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Planning with living books
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We’re going to read living books for science, geography and history. but we don’t really have a plan. If you don’t use a textbook, how do you know/decide what to study? Do I just read one book after the other, or go with a 4 year history cycle? Is studying history out of chronological order really that ‘bad’?
I’d love to hear how you all do it.
Do what works for you! 😛
Okay, at my house here is what we do:
History is generally chronological right now, but we’ve done it out of order before with no trouble too. We read 1-2 books at a time, trying to keep them in the same time period. One is a chapter book, the other tends to be picture books for younger kids. As we finish a book we start the next. If we’re mostly using shorter books we’ll be doing more books than if we’ve got a nice, meaty chapter book. Geography is a part of history for us, we find things on a map as we go.
Science we try to stick with a topic for at least a few weeks before moving to a new one. It is much more interest based, but with 7 kids not everyone is interested in the current topic.
We use Story of the World on audio as a spine for our history, and we fill in with various living books that we find at our library (or if something comes highly recommended, we purchase it). I do fill in a lot of American History with living books, since SOTW does not go into detail on American History. I use SCM’s Free Curriculum Guide and the SOTW Activity Guide to get ideas for supplemental reading.
We started with Module 5 (1550-1850), this year we are doing Module 6, and next year we’ll cycle back around to do Ancients.
As for Science, we are using NOEO Science this year, which includes lots of living books. With the amount of time I spend planning our history, I needed something more planned out for me for our science. We’re only a few weeks in, but we love NOEO so far!! (We’re doing Bio II this year).
For history, we keep it chronological. For a science we just read through books. In fact we usually have 2or 3 going at a time so we are not reading the same thing every day.
Nebby
@ Tristan,
Your kids are 12 & under, right? (Or is your daughter older…I forget!) Anyhow, I ask because I am wondering approximately how many history chapter books you complete in a school year. Last year we didn’t get through as many as I thought we would….
Thank you everyone for your response. I think I really do want a plan, but I’m not a good decision maker. I’ll have to start looking at samples again 😉
Sue – My oldest is 11 (June Birthday). We never do as many as I hope either…LOL. Last year just for history we read about 20 chapter books. Some were long (Genevive Foster’s Columbus and Sons) while others were not (The Apple and the Arrow or some of Diane Stanley’s biographies). More were on the shorter side (150 pages or less).
This year we’re reading just 9 books for history (and may not make it through all of those, it’s a series with over 5000 pages/315 chapters). I always am in favor of lingering with a book and reading less so we can really live in, discuss, and enjoy a time period.
We also do a lot of reading in other areas (science read alouds, book club, scripture, literature, and just for fun chapter books).
Was that any help?
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