I lost my big ole long post. sigh. Suffice it to say, I've spent too much money on history curriculum but I don't think what I have is working for us and I want to go with something else. I'd love prayer for wisdom and provision, and I'd like to know if I'm allowed to post things for sale if I decide to sell the curriculum that I'm not using (even though it's great curriculum!) There are a few details on my blog this morning if you want to know more. Originally, I'd typed more specifics on the history in question but I'm not up for redoing it now! lol
Michelle, if diagramming is the only thing that's not working for you about the CLE LA, they do have a $4 workbook (with a $4 answer key) that covers all 8 grades of the diagramming they teach. Very easy to catch up to where you are, and refer back to whenever you need to.
Thanks, Lindina! I also saw they recommend an English Handbook or something, that we don't have. But this post is actually our TruthQuest History Guides. I was mixing Abeka with Truthquest, planning to slow down and dig deeper with living books and the guides at certain key points, but the living books approach just isn't working for us. I miss My Father's World. My dd likes the Abeka because it's more like "real school" but I don't think she's retaining as much and I think it's dry and boring. She SAYS she likes it but she's not looking forward to history each day or having fun or discussing anything with me, etc. She just hasn't been de-institutionalized from ps enough. And since she's going back next year, ... blah. CLE is not just the diagramming. We're diving into a progeny press lit guide right now and I'll use CLE as needed along with whatever else I can find to fill in some grammar gaps. I'm not as concerned because the CLE was pretty cheap for an entire year's curriculum. Thanks!
I think it's very easy to combine living books with Abeka History! We did that a couple years ago - we read the text and answered the study questions for each section. For their language arts I would find a book that coincided with that period of history (Sonlight is AWESOME to glean historical fiction for certain time periods). It usually worked out that they'd read a chapter or two a day. And I'd have them fill out a daily form that had a spot for summarizing the chapter, a spot for looking up words in the dictionary that they didn't know, and a spot for copywork of their favorite sentence from that chapter. It worked very nicely.
What are you using now? Are you looking for a more traditional textbook approach or something different?
Would you be able to make unit studies out of the main points or is your kiddo strictly a traditional learner?
Kaitlyn likes the Abeka. I chose it for it's independant nature and it's scope (creation thru modern history). We skipped the first 4 chapters and started with greece in chapter 5 because we'd studied creation up to Greeks last year in MFW. I do miss sitting down with her to read Bible passages and discuss God's hand in history like we did with MFW but it's also nice to be able to assign the reading and questions to her to do on her own. I bought the TruthQuest guides but never pick them up (barely). I had her read some of the commentary and look through some books on Greece I picked up at the library but we aren't working through all the activities together or discussing things. I'm not getting to the library enough to pick up the books and each day I'm feeling too overwhelmed to bother sorting through what pages I want to focus on and find books for, and which activities to do, etc. She hasn't liked reading the commentaries only. She prefers the Abeka and wants to keep moving right along. We're on chapter 8 in Abeka (Rome after Christ). I'd also purchased Drive Thru History on Rome and we watched that. So we aren't moving through Abeka as quickly as we could because some days I've had us watching the dvd and I don't want to rush this time period around Christ. I'm looking for something that will both keep us moving along at a fairly good clip, that she can do independently when needed, but that we could add some do-togethers periodically. I was wanting MFW again but last night she said she doesn't want to do that. What I am wondering today, is if I could carve out the time to put together something a bit similar to MFW (as far as the scheduled things) with what I liked about it but using the Abeka curriculum. I'd have to look at each chapter and find Bible passages I wanted us to read together (some are referenced in the curric already so I'd have to find them and schedule them as read-togethers rather than glossing over them as merely a reference in the text). What I find is I'm not liking the unbalance. I can't always do the chapters with her and sometimes I do need to have her work independantly. But I find it hard to jump back in and get myself up to speed when I want to take part. I want to be a part when I can but that's not every day. I have a two year old who clings to me and is not an independent player yet. Even when I find fascinating things for him to do, he wants me to be right there with him. I can only put him off so long, and he'll only be a little boy for so long. I spend a lot of time simply keeping him from bugging his sister so she can do her work. So I need flexibility. During his naptime we work together. But sometimes that's history, sometimes it's LA, sometimes it's a science experiment. It's different each day which subject(s) we can do together and which she has to do on her own. But my heart wants to keep as up to speed with her as possible, to find those times of discovering new things together and connecting everything with the Word of God. Krista, we just started reading Anne of Green Gables and are going to make that our main LA for now (Progeny Press Guide). Didn't the books you got for the time period take a lot longer to go through than the Abeka chapter? I don't mind slowing down but I do want to finish most, if not all, of the Abeka text by the end of the year. She's going to public high school next year and I want her to be familiar with basic history. If I slow down for one time period, I expect it will mean moving more quickly through something else to make up for it, lol. I'm not a very good organizer or decision-maker. Hopefully when my other daughter comes home for Jr High I'll be better at this.
