Working MFW 1st and HOD LHFHG together

I've had numerous emails asking me how to make MFW and HOD work together, so I hope to try to answer that question here.

First of all, I need to mention that each program is complete on its own (i.e. implimented as scheduled) but I have chosen to combine different aspects for different reasons.

The first step to combining is to decide what you want for your children as far as what their day looks like. Before we added HOD, my kids were asking for things to do, and were always asking for more science, for example, "Can we study bugs?"

The second step is to assess which program is going to be used as your spine. You cannot use both programs in their entirety every day. Unless you're superwoman, of course. But I certainly am not, and I needed to decide which program was going to be the foundation, and then pull the deficit from the other program.

MFW 1st has a wonderful overview of the Bible, which is presented as the outline for history. You start a timeline, and work through from Creation to a quick survey of the NT. This leads up to the next year of Adventures (American History). I decided to use that as my core, and the HOD LHFHG compliments this nicely with the same theme for the year, with weekly units being broken down into an overview of history from Creation to recent history.

There is also daily devotions and memory work in both programs. MFW 1st does some Proverbs. HOD works through the book of Matthew. I chose to do the HOD Bible because I feel it's important to always be working on NT, and not to just be in the OT.

MFW 1st language arts move very quickly compared to the MFW K program. We struggled at the beginning and had to add in HOP and some Bob Books for practice. We weren't doing the MFW LA every day and it was driving me crazy flipping around from the current day to do the Bible, and then back to wherever we were to do LA. So we dropped MFW LA altogether. However, as happens with maturity over a few months at this young age, DD6 seems ready for the quicker pace in LA and we have picked it up again, and are still doing the HOP and Bob Books.

As far as I'm concerned, for a family who does well with formal teaching, worksheets etc, MFWK and 1st math does not work. The "conceptual math" based on games and daily life didn't translate to anything meaningful. We replaced it with Singapore Math (which is also the HOD and Sonlight recommendation) and it's going extremely well. I've ordered RightStart Math (used) and Horizons math to compare all three programs, since it's important to me to start with the program we plan on using for High School.

History is covered in MFW1st in conjunction with the Bible. It's good, but there's no world history integrated with it, which I feel helps to contextualize our world with the Bible. So we've added in HOD history with "History for Little Pilgrims" and "History Stories For Children".

Science in MFW1st is incredibly light for my kiddos. Why would they want to do the 3 R's every day and leave the "cool stuff" to only twice a week, one of those days being a reading assignment!? So I wrote down the themes from both programs and have combined them. Now they get to do science 4 times a week. Much better.

As far as the "fun" that they're looking for, is HOD all the way! There are fingerplays (we learned the continents in the first week with a little creation fingerplay) and fun activities. They love them all.

That, in a nutshell, is how to combine MFW1st with HOD LHFHG. Every day, make sure you do your vital subjects (the 3 R's - Reading, Writing and Arithmatic) and everything else is icing on the cake. Our icing on the cake includes French, Home Economics and Galloping the Globe but these are done if and when we feel like it at this point, since we are also doing LHTH and growing a 5 month old!

If you're combining programs, please let me know how it's going, or leave your blog address or web site - I'd love to take a peek!