Another Spielvogel question (or 2 or 3)

[Pip]

I was on abebooks.com and I saw the Texas teachers edition. What exactly is this? Is there a general teacher's edition? Does it really matter? I am assuming the TX edition is tied in with state testing and it really doesn't matter.

 

If you like this text, what do you use to round out your high school requirements? Our state does not require econ, but we do require government and American History.

 

Also, is this a good stand alone program or is it used as spine for a study using other books? I saw someone uses it with Omnibus.

 

Thanks, and hopefully this is it for the time being.

 

Ann

[Jill- OK]

If you like this text, what do you use to round out your high school requirements? Our state does not require econ, but we do require government and American History.

 

Also, is this a good stand alone program or is it used as spine for a study using other books? I saw someone uses it with Omnibus.

 

...but I didn't explain how we use it, so, here goes...

 

We use this as a spine, and fill in a bit with other books.

 

I tie our literature studies to history, a la WTM, but don't follow their lists exactly.

 

I've broken up Spielvogel's Human Odyssey, to roughly follow the WTM four year cycle, but we may just finish the book this year (we did six chapters last year, in 9th grade, when we did Ancients) so that the kids can follow their bliss a little in the last two years of high school, as well as do some OK history (through OU) and Am. history/government.

 

Hope this helps some...

Edited June 4, 2009 by Jill, OK

[Jill- OK]

I know you mentioned "state requirements", but since OK doesn't require anything from homeschoolers (aside from a "good faith" promise to provide an "equivalent" education--the definition of which has been determined to mean, "almost anything", lol), I'm assuming you're following the state graduation requirements?

 

If you're doing that, then you only need one half unit each of OK history and U.S. government, which would be easy to do in one year, or spread out, piecemeal, through the whole high school career. (Using a book like Spielvogel's would give you the "other" unit of history). But you would have to spend a whole unit on American history, though.

 

We're not following the state requirements closely (although they figure in), because I decided to build our schedule at least partially around the requirements of some colleges they're considering. For instance, one college requires one unit of "Citizenship", which can be either government, geography, or "Non-Western Culture", and two units of history, with one being American history. So, my tenative plan is to use some of our WTM-style history/literature study to qualify under "Non-Western Culture", and do government study along with American History. (It's important to me that they do formally study government before voting age, even if we meet the requirement another way).

 

So...there's lots of different choices, as long as you know what you're shooting for, and how to label what you're doing.

Edited June 3, 2009 by Jill, OK