Aside from the 4 year history cycle...

[Slache]

What totally awesome things have you studied? Current Events, Cultural Geography, Civics and Economics are all popular. I've heard of people spending a year on the Eastern hemisphere. One woman said she let her child study one topic (like WWII) for a year. My husband thinks an in-depth look at the founding of our country would be cool. Any other nifty ideas?

[Kfamily]

These topics are reserved for seniors in high school with my curriculum, but you might could adapt them a bit.

 

Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse Study (my daughters went through a huge phase or fascination with these cultures/people while in their Tolkien crazed time period)

 

Political Science...which could be a current events/government/election process type study for younger people

 

Also, the Big History Project has been very tempting here...maybe next year...:)

 

You could also choose one or two countries (of particular interest based on your own heritage) and study them exclusively.

[SebastianCat]

We spent a year studying state history when my kids were in 4th & 2nd grades.   We did lots of field trips that year, and it was a fabulous experience.  I learned things about the state I had lived in my entire life that year.

[Slache]

These topics are reserved for seniors in high school with my curriculum, but you might could adapt them a bit.

 

Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse Study (my daughters went through a huge phase or fascination with these cultures/people while in their Tolkien crazed time period)

 

Political Science...which could be a current events/government/election process type study for younger people

 

Also, the Big History Project has been very tempting here...maybe next year...:)

 

You could also choose one or two countries (of particular interest based on your own heritage) and study them exclusively.

I wasn't going to anything special this year. I'm in a mood or something. I love the idea of studying the countries of your heritage!

  

We spent a year studying state history when my kids were in 4th & 2nd grades.   We did lots of field trips that year, and it was a fabulous experience.  I learned things about the state I had lived in my entire life that year.

That's awesome!

[Ausmumof3]

Sonlight does a year on eastern hemisphere between the history cycle.

[EKS]

We did history of science--but I don't recommend it until kids have high school level knowledge of the basic sciences.

[Jackie]

We used Mary Pope Osborne's One World, Many Religions, plus a lot of library picture books to create an elementary-level introduction to world religions.

[FloridaLisa]

We do 5-year history cycles a la Veritas Press but my all-time favorite off-schedule year has been World Geography. I try to place it close to 7th grade. 

[Lori D.]

Our first 4-year history cycle turned into a 6-year cycle, which allowed us to include:

- special focus for over a year on U.S. history

- a big unit on state history

- a short elementary-age unit on Government/politics

- time throughout on basic current events

 

That cycle happened when DSs were grades 1-2 through grades 6-7. One regret: wish we had done a deeper Native American cultures / literature / history study than what we did at the time.

 

For grades 7-8, we dropped History for a year in favor of a World Cultures/Geography & Comparative Religions study. We focused on Eastern Hemisphere nations. SO wish we had taken a second year to continue that in more depth, and to include a Europe/Americas cultures/geography & Worldviews study.

Edited January 24, 2017 by Lori D.

[2_girls_mommy]

During our last year of modern history we broke it up by month. 1-2 months of revolutionary war/Constitution. 1-2 months of Native American HIstory. We did state history alongside our modern, so there was a lot of overlap. We did a lot of field trips and did several presentations and big projects with co-op. We created two notebooks for the year. One specifically for state history which is ongoing, and then kept up our regular WTM style history notebook with the dividers.  Then we did 1-2 months of Civil War. One was an in depth of our state for a few weeks and then a few weeks of Reconstruction. Then we did a month of WWI, then a month of WWII. 

By dividing the year up into months we could really focus on our topics. We still studied world history, but with a definite focus on American history and government and our state. But you had to learn about what was going on in the world to understand what was happening here. Anyway, that was a super duper history year for us. We read a lot of great novels along with non fiction and journals from all kinds of eyewitnesses. We memorized the Preamble to the Constitution, the Amendments, Lincoln's speeches and famous lines, and some poetry. We did lots of projects and field trips. Each child got to choose the focus for their projects. During the Native American project month one wrote a speech and did a poster about a particular tribe that has prominence here. She told their story. We visited their cultural center. The other wrote about an ancient site from another region that we had visited during our vacation when we toured the ruins in another state. 

