hi! This is our first year, we are on our third day of this and so far it has been exciting! We are going through a charter, so we need to meet the state standards(CA), which for this year are mostly just early American history, up to 1850 I think. The Social Studies book seems very BORING. I don't know if they all are, or it is just the one we have. I didn't have time to research and pick curriculum, so they just ordered me a boxed set, but I have the option of swapping things out if they arent working for us. I would love someone to point me in the right direction, even if it means continuing to use the book we have, but supplemental things to hold her interest as well. The book we have is McGraw Hill, United States Adventures in Time and Place. My daughter pointed out that it must be really old if it had the population listed for 1997 and the estimated population for 2000.. I think we might have the same problem with science, that is McGraw Hill also. BBOOORRRRRIIIIIINNNGGGGG! I don't know if it is just me and I am a little bit too anti-typical textbook or what, but I'd love to explore other options before she gets frustrated with these subjects! I am very overwhelmed with what we are doing and feel like I have bitten off more than I could chew.
TMom can answer best for you. She is from CA and I am sure is full of info for you. If she doesn't see this send her a pm.
For US history, we used The Complete Book of United States History and supplemented it with lots of trips to the library and hands on activites we found online or made up ourselves. For science.. if you want Christian then Apologia is amazing. We are a secular family and have started using Prentice Hall's Science Explorer.. though it's a textbook, it has clicked the best with my son out of everything we have ever used!
We used Story of the world last year (the book and student activity guide) and the kids really liked it - even my 12 yr old! Plus, you can supplement with lots of literature, which is what we do. My familyd link below has our book lists and lesson ideas -- and many catalogs (like Sonlight and Veritas Press and Beautiful Feet Books) even if you don't use their program, are a great source of extra materials and literature. I also recommend History Pockets - they are full of hands on activities for different historical periods. The Activities guide for Story of the world also has lots of stuff to do, like costumes, food, and the like. You can also do stuff like use American Girl or Little House on the Prairie books and activities to supplement what you do as well. We are doing American History this year as well (early American this year, and it looks like modern America next year!) and we do read alouds from a story text like Story of the World; we do a large wall timeline together, then more specific, individual timelines in our notebooks. The kids write lots of 1-2 paragraph biographies, read literature about historical figures, and do projects based on that history. We use a charter in CA as well, so I know where you are coming from, but I pick and choose what I want to use, just to avoid stuff like this. If you want to see what something looks like before you order it, try rainbowresource.com They have a huge online catalog. I love it as they are a vendor for our Charter, so we order most of our stuff from them. I hope all this helps! We've used Charters for going on 3 years now, and have hs'd for 9, so you can also pm me if you have more specific questions. Good luck!!
We use a charter school in CA but we have access to many different types of text books, I found when my youngest was in 5th that for history we used Story of the world. And science was terrible so we went to using consumables such as Steck Vaugh Wonders of Science Matter, Motion and Machine. They have I think 8 different books and subjects and it's what got us through science plus a hands on science class that we took at the charter school. Since we've now worked our way through all those books we had to get a textbook this year and it's boring but it could of been as bad as the one we had that first year.
abookintime.com has lists of books to read for each time period and also some activities - I was on it yesterday selecting supplemental reading material for my 4th grader. We are doing Sonlight 4 ie 2nd half of US History - so last year we did the first half. Some things she really enjoyed were watching the movie 1776 and more recently playing Liberty's Kids CD Rom (also an online website) and playing Oregon Trail CD Rom Meryl
Hey I saw my name! cool! hehe, We used Exploring American History which we got through the internet, it was on a site that lists whole sets but we chose what we wanted from it. IT studied the exploreres and beginings of USA pretty well from the persons point of view, we went on to look at maps and did some Scholastics projects , scholastics.com has good things there California standards are fun arent they? We do not use a Charter but Emma's Number one Fan used to I think... same state. We watched movies about the beginings as well to supplilment and add flair to the studies. if you have to submit a form and if the Charter pays you back I would go look at both Amazon.com and Cbd.com and maybe even CLP I forget what the actual letters stand for but that is where I got the History books from and they have the teacher masters and such for a cheaper price because it is basic not colorful lol. I also agree to check otu Story of the World because if it was okayed by one charter you may be able to get it okayed by yours too! Both mentioned here are written in same style which is why we are using Mystery of HIstory this year becuase we like the way its set up too.
