Using Sonlight Core 300 for history

[Janet in MA]

Hi,

 

I am thinking about having my dds do Core 300 for a history course without the literature, using just the titles listed in the catalog under history and biography and historical fiction.

 

They will be taking an American Literature course (20th century) but I would like them to use Sonlight for history. It seems like doing both the entire Core 300 and the class would be too much, but I am not sure how it would work to separate out the history.

 

Has anyone done anything like this? How did it work?

 

Thanks for any help.

 

Janet

[Miss Marple]

Hi Janet,

 

We did this with 2 of my sons this past year. It was taught in our co-op, but I think one could still do it at home easily. We purchased SL's syllabus in order to have the weekly schedule as well as the student/teacher study guides for history. We used DK's huge book on 20th century and the 20th Century in Pictures book. The students also did current events using God's World magazine. Each week they had to write a good paragraph summarizing one of the main stories in GW magazine to present to the class. Other assignments were a research paper (due first semester) and then a research project (over the same topic/decade) due at the end of second semester. One son wrote about Al Capone and did his project on prohibition and crime, the other wrote about Pearl Harbor and did a huge salt map of the bombings using the game pieces (ships, subs, carriers, bombers, etc.) from his Axis and Allies game. He showed the various bombing runs and the damage sustained to US.

 

Both of my boys were taking my Great Books/Worldviews course so that I could not overload them with any more reading. They enjoyed the SL class a lot and learned a lot from it.

 

(PS - sorry I didn't respond sooner, I just found your PM).

[Janet in MA]

Hi Cynthia,

 

Thank you very much. That helps a lot! Your sons projects sound great!

I was at a home school convention this past weekend and was able to see the Core 300 syllabus which was helpful, but they did not have the two history books, Visual History of the Modern World and Our Century in Pictures.

 

Did you just drop the literature readings, or the biographies and historical fiction titles as well?

 

(Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt or take over the thread where I saw your post, so I sent a PM. I don't know whether people generally check there or not.)

[Miss Marple]

Yes, we just omitted all the other readings. However, some of the kids in the class did do some of the literature because they were not in another literature class.