I want to integrate history and English and use real books. I know there are several prewritten programs out there, but I have not liked anything I have seen yet. One, I don't like having 5 books going at once, which seems to be common on many of the programs. I also like to draw from a variety of sources, from movies to museums, etc. Anyone just pull together their own resources and study the subject at hand without following a pre-written guide from someone else?
Not at that age level. By high school I start quivering in my shoes and whimpering uncontrollably . So much for being a super mom.
Take a look at Notgrass History. Rachael is doing it right now, and I think TeacherMom has used it, too. It counts as three credits: 1 history, 1 literature, and 1 Bible. The list of books for World History are: Mere Christianity (Lewis), The Cat of Bubastes (Henty), Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), The Imitation of Christ (Kempis), Here I Stand (Bainton), Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan), A Tale fo Two Cities (Dickens), Pride and Prejudice (Austen), Heart of Darkness (Conrad), Eric Liddell: Pure Gold (McCaseland), The Hiding Place (Ten Boom), Animal Farm (Orwell), and The Abolition of Man (Lewis) They have a U.S. History course, too, but I don't have the list for it.
I don't do that for all the subjects. But we are doing something like that for World History. We jump around, but tend to stay in the same continent for a period of time. I don't think he needs to know everything, so I find books that point out major things. Or we use videos. I decided to read to him about East Timor (from a library book) today, it was pretty fascinating what this little piece of land has been through. I learned a lot today. I didn't even know where it was. COOL!! We are going to watch a video for some more Asian history about the Korean War. That could go for US history, but it deals with Asian history also. He loves to watch History Channel stuff, so this will be good. History is also a class that I am probably not going to test in, or if I do-very little.
I'm right there with ya, momofafew. We were doing SOS for history and I chucked it a couple months ago. Ds13 is a history buff and SOS was so boring for a naturally curious person to be burdened with. History is one subjec that I know ds learns about on his own in his spare time, so no worries here about it being "enough". I did make sure to find out a general time period to study. We started out in December witha a fiction book written from a 14yo boy's perspective of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We then chose books with real accounts of WWI since we both agreed that WWI education seems to always be overlooked. After that, we will move on to WWII and so on. He has been watching history documentaries for years anyway so he is already way ahead of the game if you want to do a ps comparison of material learned. I would say that the information he retains far surpasses what is taught in most college level history courses. I did focus this year (8th grade) on US history since he had to take his US and IL constitution tests. Next year will probably be world history, but there is nothing that says what time period is mandatory, so I'm going to let him chose what/where he would like to learn about. We have a Kingfisher World History Encyclopedia that is great of browsing through or using a springboard for ideas on what route to take. Have fun! We absolutely love this approach so far. I plan on encorporating writing into history or whatever subject ds feels like writing a paper on. I understand that "in life he won't always have those options". True. But until he is highly motivated to complete requirements for his chosen field in life, I don't think he will pour himself into useless paper-writing 'just cuz'. Know what I mean? If the goal is to learn how to write, it might as well be something you want to write about. Sorry so long. Just really excited about how much more we are getting out of history now.
I always pull together my own resources and never follow a pre-written guide from someone else. To combine History and English, I would recommend a book that I love called All through the Ages by Christine Miller. It is a History through Literature Guide. Rainbow Resource sells it and you can read reviews of it on their site. You could study History in order and choose which books you want your teen to read. Then you could require them to write papers on those books and watch movies, go on fields trips, etc. It would make it interesting and fun. Many times you can find free online quizzes for the books you read or you could make up your own.
Yep! I was just going to suggest that! MY dd loved it! in fact we nwo own Pride and prejudice andd several other Austen movies and books because she enjoyed them and of course so did I! If you wanted to you could take lists from several of these books though and put them in the orders that you wish to use them. The idea is marvelous!
I am working on that right now, so I'm so glad you asked this question. My kids LOVE history and LOVE reading. We use Sonlight now, but after researching other things there are other great books out there that aren't on Sonlight's list. I also don't like reading a bunch of books at once (two max) so I've modified Sonlight a good bit this year to accomodate that. We're a somewhat "classical" homeschool, so we have already covered world history twice. I was going to do a complete world history, but it was overwhelming, so I decided to break it up. I looked at several programs (Sonlight,Beautiful Feet, Winter Promise and another CM list) and compiled a list of all the books they covered, then looked to see what overlapped, then researched reviews to see what might be the best for our family based on what we've already read. (I want to take a look at Notgrass and All Through the Ages now to tweak my list!) Right now my *must read* list includes: Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt Mara, Daughter of the Nile The Golden Goblet Hittite Warrior The Bronze Bow Augustus Caesars World Then I have a list of about 15-20 others that I haven't fully researched yet. Thanks for the ideas ladies!
Oh, Jill, be sure to add "The God King" on your list! It's about a boy who "accidently" ends up being Pharoah, and has to flee from his half-brother (who SHOULD HAVE been king), and ends up in Jerusalem when Sennecharib is coming against King Hezikiah.
Jackie- That one did make my "short list" of the 20 or so more left to research. Glad to hear a good review from you...that puts it over the top to a "must read." Thanks for making my job easier.
Jill, check out this very old post. It's a book list that goes along with MOH, but it can supplement ANY history on the ancients! http://www.homeschoolspot.com/showthread.php?t=5108&highlight=ancient+history+book+list
