Last week there was a used curriculum fair near me and I went not really needing anything but hoping to find some living books. Well, I found tons of living books, but I also found 2 curriculums that I have been wanting to try but not sure if I really wanted to pay for them. But, because of the price I bought them both. I bought Sonlight 1st grade language arts IG, and TOG Y1 U 3-4. Now after looking them over I think I like TOG much better. So, my question is have any of you used TOG and if so, how did you like it? Was is teacher intensive? What are the pros and cons of both Sonlight and TOG? Can anyone compare the two for me?
I drool over both of them..lol I hear TOG is really full of hands on activities. I just am not good at following a written curriculum.. and do better just going on my own (it satisfies my need to tweek without me feeling like I wasted a ton of $$ on something I'm not really using. I'm also not keen on making sure it's secular enough for us ahead of time... if I pay I want open and go so I don't have to think..lol
After looking through both curriculums, it looks like TOG is VERY religious through every subject. I don't see a way to make it secular. It does have a LOT of hands on things that I am excited about. I do see ways to make Sonlight more secular however. If they hadn't been so cheap ($5 each set) at the fair, I wouldn't have bought them. I too like things I don't have to tweak much and since I don't need secular, TOG looks like it will work for us.
I didn't have a hard time secularizing SL when we did it a couple years back. I'm not completely sure why I didn't stay with it.. but really all we used it for was history, kind of ended up being expensive just for history. I'm glad to hear TOG would be hard. Hands on sounds fun, but not if it means a ton of work for me..lol.
