Home School Curriculum Part.....IV--History & Geography

While we use curriculum for just about everything else, History and Geography is one of the loose more "unschooling" type of topics that we do in a very eclectic way.  Mind you, in order to do this, yes it is child led to a degree, but in a very limited capacity.

We began 4-5 years ago simply picking states to study.  We chose Pennsylvania because we live here, Florida,   Missouri and South Dakota because grandparents live there.  It seemed like the perfect idea.  We'd pick books for each child to read dealing with a variety of historical topics from these areas.  It also helped that when we visited Florida that Grandma and Grandpa took us to educational places for us to learn more about Florida's history through the years.  The interesting tid-bit is that we've found historical significance that joins not only Florida, but also Missouri and Nebraska (where cousins live) in the explorer DeSoto.  We couldn't find this area specific information through a mere text book.  I'm sure some curriculum may have covered explorers, but not to this extent.

Through our conversations as a result of listening to the radio or reading articles on a variety of topics, the children feel free to ask us questions about a variety of topics.  Most of the time, those questions lead directly to the choosing of the following school year's topics.  Last Spring while raking grass with our daughter, she asked me about the Civil Rights Movement and the KKK.  As a result, this school year we're studying the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movement.  They closely corresponded with one another historically that we decided to study those topics.

When we study topics, we don't just get informational books.  We get books that deal with everything our children are interested in.  For example, our daughter enjoys art, beading, painting, sculpting and all other things deemed artistic.  We've found quite a few books on the art of the Seminole Indian Tribe in Florida when studying Florida as well as artistic books on the Alaskan Eskimos when we studied the Klondike Gold Rush.  For our oldest son, he enjoys reading about guns and munitions from a variety of time periods as well as scientific history, so we approach studying time periods from that point of view.  Our youngest son likes survivalist types of things, hunting, trapping as well as the munitions like our oldest son, so we try very hard to get things from the point of view that each of them are interested in.  However, they do understand that there will be times when they just have to read the book because it is one of those things that has to be done.  For example, this school year we decided it was time to study the Holocaust.  To make things a little closer to home and more interesting for them, we further narrowed the topic to the Holocaust from the eyes of children.  It has spurred on some heart wrenching discussions as well as questions and interest in further study on the history of the OSS, the Nazi officers and what drove them to commit the atrocities of the Holocaust.  We find ourselves looking for even more books throughout the school year to further fill in the areas that the paths our studies take us.

For each year, we split our year in to 4, sometimes 5 different sessions.  Mr. G has requested that we take all of deer hunting season off so that he can take our children out hunting.  During that time, I do my baking, decorating, painting, crocheting and knitting, sewing and Christmas shopping.  It gives me a much needed respite.  We take other times off during our school year, but our yearly calendar hinges on deer hunting season.  I count 8 weeks before and 8 weeks after and come up with 2 of our unit study times.  I add a week or two off between sessions, then add the rest counting backwards.  LOL  We fill in with 4 day weekends since February is one of those months when we're restless and ready for Spring to come. The last part of the school year we add in holidays to take off, then count out how much time we have left for the last session.

This coming school year, we're studying the following~
First Session~Religious Reformation and the Renaissance
Second Session~Africa
Third Session~Slavery and the Underground Railroad
Fourth Session~Australia

You can be sure that there has been quite a few conversations revolving around the above topics which is why there is no cohesiveness between all of the topics.  This is how things go with our family.  :)

Do we cook a variety of foods from the eras and areas we study?  We try to.  I can't say that we're always successful in getting that done, but that's something that comes in when we're looking for new and interesting recipes and we reflect upon the regions we've studied.  We also watch Bizzare Foods with Andrew Zimmern on Netflix.  I save the regions of the world we'll be studying for that time frame.  :)

As sub-topics come up within all of these topics, we look them up online and read which usually leads us to other topics.  Eventually, we may come up with the following school year's topics.  :)

In the year 2013-2014 we will have our first Senior.  Among getting ready for graduation, we will be finishing up the requirements for getting his diploma.  For those of you who wonder if this particular way of doing History and Geography works for diploma requirements, it does.  While the younger two children study the above topics, the oldest will be studying Civics with the God and Government Series and World Geography through SOS.  He will glean information from the other two children although it wouldn't surprise me if he picks up some of their books and reads them himself.  This has happened before, so it honestly doesn't surprise me.  Also, something that will count toward his graduation is an Apologetics class he chose to take with our home school group.  I'm not sure if that will count as history or more toward Civics.  We'll see though.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.