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History: To plan, or not to plan.....


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Due in part to life craziness and only deciding to continue homeschooling two weeks ago, I am at a loss for what we should do for history, grades 1-5. I should be using SOTW3 but I just have a hard time with that book- too much in the way of tragic details that we do not need to deal with right now. I want to do an early American history study, but not sure if I should try to put something together (which is such a time drain right now and really intimidates me) or try to find something that will work for everyone. We start school in about a week so time is crunched and budget is getting low :) any suggestions? Anything one way or another would help, just so I can stop dreaming about curriculum choices!

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Do you have a good local library?  If I were you, I'd pick some themes in American history, and go to the library to find books and videos for those topics.  Have the older ones write summaries, and have the younger ones do narrations.  Have them draw or paint the stories.  Get autobiographies of famous people of the time period, and have them do book reports.

 

 

You can add some geography of North America in for added measure.  I'd have them work on labeling blank maps.

 

 

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I agree that if you have a good library, then you can just wing it by making a book reading routine.  How about this, go check out a pile of biographies for early American figures.  David Adler's A Picture Book Biography of...  series is great and so are Jean Fritz's.  There are other really good ones as well.  Have the kids read and do a narration about one a week.  Get Liberty's Kids on DVD (sometimes it's crazy cheap) and have them watch an episode or two a week.  Make your first read aloud about American history.  Maybe Children of the Longhouse or A Lion to Guard Us or Ben and Me or The Sign of the Beaver or something along those lines.  And call it done at least for a couple of months.

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Thanks for the support :). I think that's what I needed to hear. We have a pretty decent library so I had been thinking somewhere along those lines, I even picked up the Libert Kids DVD the other day, but I think I just needed to hear from someone that it was an ok plan. That it was ok to not do things on a big scale, that my kids will be fine for now. Sometimes homeschooling here is so....lonely.

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