Learning At Home - History

Although it is a little bit later than I initially intended to begin (I think I have a pretty good excuse as to why this is) we are going to begin our "summer schooling" today.  I am excited and nervous about the outcome of our trial schooling at home this summer. I want it to be successful, and to be able to continue it throughout the school year, but I am very nervous about messing up. I am also equally nervous, truth be told, about the opinions of those around me. I know that most of the people I know are most likely going to be unsupportive of my potential decision to bring my kids home, and I am a recovering people pleaser, so this makes me uneasy and nervous. I also feel guilty about bringing my kids home because Sarah's school has been so awesome since her diagnosis. Many of her teachers both past and present, and even the principal of her school have been just wonderful. They have each reached out to our family in their own way, almost all of them have donated to Team Hope, and this makes me feel like I HAVE to send my kids back to school. (I know, I know, my brain is ridiculous with its thoughts sometimes.) Possibly bringing my kids home has almost nothing to do with the teachers in our school district, and I don't want anyone to take pulling my kids out personally. (I talk this way, and I haven't even begun my summer schooling project - this could turn out to be a failure, and all 4 kids could be back at the public school in 6 weeks or so).

So, today we will begin with history. I chose history as the starting point because, honestly, history is my favorite subject, but more importantly the text books cost the least, so if this doesn't work out I am not out that much money. The classical method of home schooling (as explained by Susan Bauer Wise in The Well Trained Mind ) takes history, and explains it like a story, but not in the way that we learned it and that kids are learning it today. My kids will work in 4 year increments beginning with Ancient History and then continuing on through the Middle Ages, then Early Modern Times, and finally the Modern Age.  In this fashion the kids will learn history from a beginning point to an ending point and it will be taught like a story instead of chopped over time learning different points of history during different academic school years. We will be using the book, The Story of the World, (also by Susan Bauer Wise) and its companion activity book.



How History/Geography will look for my kids is we will read a passage in The Story of the World. Then the kids will have some workbook pages and some small writing assignments in regards to what we read. Then we will be going to the library to pick out more books to read about the topics we are currently discussing (classical education is very big on reading real books instead of text books). Then the older kids will be keeping track of the events we cover on a timeline. There will also be more writing assignments to incorporate the real books that we are reading (verse  a textbook). Then the kids and I will do an activity surrounding the topic (for example, in this first week we are going to create a mock archaeological site in our sandbox and the kids are going to "dig up" artifacts from our lives to see what a future archaeologist would conclude about how we live). We will also be locating on a world map where each place we are discussing is (or used to be) and also learning about that area of the world geographically.

Because most stories are best understood from the beginning I am going to be having all 4 kids working on the same topics at the same time. Each child will have grade appropriate assignments, so that each will be learning material suited to his/her level, but everyone will be learning about the same topic to make it easier for me to teach the kids all at once, but also to help them understand history more thoroughly.

We will be going to the store today to purchase their binders for the subject as well as to the library to take out the books that they will be reading this week on the topic at hand.

I am excited to begin this journey. It has taken me quite a while to get to this point, and I am ready to begin.