After having a great year last year with MFW (countries and cultures), I was very excited to move on to that this year (Genesis through Greeks), but alas....my dc had other ideas. My 11yo dd wants to learn about American History, post Revolution to pre-industrial and my 10yo ds want to learn about early explorers, Marco Polo, Magellen, etc. And of course they want to do it with historical fictions and LOTS of books from the library. (We loved that about MFW). I'm struggling a bit with where to start. I've done some searching to try to find some books only to have a headache and less hair several hours later. LOL!!!!! I'm certainly not new to hs, and would certainly not force the curriculum I want to do, but I'm just about ready to scream. So, I'm taking a step back. Anybody out there (or even on, this time of year):lol: have any suggestions?
oh, my. I'd hate to lose them by not going with their interests, and hey, if a kid WANTS to learn, it would be stupid to discourage them. But at the same time, it would drive me bonkers to go out of order like that. LOL And to split up two kids into two different eras(I assume you combine them?) seems like twice the work. If it were me, I would take a deep breath and repeat to myself, "It's ok that it's not chronological" and then declare that Mon and Wed are Ameri History days, and Tues and Thur are explorer days. Sorry, that's all I have.
Try visiting Veritas Press. They tie in a lot of literature with their history units: http://resource2.veritaspress.com/Bible_History.html Any of the links marked 'resources' will bring up a list of corresponding books with that time period. If you visit their main page - veritaspress.com - you can click on a grade level and then on 'literature' and see some fictional books that often correspond to the historical time period studied on that grade level. That might give you a start anyway.
Take a look at Learning Adventures, too. Very cool unit study approach with all the scheduling/activities planned out for you. Also, look at Time Travelers from Homeschool Through the Woods... it doesn't have literature with it, but it would be easy to grab some books at the library to go along with it. It has lots of hands-on stuff that my son enjoyed. I agree with Leissa - I would probably do only one time period per day.
Sonlight.com is an excellent place to get reading lists. It will describe the books and when/where they are. Also, if you google "juvenile historical fiction" you'll get A LOT of lists that are out there of the things that are historical, etc. I do a lot of historical fiction with our history. What age are your kids?
THeir stuff is EXCELLENT and encompasses sooooo much more than history. Lots of hands on projects, and such. ALSO, there are MANY MANY books suggestions with each CD. Each on is 25 lessons that you can spread out and expand on as much as you'd like. We did the Explorers set, took us 3 months because we had so much fun with it!!!
The Time Travellers World War II from Homeschool in the Woods is amazing! You stars for finding that! Many thanks!
Time Travelers looks like a lot of fun. I was a bit concerned it might be too "young" but seeing some of you have kiddos about my kiddos ages was helpful. Learning Adventures looked great too. I wish I could just pull the history part out. haha!! I'm already feeling LOTS better about this. Thanks.
Here's just a thought (and what I have done with my Ds16 who is an historian at heart). If you have a plan--especially if the plan is chronological--stick to it with your curriculum. If they have interests in other areas, make sure they have access to books and videos to explore on their own time. This has worked very well for us.
