This is an awesome site I am so glad I found it. My name is Andrea, and this is my first year homeschooling. We are eight weeks into the school year, and it has been awesome. Kaitlyn is taking each subject by leaps and bounds. Praise the Lord! She finally gets math and it is no longer her struggling subject that she dreads to do but wants to do! We are using an Abeka boxed curriculum which is really working well for us except history. It is soooo boring it is just not grabbing her attention and she doesnt want to do it. I have considered a more literature rich history curriculum for next year but not sure what to do now. Any ideas on spicing it up? or maybe a different approach or book? Thank you in advance for ideas.
Many history/social studies books are boring alone. You can take the facts from the books and teach it in a way that grabs your childs attention. The exciting thing about homeschooling is you do not have to go by the book. As long as your child is learning, this is what matters. We make little dolls out of clothes pins and dress them up for whatever the lesson might be. You can have puppet shows and act out the lesson. Socks are fabulous for this. Make it fun and exciting. You can get poems, songs, activity sheets of the web. Like I said, take the important information from the book and then apply it in a creative way. As your child gets older then you can adjust and have her get more into the book but for now set things up so she enjoys homeschooling. I am assuming your child is a youngster. How old is she? By the way, WELCOME!!! We have a great time around here. Glad you can join us. Patty
Welcome, Andrea! We used Abeka history last year, and quit using it for tht reason... BORING!! I was constantly finding things to go with it to make it more interesting! If you want ot use it for the rest of the year, I would do as Patty suggested and take the info from the book and find ways to make it appealing. If the book just isn't working for you, consider unit studies for this year. BTW... I'm Pam. I have 4 kids (10,8,5,2). we ar ein our 3rd yea of hs'ing. I hope you like it here. These ladies are full of great information!
Thank you for the ideas. When it comes to history my creativity level is low. Kaitlyn is 10,and I think she would love making dolls. She doesnt leave the house without at least two baby dolls so I think that will be a hit.
Welcome, Andrea to a wonderful site. I am Jennifer, out of SC also. I have 4 kids, 1 grand and am hsing my younger 2. One idea for dolls is to buy wooden spools (like thread come on) and round wooden balls. My sis had sent the girls some a few years ago and they had the best time using old fabric for clothes and yarn for hair to include braids. They really tripped me out, though, when they showed me a "pregnant" one they had made using a hair bead under the clothes to look like the doll was pregant.
Welcome Andrea I am Kris from Tx going on my 5th year of homeschooling my two dd's whom are in the 8th and 6th grade.
Howdy and welcome aboard! I am Leslie and I have a ds11 and a dd9. We are in our 2nd yr of hs and loving it!
Hi, WELCOME! I have 3: 5th-dd, 8th-ds, and 11th-ds. We've been homeschooling since our oldest was in 2nd grade. The other two have always homeschooled. We love it! There are interesting history ideas. Jackie does MOH (Mystery of History, that has a religious base), I do SOTW (Story of the World, that includes some Bible stories, but is more secular.) with the Activity book. Both of those have ideas and lesson plans for some great stuff you can do with your kids! My kids love history, and part of the reason is because it's so much more interesting to do history this way! BTW, I am Christian-based, but I hadn't heard of MOH when I ordered SOTW. I have added to the info. in SOTW with the booklets from www.timelinesetc.com We have the Old Testament, New Testament and "Middle Ages Renaissance and Reformation" books from them. We have a big timeline on our wall and use the figures from the booklets to color and put up. My two younger ones are the ones I am doing this with. They each have their own timeline book and put figures, dats and info. in those also. The timelines on the walls will come down, but they can always keep the timeslines in the books! I love that my kids love history, and it's fun making recipes, doing crafts, building lego or sugarcube pyriamids, measuring how big Noah's ark was, etc. We've just had such a fun time! I wish I would've learned history this way, but at least I get to do it this way now!
As Deena said, I'm doing Mystery of History and loving it. We did Vol. I in two years, with three children (currently ages 12, 10, and 6). This year we started Vol. II. It must be done in just one year, because my oldest is now part of a History Co-op one afternoon a week, and we need to stay on their time frame. It's very good! As far as this year goes, there's nothing that says you MUST continue with Abeka's history. You might consider just using it for your "spine", adding to it lots of historical fiction and other good literature, and hands-on activities. There's really a lot out there! What time frame are you talking about? If you let us know, we might be able to give you some good resources that your library might have. I'm an "expert" right now on Ancient literature, since that's what we spent the last two years on! Also, your librarian will be able to give you some great titles!
Thank you all for the warm welcome. Right now we are in India ancient and then present.I am going to use emmas idea on the dolls and make some playdoh to build thier homes. I also bought some cheap fabric for her to use as a sari. Our next ch. is covering countries of far east China, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Chinese Sphere. Time frame for each is ancient and then present.
I never thought of using playdoe (sp?) for the dolls and homes. Thanks for the idea!!! We will have a great time with this. Patty
Another neat idea instead of play dough is what I think is call sculpeze?(SP) I know that Joanns, Walmart and Target all carry it. It is a little pricey but it is nice in that you bake it after you use it and then it is nice and hard. Jennifer
I plan to hot glue them to a square piece of cardboard and put other symbols for the food ,religion, etc. So she will remember the culture. We are studing India so the clothes pins will be wearing saris to hehe. We will start on this towmorrow and build on it each day as we read and learn more.
Kachelsi, it sounds like you're doing great! We're in vol. II of "Mystery of History" & really appreciate it, like others have also said. Linda Hobar, the author, hasn't come out with vol. III yet; so I'm not sure what we'll do next yr. A Jr. college has offered to let our twins (who are sophomores now) enroll for duel credit next yr., so we'll probably do that. (I would underline the title of Linda's book, but I can't get that to work.) Anyway, if you supplement your dolls & textbook with biographies & historical fiction from the library, you'll do fine. Welcome!
Prarie Home, did you know there's a Yahoo group for MOH users? I was part of it when we started MOH I. I think they even have a group for MOH II with older kids! At that time, she was ready to come out with Vol. II, and said she was going to take a year off before starting on Vol. III. She's probably started it by now, but I would guess that it would be AT LEAST two yeaars before it's ready for publication. After all, she's a wife and HS'ing mom, just like rest of us! I heard her laugh at our conference in Ohio that she'll have it all done just in time to homeschool her grandkids, lol!
No, I didn't, Jackie. We'll try to look into that. Thanks! In vol. I, Linda invited the students to write to her. They did, & she wrote a post card back. That was fun! You heard her speak! I'd love to meet her!
I think once I'm done with the SOTW series, I'll get the MOH! That way we'll be going through the same stuff again, but in a different way. I think that will be good! Prairie, it helped me to read about you using MOH with your twins, cuz I wasn't quite sure the highest grades it can be used in.
I'll be going through my Ancient History a second time with Streams of Civilization, at least with Rachael. My DSSs used it at a Christian High School, and it's an excellent book.
