We are still new to homeschooling (3 1/2 months now!), and I'm beginning to pick out our curriculum for the upcoming school year. My two daughters that are school aged will be in 2nd and 3rd grade. Has anyone used a history curriculum that they just loved? That is the one subject that I am just totally lost on. Any info/opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Kristi
We used Story of the World at that age. It has a read-aloud (or you could assign the reading independent), tests and an activity book. I am about to start with book 1 again, this time with my 6 year old.
Mystery of History. I absolutely love it. Very similar to Story of the World, only it is more Christian based while STOW is more secular. The advantage of both of these programs is that you can use it with all ages at once.
The fact that you can use it with multiple ages is whats great about these two programs. It is soooo much easier when you can combine subjects.
Is there a science program like that as well? Where I can teach both of the girls with one curriculum rather than each having their own? I'm checking in to the history now, thanks your help!
Yes, there's science programs, too. I've used ""Considering God's Creation" when my kids were 3, 6, and 8. Of course, my littlest one didn't do much, but he would sit and listen and do some of the fun stuff. So then we went to plant flowers at my mom's for Mother's Day, and Dad came out with some fertilizer to put on it. My youngest asked, "What's that, Grandpa?" "It's plant food." "Oh, no, Grandpa! You don't understand! Plants make their own food from the sun!" LOL! Grandpa was REALLY impressed! There's others, too, but that's the one I know. Another good one for kids as young as yours might be Great Science Adventures series. I liked them, too!
I second Jackie's picks. We are using both of those with my dd11. She did both when she was younger, too, but she wasn't ready to really dig into the material when she was 6. Both of those (Mystery of History and Considering God's Creation) offer activities for kids at different levels in each lesson, so even though my dd did some of it before, she is doing different activities so it doesn't seem as though she has done it before. At the age your children are, my ds was very into digging deeply into learning new information; however, my dd was not. For that reason, we used Christian Liberty Press's Nature Readers along with books and readers about animals, plants, solar system, etc. to keep dd's interested on the level she was at. Then ds would ask questions and we would dig through other books to find answers. I'm glad I didn't use a strict curriculum during the phase they were finding out their interests and playing off of their natural curiosity.
I've used several that I like. I've done Evan Moor History Pockets. If you want to do more than one of them in a year, then it is cost effective to join www.Teacherfilebox.com. In fact, you can go to that site at view everything they have. Currently, we are using Time Travelers. It is full of fun activities from which to pick and choose. It is cost effective. Story of the World was good. Its study guide recommends narrating each chapter back either verbally or in writing. It also has comprehension questions for each chapter as well as coloring pages, maps and activities. You could also do a literature based approach. Sonlight has lots of good ideas. A Child's History of the World is a concise World History in a readable and interesting format. Dear America and My Name is America series are historic fiction written in diary format; my daughter devoured them. Magic Tree House books are also good for elementary history; many have a non-fiction guide to accompany them. While the actual conversations and some of the things that happen to the individuals is made up, the larger events are very accurate in all of those series. Sonlight and Veritas Press also recommend books that are of a higher literary quality that give young children a interesting look at the past; there sites are worth perusing.
One more thing...if you want something challenging, Veritas Press has a history program. They stress memorization based on the idea that young children can memorize easily. At a young age they can prepare the "pegs" to hang future, more indepth learning on.
I have loved Sonlight for History! We did Core 2 this year (2/3rd grade). It covers from the fall of Rome through modern times. It is great and dd has picked up and remembered a ton of the material. It is a literature based approach. You use CHOW and Usborne World History as the spine and then there are some great books you read to reinforce the history.
I just looked at TruthQuest for my kids and was impressed with the samples I saw. It definately would work for multiple kids. the only reason I am not going with it is because it is a lit-based program and we are out in the sticks with a horrendously inadequate library that has none of the books in the TQguide. I end up going with BJU Heritage Series for history, which is not "amazing", just "ok". For science, we did Cons. Gods Creation as well and my kids loved it. Next year we will be doing God's Design for Life by Answers in Genesis. It is designed to be used with mixed ages as well.
We used Noeo Science. www.noeoscience.com It's packaged with all the books, experiments you need plus a schedule outlining what you need to do for the day. When we used it, I did not feel overwhelmed by the schedule at all. You can do 2 or 4 days a week. And another good thing was the experiments almost always worked! So no disappointment. (I don't know about everyone else, but whenever we do experiments, they don't turn out ).
We are using Mystery of History, and Exploring Gods Creation with Astronomy. We LOVE them both. I have a 1st and 2nd/3rd graders. Both of them are pretty easy to just pick up and read. Both of them we just sit on the couch and read the lessons, and talk about it. Then usually we do a short activity. With MOH the activity is usually coloring the figures for a timeline. Which figuring out what time line or how to do the time line was the most difficult for me because I am weird like that. We have also used salt dough to make things, or something really simple like that. Astronomy is both my kids favorite subject. They often ask me to read lessons to them at bedtime instead of a bedtime story. The activities are really really simple. I don't read ahead or plan ahead either. We do MOH 3 times a week and science 2 days a week. I am really liking school this year, because it is easy for me to do, and the kids are enjoying learning.
I am going to be using Mystery of History with my girls next year. They will be in 5th and 3rd grades. We also plan on using Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day for science. It's another one where you can cover multiple ages at once and is Christian based science.
Just a few more ideas that would work for history and science for multiple grades Real Science 4 Kids Time Travelers www.homeschoolinthewoods.com Trail Guide to US History I am ordering this for next year. I have not used it yet, but I think it looks good.
