Guesthollow Jr. World Geography?

[ktgrok]

Anyone done this? The sheer amount of books and reading scheduled looks...a bit overwhelming. But maybe I'm not understanding it? Otherwise it looks fun - I like the book selections. Would be combining an advanced but ADHD 3rd grader and dyslexic 6th grader. 

[JessinTX]

Love love love her book selections and activity suggestions. I love that she usually has a good mix of things - like videos and crafts, recipes or some kind of hands on things. 

I haven't done this particular curriculum, but will be looking at her lists for a world cultures study I'm going to do next year. I've done a couple of her others. An older American History for younger kids - that I think she pulled of the site. And the Jr. Anatomy.

The downside for me... and this is probably just me being too uptight, is that ultimately it's a list of resources with a general suggestion of how you might break them down. You aren't intended to do everything on the list. She says that right up front. So you have to look, and pick and choose what works for you, for your kiddos, what books you can actually get etc. And then besides listing the books and page numbers for each day, or a video to watch on a particular day, that's it. There are no discussion questions, or notebooking pages, or vocabulary, or any kind of output at all really - although at times she will list something that has some of those components. Like she had the applicable History Pockets scheduled in the American History, if I recall. 

So ultimately for me it ended up being a lot of work to flesh it out to what felt TO ME like a complete curriculum. 

If you just want to read a bunch of great books - and that may totally suit your purposes - then you're golden. 

Not to get off topic. But I thought I'd seen you post about Gather'Round a few times... I was thinking about their Continent units. Not as a full curriculum, but just the geography aspects. Thoughts on that? Any reason you've already ruled them out?

[ktgrok]

On 5/2/2021 at 5:03 AM, JessinTX said:

Love love love her book selections and activity suggestions. I love that she usually has a good mix of things - like videos and crafts, recipes or some kind of hands on things. 

I haven't done this particular curriculum, but will be looking at her lists for a world cultures study I'm going to do next year. I've done a couple of her others. An older American History for younger kids - that I think she pulled of the site. And the Jr. Anatomy.

The downside for me... and this is probably just me being too uptight, is that ultimately it's a list of resources with a general suggestion of how you might break them down. You aren't intended to do everything on the list. She says that right up front. So you have to look, and pick and choose what works for you, for your kiddos, what books you can actually get etc. And then besides listing the books and page numbers for each day, or a video to watch on a particular day, that's it. There are no discussion questions, or notebooking pages, or vocabulary, or any kind of output at all really - although at times she will list something that has some of those components. Like she had the applicable History Pockets scheduled in the American History, if I recall. 

So ultimately for me it ended up being a lot of work to flesh it out to what felt TO ME like a complete curriculum. 

If you just want to read a bunch of great books - and that may totally suit your purposes - then you're golden. 

Not to get off topic. But I thought I'd seen you post about Gather'Round a few times... I was thinking about their Continent units. Not as a full curriculum, but just the geography aspects. Thoughts on that? Any reason you've already ruled them out?

I actually haven't ruled out sticking with Gather 'Round - we very well may do that. But it's that time of year when it is more fun to look at stuff for next year than work on what you have in front of you, lol. I actually have North America, which we started a few lessons of then stopped to do the Christmas mini unit, and then we were all just "blah" and so we kept that packed up and started Inventions and Ideas instead of going back to North America. I also have Asia, but have never printed it out or anything. I got that right before the pandemic hit, and then never started it as I wanted to wait and use it when we can actually go to Asian restaurants and stores, do some field trips, etc. 

Most likely we will keep using Gather 'Round, but with a bit more vigor - with one high risk kid we have been stuck at home, isolated, and none of us have much "oomph" o put into our studies and Gather 'Round works best when you use it as a frame work, rather than open and go with nothing else. So it's a bit blah for us right now, but that's because we are "blah" right now, lol. Looking at new shiny stuff is fun 🙂

(we supplement language arts and handwriting though - and don't do a Gather 'Round lesson every day - today for instance we only did one actual page, but watched youtube videos and discussed a lot)

Edited May 7, 2021 by ktgrok