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How to schedule history spine and living books
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*Sigh* I’ve left the scheduling of history until last on my organizer, mostly because I felt it would be a little complicated, and now the time has come to lay out a schedule for module 6.
I had planned to cover history over 4 days each week and to split up world and American history on 2 days each. However, I’m not sure how to best divide the time up between a spine and living books. Should I use both the spine and a living book each day, alternate between spine and living book each day, or do something different? I’m a little concerned about how everything will line up chronologically.
How have any of you scheduled spines and living books for module 6?
Thanks,
Sue
We do our spine daily (1 biography/chapter). Then we read 1 chapter in our living book for each age group, so I read aloud to my 3rd and under crowd their book while 5th grade sister reads her book.
So, then, how long does your 5th grader spend on history each day?
I love my All Through the Ages as our spine.
Since I request so many of our resources from our library system, I really have a hard time reading the books in a prescribed manner. My husband picks up our stack of books several times a week, while we devour what we have already at home. For example, I requested, after looking at my All through the Ages, books about the Teddy Roosevelt, Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition, the San Fransico Earthquake in 1906, the Titanic, Lusitania, more Robert Ballard’s shipwreck discoveries, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and a basic World War 1 book (The Yanks are Coming)… to name a few. We are using 4 library cards and always max them to full capacity. So, we are reading together and individually through a diverse amount of books around the same time period. I request and renew the same books again if we don’t get through it…or just move on.
Today I met my neighbor who was in a Japanese prison camp when he was 16 years old for one and a half years. He told us his story today for an hour. Wow. I am realizing that the stories about people are so important…read in a book or learned from other’s experiences. I think we can worry too much about which spines to use and not realize the great resources we have around us ready for discovery. I planned my school this year only to realize that when I overplan I don’t get to the doing of the plan. I would rather just open a book that is available and read even if that means that next week our books may set us back ten or twenty years in our history sequence. My children connent well with their books and can see how it generally fits in the scheme of things…even if slighty mixed. Again…I love All Through the Ages as my spine because it is a great big chronological list of biographies and events. I can easily see who or what is next in the timeline and request books on the list and resources about the same topic available in my library system that are excellent too…but not on any homeschooling list.
Just wanted to add that we also use the clock as our spine…we allot a certain amount of time each day reading as a family and individually from these stacks of library books.
Janell
She listens to me read the spine – takes maybe 10 minutes, and then oral narration. Then she reads her book – takes about 10 minutes. if the chapter in her book is especially long we break it in half over 2 days. She narrates that book orally or written.
As far as using the organizer with my eclectic way of doing history, I just put in the ISBN numbers of the books we are reading in the add your resources and then we click them off as we read them. If we have a large list of books and I want to omit a book for a day or two from the list, I can click the arrow next to the resource and it disappears from a printed sheet. I have often marvelled at the simplicity and beauty of the SCM organizer. How did someone get into my mind…because it was designed similar to the way I think. It details our homeschool journey, organizes the resources we have on hand, and remains so flexible. I suggest you schedule your spine and a few books and then…get started. You will see what I am talking about. You will enjoy together organization with spontaneity like strawberry lemonade.
Janell
I don’t use the SCM organizer, but I do use an online one. It allows me to schedule different courses (for example, I separate World History, American History, and Geography) and schedule them on different or same days. Then, I can add “activities” (such as “Caddie Woodlawn, ch. 1”) for each course, or I can leave it blank and enter what we read after the fact.
We do things the same as Janell; I feel like it could’v been my post while reading her post!
I recommmend not stressing out too much about it. I do use a spine, but not for the purposes of knowing where we’re at or anything. I just like the Guerber’s books. I use All Through the Ages for keeping up where we’re at and who we need to read about. Using the library means we’re not in exact chronological order; within 100 years. My children have no trouble connecting it all.
I read the “spine” on our history days (2x Ancient World; 2x Middle Ages/Renaissance) and they also have their independent readings on those days. I also usually have one read aloud going related to the time period.
I, too, use the SCM ORg. and when I get a book fromt he library, I just put it in and mark it off as we go.
HTH,
Rachel
I’ve been using this one. (It’s called homeschool skedtrack.) It’s free of charge, but it takes a little time to put everything in. They have tutorials to walk you through setting things up, and then you can decide whether you want to use certain things like report cards and such. It probably doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of the SCM Organizer, but it’s alright for something free.
I really can’t compare it to the SCM Organizer, though, because I’ve never tried it. (I figure if I signed up for the one-month trial, I’d like the organizer too much and then I’d have to cry buckets of tears when the month was up!)
Sue
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