A Healer’s Geste

2011-2012 School Year: History & Geography

This is part of a series of descriptions of our plans for 2011-2012.

World History

• A Child’s History of the World. We’ll read this together on the couch. We will cover the first few chapters (which are evolutionary), pointing out as we go the inconsistencies (Cain & Abel had fire for sacrifices; humans did not go for eons without fire), but showing the kids what society’s prevalent story/narrative is. I just want to attempt to do it humbly, without puffing the boys up thinking they are smarter than dumb or silly evolutionists. No, God has opened their eyes, but the others are blind and to be pitied as well as censured. “There, but for the grace of God, go I” is the attitude I want to convey all year as we study history.

• Draw and Write Through History. The boys will draw a picture from this once a week, and keep the drawings chronologically under a separate tab in their Book of Centuries.

• Veritas history cards. We’ll be memorizing these “Classical Conversations style”: all 160 every year from here on out. Having “history pegs” in our minds has always been one of the goals important to me, but I never could settle exactly how to do that until I went to the Classical Conversations information night. We aren’t going to do CC, but we are stealing this idea. It was settled when I realized I had one history card set from Marji and my mom had two (different!) sets, so instead of a $100 purchase for the cards, it was only $40. And we will be doing this every year. I put the cards 2-across in regular sheet protectors and in a binder, so as we sing the songs we flip through the cards. YouTube has some great examples of hand motions to do with the timeline, too, and we might recite it along with a video now and again to get the hand motions down. We’ll do this during Circle Time.

• History through the Ages timeline figures in a Book of Centuries. I bought the timeline figures last year, and I love them. This year I’ll give both boys a sheet or two of figures (with names but not descriptions) a week and let them cut out and paste into their binder any they can tell me about. Also, I’m working on making a set of index cards, each with a figure to correspond to the Veritas timeline, so the boys can order them or play games with them, or use them as flashcards. Plus I’ll add in a few more people I want the boys to be familiar with that aren’t covered in the Veritas timeline.

World Geography

• A Child’s Geography of the World. This year I wanted to do a little more than just Geography Songs, but I wasn’t sure what book or books would work for us. Getting library books didn’t work well two years ago, because most of them are so dull or political or environmental (and usually all three). Honestly, I was debating whether or not I wanted to get Ann Voskamp’s Geography, but I was dragging my feet because I don’t think our styles will mesh well. Still, I was almost ready to pull the trigger on it when on a whim I thought, “Well, I’ll look at Hillyer’s Geography again, maybe it’d be worth it.” It’s out of print, and last I had checked on Amazon, used prices started at $50. Well, I was floored. There was a hardback in good condition for $15 (plus $4 shipping). I jumped on it, and now I own it. I’ve only read bits and pieces so far, but I love Hillyer’s style and humor.

• Children’s atlases and geography picture books. I broadened our selection of children’s atlases and plan to keep them out and reference them as the kids have questions or fill in their maps. I found used: The Kingfisher First Picture Atlas and Children’s Picture Atlas to add to our Barnes & Noble Children’s Atlas (which was not really a good one for beginners, but still full of good maps and information) and Geography from A to Z: A Picture Glossary

• Geography Songs. We’ll be continuing with this. The kids really enjoy the songs, actually. We’ll go over the songs while looking at the maps during Circle Time.

• Homeschool in the Woods maps. I was going to make due with free maps online, but when I won the prizes for reviewing books at Exodus, I used some of it to get these pretty maps. Filling in maps will be independent work. They’ll copy from an atlas or master map to their blank map several times over the course of the term, and then on the last week we’ll see how much they can do from memory. We’re focusing on one continent a term (leaving out antarctica and australia this time and giving the Middle East its own term.).