2015-2016 Homeschool Plan: Science, History & Geography

Powering through with science, history & geography... ;)

SCIENCE: Last year's unit study approach went okay. We definitely enjoyed our units on astronomy, lockpicking, physics and the like and I enjoyed that each topic only lasted the six week session. The "okay" part is because I feel like we just really didn't put much effort into it. It's difficult because the boys claim to already know most of the things we cover. (This has actually always been part of our problem, lol. And, honestly, they usually *do* already know.)

This year, I'm going to worry less about the actual science and more about using science to teach note-taking and study skills. I'm using CPO Science's middle school series. We'll tackle earth, life and physical science. We'll go through them fairly briskly. (I'm guessing they're intended to be broken out to cover each one for a year but I'm using them more as review and to make sure I'm not leaving gaps.) I know that the textbook-y approach isn't the most exciting but I think/hope it will make for a more straight-forward lesson in note-taking, etc.

ETA: We'll also enjoy our monthly Tinker Crates. :)

HISTORY: Last year I combined world and US history, tackling things in six sessions again. I took Reconstruction (1865) to 2000 and broke it into six chunks. Within each of those, I used Story of the World Volume 4 and The Story of Us (books 7-10) as the framework and added supplementary books. I really enjoyed how it worked and ended up reading a number of awesome books...some with the boys and some just on my own for fun. :) 

With history, I feel like we've really covered things pretty well. We've made it, twice, through the four year classical history rotation (ancients, medieval, early modern, modern). Given various circumstances, I'm now attempting to cover the four year rotation one last time and in just two years. So. This year I want to tackle both ancient and medieval history. Rather than read through the history, though, I'm going to take 2-3 of our sessions for each and have the boys work with me to make a general timeline...to pick out the most important events, people, battles, buildings, etc. As with science, I'm less concerned this year with the content being covered as with the process of teaching boys to sort out main points and make outlines and the like. 

GEOGRAPHY: Last year, for world geography, I tried to use Mapping the World With Art by Ellen McHenry but decided after a few lessons that it was too advanced for us at this point. So we didn't really cover world geography last year. For US geography, we used 50 States and Where to Find Them, and that went pretty well.

This year, I simply want to review both world and US geography. I don't have a curriculum in mind...just want to divide up the states and continents and cover a portion each session.

Wish us luck!