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Help scheduling TQ American History
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I am finally getting a chance to try and figure out our plans for next school year. My children will be grades 3 and 5 next year. I am planning to read everything as a family. My 3rd grader could easily be assigned independent reading but my 5th grader is not ready for that. We have used SCM modules 1-4 but are planning to use TruthQuest American History for Young Students 1 next year. There are 51 units of things to study. Some have more than others listed as resource choices. How do I fit everything into a 36 week year? If you’ve used this before or are planning to use it, are there sections that you skipped to fit it in? I could see this taking several years to go through. I am planning to skip most of section 2 because we read about the explorers last year. I thought we’d start with the Christopher Columbus movie as a review and something fun to start the year. We own the Your Story Hour set and listen to them all the time. I was thinking of doing a book on the French Explorer’s and Hudson, but am wondering if I should just skip them. How did you make it work?
Yippie for using TQ. We love it. I don’t know how you get through the Vol I in a year. We started in late Sep 2013 and are just now beginning the American Revolution and I foresee us taking 6 mths to cover it. In our defense our “school” year does not end until August. I did skip a lot of the Native American Indian info at the beginning because I know we will cover it again later. We spent a lot of time on Jamestown because we live so close to it. Instead of choosing one colony to study in depth, I covered them all in detail (should not have spent so much time on that, I would suggest picking 1 colony to study in depth). I also spent too much time learning about how the colonist lived. I tend to run off on rabbit trails. I did skip a few of the explorers. I guess you could finish in 36 weeks if you don’t linger too long like I did. My kids and I really enjoyed this time period. I know I am going to drag out the revolution too. Especially now that I am doing my own reading about the Revo (thanks again ladies for your awesome recommendations I am enjoying 1776 and looking forward to the John Adams book). My kids are just having a great time and learning so much. Sorry I haven’t answered your question about getting it all done. I think you will need to skip some stuff in order to finish in 36 weeks. Just pick what you think is most important. Enjoy it! I am sure someone has done it and will give you some great ideas.
I’m afraid I didn’t discover and start TQ until the second guide for young students, so can’t help you specifically with the first guide. But I did go through and decide some areas to not cover. I also used only books we already had or what I could find in the library and tried to keep it to just a couple of books per section. Sometimes I did good to just find one book. 🙂 We loved it. Just finished up the third guide this year. I really like her emphasis on the 2 big beliefs. There is a lot there and you do not have to do all of it, especially at this level.
Melissa
@pangit, Check the “Living Book Reviews” thread that just started. Melissa has been using TQ and shares about the books they’ve used.
I’ve got a wild idea. 🙂 Don’t “schedule” it. With each topic, see what you can find. Read that. Pray if there are too many things, so that you know what choice to make. Have fun. 🙂 If you can’t find much on a topic–don’t worry about it. Move on. RELAX.
Agreeing with Bookworm one million percent. 🙂 I’ve used TQ since it’s release and that’s exactly the way I’ve always done it. Some topics we don’t do at all. Others we touch on and some we camp out on for awhile. It’s just like getting to know people. There are people we will never know at all, some we know casually or in passing and some we know intimately. And that’s the way it should be. Let God lead you to those intimate topics based on what He has for your children. Better to spend time on those things rather than being “a mile wide and an inch deep.”
Pangit…we’re just finishing up that TQ guide and it was wonderful!!
Now that we’ve completed (or will shortly) our first TQ guide, I plan to write an overview summary with some planning thoughts on our blog some time this summer. I used this with our 4th grade dd, 3rd grade ds, and 2nd grade niece.
Quickly for now….I didn’t plan a detailed schedule ahead of time. Instead, since we school using three 12 week terms, I broke the guide into 3 sections: Exploration, Colonization, and the American Revolution. Looking at the TOC, these breaks are roughly:
Exploration – Topics 1-5
Colonial Life – Topics 6-32
American Revolution – Topics 33-51
I then went through the guide and chose books that we either had on our shelves or could get easily through the public library. From those books, I considered books recommended by SCM, Sonlight and Beautiful Feet. I also considered ages of my kiddos and the fact that we will cover this time period again down the road.
I started with a spine, but ended up scrapping it. I found it to be overkill and the kids enjoyed reading actual literature books, historical fiction, and biographies instead. However, I did use Homeschool in the Woods’ Time Traveler CD-Roms for hands on activities and occassionally I did read their lesson notes aloud as sort of a spine or overview. I found them to be a good supplement/review to the TQ guide.
In hind sight, as I went along I realized it was easier to study the Native Americans that lived in each colony (topic 10) while studying the colony. The same was true for Topic 45 “Figures of the War of Independence”. We couldn’t help but learn about those people while reading about the various events that took place throughout the Revolution. So I would recommend looking at things like that in the guide and combining topics wherever you can.
I have several posts and book reviews regarding TQ here…
Book Reviews: http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/search/label/Books
Specific TQ Posts: http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/search/label/TruthQuest
Under the TQ posts, there is also a complete list of books we used for each of the first two terms. I haven’t posted the third term yet.
I hope this makes sense. I’m in a bit of a rush and need to run….
Feel free to ask other questions. There is also a wonderful TQ Yahoo Group called “historyquesters”, I believe. Michelle Miller, author, is a member of that board. They also have tips, tricks, and files available for using TQ.
Blessings,
Melissa
http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/
Funny to hear me, the schedule and planning queen, say this!Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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