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Geography/Social Studies curriculum help
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Ok, I’m still trying to finalize my purchases for our fall curriculum for an 11 year old (5th grade) and 7 year-old (2/3rd grade) new to homeschooling, and I have a few questions in regards to possible products:
1) (Ok — more science related this one.) Has anyone used Considering God’s Creation and A Child’s Geography: Exploring His Earth? There seems to be a decent over-lap between the first 9 chapters of CGC and A Child’s Geography.
2) Trail Guide to World Geograhy: How do people feel about this one? I like that it has the multi levels. How indepth do they go into countries & cultures?
3) A Trip Around the World & Another Trip Around the World: I know these are unit studies, but may be easily adapted to a more CM approach. Would they be suited to this age range?
4) Opinions on Canadian Social Studies “My Canada” and “Courage and Conquest”. I know they aren’t CM, but I feel I need some direction on this one this year and thought I could flesh them out with living books — biographies, etc.
Which curriculum of 2 & 3 would you choose — Trail or Trip? Do you have any other suggestions? I would like to focus on Canadian/North American geography/social studies in the first term as we are Canadian.
I personally think A Trip Around the World is MUCH too young for a 5th grader, and on the young side for a third grader. I did have these but feel they are K-3 resources. Also there really isn’t much there.
I’ve looked at the Trail Guides many times but never felt like they were for us so can’t help you there. They mostly seemed to be “So go research this yourself” kind of things, and if I wanted that I could just TELL them to go research something without needing to buy a book! LOL But others might have better ideas.
Know nothing about Canada, sorry!
Here are my Canadian resources so far…. I don’t have a good one for Geography yet though. I was originally doing it to go along with AO, so the literature was selected to go with the AO topics, but still good options.
http://maplehillacademy.blogspot.com/p/canadian.html
For history for elementary school it seems really hard to find a good Canadian History Spine. There are some options that come up, but are mostly out of print and expensive. I’ve been borrowing from the Library……
We are going to use “Story of Canada” by Janet Lunn. There is another book called “Story of Canada” that is supposed to be good, but I haven’t seen it yet. We were using “Great Canadian Lives” as it did history giving a 1-2 page little biography of various people… but after a bit of that format I couldn’t take it much more… but other people still like it. Another possible spine you will hear about is “My First History of Canada” which we were also using before… it is a bit on the dry side but can work.
We do history lined up with the world history… Here is my history plan that I worked out to match AO when I was doing AO. I haven’t read them all yet… http://maplehillacademy.blogspot.com/2011/02/canadian-history-plan-updated.html
My new plan is basically the same at this point, except being changed to match up with my own world history rotations….
hope it helps some!
Hmm…I thought I’d read somewhere of people using A Trip Around the World for 7th grade. Expedition Earth from Knowledge Quest looks to be about the same type of thing. I recognize that both would need to be fleshed out considerably, but thought they might be a good starting point.
Any Further comments on Trail Guide or A Child’s Geography: Exploring His Earth? Part of me has thought I would just take the table of contents and follow it to create my own curriculum, but I do work part-time, so time is limited. I only have a month left to pull it all together so I am really starting to feel the pinch!
Hmm. Is there another resource with the same name then? The only ones I know about are the Carson-Dellosa unit studies used in MFW-ECC. And they are DEFINITELY k-3. A 7th grader would be insulted!
I read A Child’s Geography vol. 1 to my son when he was about 6, and he felt talked down to. The tone drove us both bananas.
I do have Expedition: Earth to use this year with my 6th grader. We’ve lined up lots of additional food resources and intend to eat our way around the earth.
Yes, as far as I know it is the same one in MFW, so that is very good info to know. Have you had a good look through Expedition Earth? Does it seem suited to your 6th grader? My 5th grader will not appreciate a childish tone. Sometimes my 7 year-old is harder to read — his reading is very advanced for his age and he can be very mature in his tastes — then all of a sudden he’ll be pulling out the Dr. Suess books again.
Yes, it’s very factual-based. The lesson plans that come with it have some research ideas and links. There is mapwork and also quizzes (don’t know if we’ll be using those or not). There is one-half to one page of info on each country (that’s the main text) plus the extra resources on the disk that comes with the book. We plan on adding in some extra atlases, almanac information, information especially on what is going on around the world in the church, and food. He is interested right now in food and cooking, so we are planning on doing LOTS of that.
Thanks, Bookworm.
I was mistaken, I thought that the Expedition Earth was something else — I think I got it confused with Around the World in Unit Studies, which is more like the other. Expedition Earth looks very interesting, I like that there is so much material in it and you could really stretch the book out over several years, but I’m not sure if it would be suitable for my younger child where it is suggested for grades 5-12. In your opinion, could you adapt it for a younger student? I’m told that my 7 year old reads at a grade 12 level (although his comprehension is more a fourth or fifth grade in my opinion). The problem is finding material that suits him on an itellectual level. Maybe I’m answering my own questions as I type this. Perhaps the fact that I could use it over several years would make it a worthwhile investment. My younger would get more out of it as he matured, and where both boys are realatively evenly matched in comprehension, What works for my 11 year old, will probably work fine for my 7 year old. I would just need to adjust additional work accordingly.
How are you planning to use the resource? All in one year or spread it out?
Yes, I think the pages in the book are easy enough to be enjoyed by everyone. The extra stuff on the CD is where you might have differences–you might assign the older to visit some of the websites. They both can map, although you may need to adjust to the most important countries if you like for the 7yo–France, yes, maybe not Kiribati.
We are going to do it in one year. This is a “filler” year for us before I think my 11yo is ready for some of the higher-difficulty living books from AO.
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