It's so nice that I'm not homeschooling on an island. I mean, I guess I could do it on an island and I'm sure we'd learn a lot. But what I'm saying is, I'm really thankful that I'm not in the pioneering generation of homeschoolers. I have friends who are late 20s/early 30s who were homeschooled themselves, and now they are homeschooling their children.
I have friends who homeschooled their children, who are now graduates or high schoolers.
And I have friends who are right here with me, starting out and with younger kids.
I LOVE that I can obtain so many perspectives from friends! And of course the internet has lots of opinions. What a convenient time I'm in.
Anyway.
So I'm getting some history ideas from friends and soaking it in. I wanted to share just a few things that are standing out to me:
This post at Memoria Press called "History is Not Chronological." I am not familiar with the company or their general education philosophy, but this article really, really resonated with me. See part 2 here, at "How to Teach History Chronologically."
Another influential article, this time from Beautiful Feet: "When Should I Teach Ancient History?"
It's curriculum round-up week at The Curriculum Choice, and here are a ton of reviews for history and geography. Perfect timing, folks!
I own a resource called "All Through the Ages" which is a very well-organized book list for history titles. I may get it spiral-bound or do contact paper on the cover or something, because this is a book I will use for many years to help get ideas for library books and such for specific time periods. Love it.
Linking for future reference: a pro-ancient history in 1st grade thread from Well-Trained Mind forums (with some who are not doing ancients/wouldn't recommend it). And here's "is there a case against teaching history chronologically."
Wanted to link up a book and movie list matchup for historical eras since that post isn't particularly good for Pinterest.
Soo...I'm less anti-ancients in early years than I was a few days ago. I'm still not completely sure of what I want to do, though.
Ooh, and I remember we definitely talked about Mesopotamia and the "fertile crescent" and I'm wanting to say that was 6th grade? Perhaps? It's starting to come back to me in bits.
p.s. Blogger has been eating comments! So if you want to comment here, I would suggest typing it and then copying it to your clipboard just in case.
*crossing fingers that Blogger doesn't eat me*
ReplyDeleteOoh, that's a great idea to spiral-bind the All Through the Ages book. I hope to use my copy for years too, and I just don't know how well it will hold up :-P. Would you go to Staples or Office Depot or somewhere like that?
If you aren't thinking a chronological history, I know there are tons of resources out there that do unit studies. Have you looked into those? I've never done unit studies (either growing up or with my own kids), but I know many people who love them :-).
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