as I begin to wonder and debate our course for history/lit.... again.

[Trivium Academy]

Here's a post from the old High school board that may be helpful:
http://wtmboards.com/HSboardJun202007/messages/1696.html

Maybe someone at the HS board can direct you to any other helpful posts about it, I've read quite a few in my research of whether to buy TOG.

[OhElizabeth]

Omnibus would not combine all those ages; it would only work for the oldest. I'm using the VP history cards and they would go well with Guerber. In fact, that might be all it would take for you to get back on track, if Guerber works for you. The history cards would form your spine (make a chart correlating Guerber and the cards or see if one is around). You'll do a card each week and use the assignments in the tm included on the enhanced cd to get assignments for each of your levels of kids. Britta of www.morningstarlearning.com tells in her blog how she uses the VP history with kids older than the target grades of 2-6th. I think she adds more challenging reading, writing assigments, more complex crafts, public speaking, etc.

Your oldest is approaching high school, so you need a game plan there. I haven't been there, so I'm not much help. I actually only answered because no one else had, lol. If you are interested in VP for the lowers and Omnibus for your oldest, that might work. I'd join the yahoo group VP_Elementary and talk with others using it. VP is like a slimmed down TOG, where any spine and books you have will work, because the cards provide the structure.

[Trivium Academy]

You don't need to purchase Writing Aids from TOG to use TOG, there are plenty of assignments for writing you can use within the TOG Year Plan, even if it's using a discussion question for an essay. That's up to you. I would download the 3 week samples and take a good look at them and print out samples for Omnibus (if they are available) and see which one appeals to you more- in content, format and usability.

:)