By fifth grade, the curriculum choices were finally starting to fall into place a little more easily. Not only had I begun to find textbooks in subject areas that seemed to fit our daily rhythm from year to year, I was also narrowing down the learning styles and tendencies for each of our boys. That might sound funny because after 5 years of homeschooling, one would think that the teacher would know learning styles and tendencies far sooner. However, putting it all together with learning styles, textbooks styles, and actual content in the textbooks…the “fit” is harder than it might seem.
Our boys love realistic things…particularly war related things. So, for us at the time, (I say “at the time” because there are many great options out there…then and now) I chose the Mystery of History chronological 4-year history curriculum. Without trying to plan it as such, this would take us through each time period/book by the end of 8th grade and then allow us to repeat it all for high school (if still homeschooling then).
The Mystery of History curriculum was written in an easy to read narrative that is very engaging and full of facts. It begins with Creation and moves through Ancient History within the first book. The second book focuses on Medieval History while the third book teaches the Renaissance time period. And the final book moves from early colonial days of America to modern history. We did three lessons a week over the nine month school year. (If desired, Mystery of History could be done as a 3-year cycle by doing the first book in one semester and the second book during the second semester. You’d just do more lessons per week.)
Additional activities, maps, timelines, weekly pretests and posttests are available and age appropriate (younger/middle/high school) options are provided. We don’t do everything she has listed (often times because I recognize an activity will have greater influence if/when we come back to it in high school), but we do a lot of it. She has also provided a variety of reading material lists so books that tie in with the topics of each lesson can supplement the information. This is one source where we have found some GREAT books to read…especially historical fiction.
Some may prefer a more heavily involved or “meaty” history curriculum, but my perspective with history (and with science) is to use it as a reading source early on…leading to additional/further reading in areas of interest. After my experiences as a teacher in the classroom, I felt that if I took the pressure off remembering all the “facts” by simply reading the material, the boys might actually remember more in the long run by just following the story as we go along. Honestly, I have probably learned as much as they have (or more) seeing as the history classes in my schooling were always separated by time periods and didn’t overlap chronologically like this material does.
Other textbooks for subject areas this year included Abeka Health (Enjoying Good Health), Abeka Science (Investigating God’s World), Spelling (I created lists based on Latin/Greek roots as well as phonetic rules.), DOL (I found a document of sentence/punctuation corrections.), Rod and Staff English (Following the Plan), and Abeka Math (Arithmetic 5).
In addition, we also worked through a variety of texts for Literature, continued keyboarding skills, incorporated cursive into daily writing, and practiced writing skills through Literature based work and other writing guides I had. My mom wanted to do a poetry lesson via Skype . And we incorporated 4H work for the county fair, Art (from Rod and Staff’s Art Pac), and piano lessons along the way. I also chose to add baking and meal preparations throughout the year to teach cooking skills. This was definitely a lesson in patience with the mess made in the process. But I realized the mess (and minimizing the mess) was all part of the learning.
During the second part of the year, I decided to have the boys each choose a topic to explore a couple times each week. Joe (the farmer) chose a combine—better understanding its design and function. And Jake (the war guy) chose the Gatling Gun—researching its design and influence on the war. This added an element of “research” to their learning while allowing them to also choose their path of further learning along the way. It was fun to explore topics with them and see their learning along the way. At the end of each year, (I am not sure which year I started this, but I know I did it with both boys this year…3rd and 5th grade.), I utilized a summer school grammar based lesson I had created as a teacher and we compiled an “All About Me” book. This included a timeline of notable events from the year, a physical description of their current physical features (including weight and height), a current family tree (including adjectives to describe each family member), and writing assignments about “your favorite place”, “your favorite possession”, “your best characteristic”, a top 3 list (including their favorite top 3 foods, restaurants, books, friends, subjects, toys, music, tv shows, etc.), and “your future dreams”. We do this assignment over the course of the last couple weeks of our school year. We make a Table of Contents for the “book” and create a cover where they draw a picture (of their choice) under the title “All About Me”. When finished, we had a summary of their year. These have continued to be a fun thing to look back at over the years.