 

For our state history end of year project they both researched a particular career from early statehood and came up with a character and backstory and costume and described the life of their character. They used real instances from history as if they were there. 

[Farrar]

In elementary school, we did a year off for US history and that was good. And all our science topics were good.

 

Starting in fifth grade, we moved to doing more child-suggested topics for learning. Some long term projects we've done have included:

 

* philosophy

* houses and homes (this one was GREAT - among other things, we did research into our house)

* the history and science of flight (also an amazing project with lots of history and science - right now he's wrapping this up and doing a research paper about the food astronauts take to space... he read part of Packing for Mars and a bunch of interesting articles...)

* folk tales

* the Mayans (this was in advance of a Mexico trip, but it was so fun just on its own to spend several months on a single topic and man did it ever pay off - the kids were totally tour guiding us all around the ruins, like ooh, this is that, ooh, this must be one of those things where they did that, etc.)

* time travel (brought literature, movies and science together in an interesting way and led to good, fun writing projects)

[2_girls_mommy]

Oh, I was thinking history, since that was mentioned. Science units have been good some years. During our last biology year, we focused on birds that was fun. We covered other stuff throughout the year, but we did an intense unit on birds and then did a lot of projects over the course of the year (and still ongoing really. We still birdwatch and notebook about them years later.) We incorporated birds into a big scout project, joined the Audobon society for a census, built birdhouses, etc. I really want to do a big unit on trees and flowers next. I really can't identify them like I would like to. 

[Carol in Cal.]

We folded  Bible history into SOTW 1, so it took about 1 1/2 years to get through it.  It was awesome.

 

Also, after finishing the SOTW series, we did a review that emphasized church history, from the Ascension to more or less the present day.  That was about a semester in length.

 

In parallel with world history, we spent a year or so doing intensive field trips and reading around state history and state industries/ways of life/cultures.

 

I bought Sonlight 5 used so that we could spend a year on nonWestern cultures, but didn't really like some of the materials with it.  However, DD loved Japan and all things Japanese so I assembled some of the Sonlight books along with lots of others into a semester or so unit study on Japan when she was in middle school.

 

I personally was kind of surprised and fascinated to realize that things I had studied independently in mid-19th century American history were actually coincident, and set up a unit study approach to that, but DD found it boring so we dropped it.  I had studied the ante bellum reform movements, and the pioneer movements, and great European migrations to the US, industrialization, and the Civil War without really understanding the implications of the fact that they all happened during a fairly tight period of time.  

Edited January 24, 2017 by Carol in Cal.

[Sherry in OH]

We did a year long integrated science-history study of prehistory.

[2_girls_mommy]

We did a great unit study over the summer that revolved around certain passages from the Bible and focused on Earth Science. That was a good one. 

 

And we are in our Ancients year here too. We definitely cover Bible a lot with the Ancient studies, then church history alongside the other periods. 

 

We have been taking the National Latin Exams for a couple years and the Exploratory Latin Exams before that. So we study Roman culture, myths, history, and vocab not covered in our grammar curriculum every year intensely for a couple of months.  We have done plays, seen plays, and done all kinds of projects every year on topics covered there. Today we are making giant maps and labeling them in Latin of the Mediterranean area and Roman Empire controlled lands. I try to review yearly, plus learn new materials in depth. I often use whatever the ELE's special subject for 5th and 6th graders as a guide as to what to go into depth on. Last year was women in Roman history. That was refreshing as so little is ever usually told about women. I read several books on my own that I could then summarize to share with the kids. (and of course to tone down some things that aren't so child friendly!)

[Soror]

We've not done anything too rare here, my son is studying Cultures and Religions around the world w/ BYL 7 this year and my daughters (then 3rd and k) did a year of cultures as well, we just focused on various countries. We did China, Japan, India, France, Mexico and Italy I think, that was a HUGE hit. We ended each section w a night of celebration focused on that country with an authentic(as I could make) feast. We even somewhat did costumes, I bought scarves from Goodwill for Saris(India) and did a quick sew of kimonos for Japan, Italy we did togas like ancient Romans, huge fun had by all! This year is American Girl History for the girls and we will be ending with a party of course, if I was on the ball we would have had a party based on each time frame but alas I didn't pull it off. We'll end w/ Kit and watch her movie and do a Kit based party, we're taking a whole week to plan it out (3 cheers for party school!). 

