While I love the Visit to…series I am finding that my small and rather book-poor library doesn’t have many of the books. So far they’ve had one book for Africa and one for Europe. I’ve been able to order most of them at a reasonable price, but a few are out of my price range. I’m wondering if it would be possible to create a list, perhaps in the Bookfinder, of alternate living books that people have read and recommend as substitutes.
If this happens in the Bookfinder it would be nice to have them labeled ‘Visits to Africa’ instead of just geography. Or maybe a list of additional resources similar to what the history guides have….a separate page with ‘extras’.
Maybe this isn’t a problem for everyone else and I’m the only one blessed with a challenging library! I know I can interlibrary loan but at $3.00 a book it adds up, and is often close in price to purchasing them used.
I don’t have any of the Visits to.. yet, are you talking about a chapter book or picture books for different countries?
Each Visits to . . . book requires Material World and Hungry Planet for some of the lessons. We also recommend several optional books, usually picture books for the younger grades, to go along with the study. The full list of books for each study is listed in the beginning of the free sample.
It’s a great idea to collect alternate resources, and putting them under a tag like “Visits to Africa alternate” in the Bookfinder would work well. If someone starts a project like that, please let us know so that we can add a link to the extras page.
Yes, it’s the picture books/chapter books I am having a hard time finding. I already own Material World and Hungry Planet. We used to have free ILL through the base library and they would allow up to 10 at a time but then it CLOSED. The stinking library closed!!!
Hopefully as we all work through them we can find more living books and share them with each other. It’s always nice to have others recommendations instead of checking out a stack of books you hope will work and end up with a bunch of duds.
Wow! I’m so sorry you have to pay for ILL’s . As far as I know, ours are free – they do limit it, though. They will only ILL a book that costs more than $10 on Amazon.
Isn’t there a library for homeschoolers that’s based online? They charge a small fee for postage…..I’m sure I remember reading about it, but i can’t for the life of me remember the name or where I read it. OR maybe I dreamed it???
Our ILL only allows the books to be borrowed for 10 days, then begins charging $1 a day for late fees. I didn’t try to do ILL for our Visits to…optional books but I did try to find them used..they were a bit too pricey for me or just ended up not buying them.
At the risk of hijacking this thread…for those of you who have done the “Visits To…” already, if I chose not to buy Material World and Hungry Planet would I still be able to use this series?
Yes, you could. HOWEVER -since they are the spines that introduce you to various countries and their people in a personal and interesting way and there are places to record written narrations specific to the MW and HP books, removing them from it would only leave a map drill book.
You could always add in other books about countries with that portion (although that would be A LOT more work and time than simply buying the spines). I think that your decision would depend on what is most important to you regarding a more personal planned approach to geography or a straight-forward ready-to-use map drill book with you adding in what books you can find. If you haven’t looked at the free sample pages in depth, I would recommend you do. It would make the decision easier for you.
IMO, these are spines used multiple years in multiple books for mulitple ages, so they will be worth their price in the end.
Hungry Planet is selling $13.63 new for a paperback on Amazon, and Material World is going for $11.00 new on Amazon. Used ones are as little as $5.95. I personally do not think that they are all that expensive for a paperback version, especially since they are full of color photos.
The ones that are more expensive are the individual country books…those are wonderful, but you can substitute those much easier than the MW and HP.
Thank you for your suggestions! However, both books are carried at both of my libraries. My last student is ds11 so I hestiate to spend money on books knowing there is no one coming after him…we have so many books already!