2013-14 Homeschool Plan: History & Geography
Friday, July 26, 2013 at 12:04PM History is another of those subjects that we do together. We do both world and US history. For both, we're just going to be continuing what we did last year. :)
So. For WORLD HISTORY, we'll cover Volume 3 of Story of the World. This year, I'm going to work at more intentionally incorporating projects and games (like Timeline, which I recently discovered but haven't tried yet) and will also start giving tests each session.
For US HISTORY, we'll cover the 1800's...books 4-7 in Joy Hakim's A History of US. We'll supplement that with lessons out of Critical Thinking in US History-New Republic to Civil War. We used both last year and will simply continue. I really like how the Critical Thinking program offers more ways to look at historic events and encourages kids to think about how information is presented.
As with history, we do both world geography and US geography.
For WORLD GEOGRAPHY, I'm making my own plan. Since we'll have six sessions, I'm going to cover one continent each session (and omit Antarctica...sorry, Antarctica!). During each of those sessions, we'll spend the first week reviewing the countries, landmarks & physical features. The next week will introduce some stories from that continent. The third week will cover history of that continent. The fourth week will cover current events on that continent. And the last two weeks my plan is to have the boys work together to plan a trip to that continent...what would they want to see? how would they travel? what currency would they need? how many time zones will be covered? what customs will they need to be mindful of? The list goes on...I'm hoping it will be as fun as it is in my head.
(Obviously, this will all be limited and not all-inclusive, but it should give the boys a nice picture of each continent and we can work from there in the future.)
It may be worth noting to some that I initially thought perhaps I'd just read through "Around the World in 80 Days" and follow that travel plan and study the areas passed through during the year. I even found some lesson plans online to help. But then I actually tried to read the book. And I decided my new plan is more interesting and comprehensive. ;)
For US GEOGRAPHY, I'm going to go through the 50 states again...this time adding in things like postal abbreviations and the history of how that state got its shape, altogether instead of separately as I've touched on in the past. As with world geography, I'll build in more time for review and also for planning road trips. :)
Reader Comments (2)
Thanks for sharing! So many good ideas. I always enjoy looking at someone else's curriculum choices--gives me lots of food for thought. Enjoy the rest of your summer!
I love your world geography and US geography plan! It sounds very fun. Daniel is interested in states right now, but I may steal your idea for future grades. :) We love learning that way. I like the six session idea. Although, at this point we pretty much school year round, taking breaks randomly when going on vacation or such. I'll have to think about implementing something like the 6/2 idea later on. It seems easy to think about it in the framework of six chunks. :) More to think about...although I'd like to maybe do only 3-4 days a week so maybe we'll do 6/1. :) Hum...lots to think about.