 

Oh, and my son is doing a History of Science year next year for 8th. I've considered a year based on family and community history, my MIL is hugely into geneology, she took us on a cemetery expedition here while back, which can be surprisingly interesting. 

Edited January 25, 2017 by soror

[Slache]

We did a great unit study over the summer that revolved around certain passages from the Bible and focused on Earth Science. That was a good one.

 

And we are in our Ancients year here too. We definitely cover Bible a lot with the Ancient studies, then church history alongside the other periods.

 

What resources did you pull from for these?

[Chris in VA]

We tried to do a study about Africa when dd was in 2nd grade. We wanted to learn some geography and pair it with soome traditional art projects from different African civilizations. We also wanted to raise money for Bishop Nkyoyo and his school for blind students (and others). So I printed out a giant map for the wall (6 or 7 sheets of copy paper by 6 or 7 sheets! It was huge!). We used an African craft book. We were supposed to study on Fridays. Things got complicated in our family and we couldn't do it as much as we wanted.

[2_girls_mommy]

What resources did you pull from for these?

The Bible/Earth Science unit was the Psalm 104 unit study from Reasons To Believe. They have a website. It is for Old Earth believers which I love because so much of everything else for homeschoolers is Young Earth. I got it at convention and we did so much with it: art, literature, games, collected specimens and looked at them under the microscope. It covered a broad range of Earth topics in 9 weeks which was perfect for summer vacation. 

 

*** ETA since this was a premade unit the website had links to online sites, games, videos, for every lesson. Some of the lessons were art lessons and they had made specific how to videos to go with it. Everything was all laid out for me with the exception of an additional reading list which I picked up from the library and we picked through some of those books too. 

Edited January 25, 2017 by 2_girls_mommy

[Slache]

The Bible/Earth Science unit was the Psalm 104 unit study from Reasons To Believe. They have a website. It is for Old Earth believers which I love because so much of everything else for homeschoolers is Young Earth. I got it at convention and we did so much with it: art, literature, games, collected specimens and looked at them under the microscope. It covered a broad range of Earth topics in 9 weeks which was perfect for summer vacation.

Would it be easily adaptable for the finatics amoung us? ;)

[2_girls_mommy]

Would it be easily adaptable for the finatics amoung us? ;)

Fanatics? How do you mean? If you mean for YE, nope this wouldn't be for you, lol, unless you are wanting to see how OE believers believe. It creates a long time line, and the point of all the lessons is explaining how OE does line up with the Bible's Creation which was really refreshing for me to have scientists explain it to my kids so much better than non sciency me can. 

[Slache]

Fanatics? How do you mean? If you mean for YE, nope this wouldn't be for you, lol, unless you are wanting to see how OE believers believe. It creates a long time line, and the point of all the lessons is explaining how OE does line up with the Bible's Creation which was really refreshing for me to have scientists explain it to my kids so much better than non sciency me can.

Yes, I meant young earth. Sorry. It sounds neat and I still might need it.

[Junie]

We just finished an (eternally long) study on the presidential election process.   :svengo:

 

We are getting ready to begin a geography/culture study one continent at a time.  January will be Antarctica, which will mostly be learning about early expeditions and March of the Penguins.  In February we will be moving on to Australia.

[Slache]

We just finished an (eternally long) study on the presidential election process. :svengo:

 

We are getting ready to begin a geography/culture study one continent at a time. January will be Antarctica, which will mostly be learning about early expeditions and March of the Penguins. In February we will be moving on to Australia.

I didn't know you were moving to Australia! That's awesome! :P

[Junie]

I didn't know you were moving to Australia! That's awesome! :p

 

We will only be there for a month.  And only for 30 minutes a day.  ;)

[PeachyDoodle]

I didn't want to start history with ds until 1st grade, so for kindy this year I cobbled together a study of holidays around the world. We take one holiday per month and learn about the culture where it originates. We cover all kinds of things -- geography, food, dress, religion. He's enjoying it!

 

We're doing Chinese New Year this month and will be learning to eat with chopsticks this week!