Telos Living

We had a wonderful history year last school year. Making our own plans was a bit cumbersome, but very worth it. This year, we are continuing with the second year of U.S. History. When I sat down to plan the year I assumed like last year we would use The Complete Book of U.S. History as a spine and add in lots of books... However, as I sat down to look it over, I realized that The Complete Book of U.S. History took more of a "social history" turn that we would have liked in the second half. I scoured the shelves and settled on the Veritas Press 1815 to Present cards as a spine. I looked through all the usual lists (Sonlight, TOG, BP) and picked some nonfiction books to provide a great spine alongside the VP cards with The Complete Books of U.S. History to fill in any gaps.



Here is the link to the schedule: U.S. History Year 2 Overview/Schedule

After last year, I have discovered that we really enjoy studying history in chronological units-- for this year, we will be studying the following units:

U.S. History Year 2 Chronological Units:

I. Westward Expansion (1830's-1850's)
II. The Civil War (1840-1870)
III. The U.S. Grows (1865-1900)
IV. Changes (1890-1920)
V. Trouble (1914-1945)
VI. New Frontiers (1950-present)

I picked my topics/units, lined up the VP cards, assigned The Complete Book of U.S. History (though we will most likely only use this when we don't have other resources on hand for the topic), added living books, hands on notebooking, and unit projects. I also scheduled any of the NEST history DVD's we happened to have on hand, but they are not necessary.

SPINE RESOURCES:
Veritas Press cards 1815-Present
The Complete Book of U.S. History

LIVING BOOKS:
Remember the Alamo
Buffalo Bill
If Your Traveled West in a Covered Wagon
Lincoln
Clara Barton
If You Lived at the Time of the Civil War
If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad
Harriet Tubman
Bully for You Teddy Roosevelt
If Your Name was Changed at Ellis Island
The World Wars
The Story of Ruby Bridges
A Picture Book of Martin Luther King Jr.

READERS AND READ ALOUDS
Many of the Sonlight Core E Readers and Read Alouds are scheduled as well. (These can be seen on the schedule.) I scheduled both upper grammar and lower grammar readers (from Sonlight), but not every week has a lower grammar reader. I added what I had on the shelves for my 2nd grader from the SL grade 2, 3, and 4/5 readers that applied to the time period. We will just fill in with the rest whatever he wants to read.

A note about read alouds. Many read alouds are scheduled. We will not read all of them. I am adventurous in my planning, but try to be realistic in my expectations. We will get behind and end up skipping some. Some we will read over the summer, some will remain unread for future use. It is what it is. We are currently 4 weeks into this schedule and still only reading the first scheduled read aloud. It happens. Review weeks (which are scheduled three times throughout the schedule) are great read aloud catch up weeks.

HANDS-ON-NOTEBOOKING
Last year we discovered interactive notebooking. Basically similar to History Pockets or Lapbooking, but you do projects, activities, and interactive notebooking pages that get put into a 3 ring binder, providing you with a wonderful "scrapbook" from your history studies.

Hands on History Pioneers
Hands on History Civil War
Scholastic Interactive maps
TruthQuest History binder builder (American History year 3)
TQ Memory cards and maps (American History-- second half of year 2 and year 3)
VP 1815-Present Teacher's Manual (I used a few of the projects from here, but not many and it is not necessary if you do not have it).

(The Hands on Histories and the Scholastic Interactive maps were purchased during the Scholastic $1 sale). 
Here are a few samples of what the kids have done so far this year:

(This is an old post I had yet to post, so this is from several months ago. Hopefully, nonetheless, it will give the feel of a week with BP.)

Biblioplan has been a highlight in our homeschool this year, and I thought I would share what a week with Biblioplan looks like in our home.

Monday: We usually listen to the SOTW 2 chapters for that week (audio) while coloring the coloring page.

This week we listened to SOTW chapter 10 and 17b-- Japan and Samurais. They colored the coloring page of a Shogun and a second page of a kangaroo. Even though we skipped Australia, they love to color. (The Australia chapter was also scheduled for this week, but I thought it too much so we skipped it.) The kids were especially interested in the samurai chapter and I drew katana's on construction paper, a book of haikus, and E practiced writing a Japanese character. E picked 3 facts to narrate from the SOTW audio and I wrote them for her on her coloring page (this is what we call "lazy notebooking!" ;) C cut out his construction paper katana and went to work being a Japanese Samurai.

Wednesday: We usually read from Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, the Companion, do the Cool Histories and geography.

This week we read several sections from the companion: Mysterious Myths: Izanagi and Izanami, Fascinating Facts: Samurai Armies, Fascinating Facts: Samurai, Fascinating Facts: Bushido. Surprisingly my kids really like the Companion. I like it because it gives me the "big picture" while allowing me to give only small pieces to my children. The pictures are great and viewing it on my iPad is wonderful because we can zoom in on all the great pictures and illustrations. The Companion gives great lead in to good discussions.

Next, We reviewed the relevant questions from the Cool Histories, and did some of the geography. We used our wall map to see where we are studying. They found Japan, China, Korea, reviewed the seven continents, and the five oceans. We also skimmed the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, looking at pictures and information that interested them. We finished up our time by reading from Sam Samurai.

Friday: Friday's usually cover anything from the companion we didn't get to, review Cool History questions, and do a project. The Craft book from BP came out later so I have been using many of the SOTW Activity Guide projects. This week we reviewed the Cool History questions, but skipped the activity from the Cool Histories which was make Tanzaku's. The Craft Book selection: hold a Japanese tea ceremony we will try to get to soon. My kids were still really interested in Samurais and swords, so we made wakishazi's out of cardboard. We finished our history time with reading Sam Samurai.

Sword fighting at Grandma's!

Writing: We do narrations from our reading, and occasionally use the BP writing selections. This week's writing suggestion was "explain what is it like to be a Japanese Samurai." We didn't write about this, but we did discuss it. We came across the topics of Haiku's this week, and E wrote three Haikus and illustrated them.

It was a lot of fun.

Readers and Read Alouds:

Biblioplan allows us to have 3 days of "history," but I also have E read from a reader every day. (We alternate between readers that tie into history and other Sonlight readers). We also do a read aloud every night that often ties into our history studies. Not every read aloud ties into history, as we want to cover other great literature selections. So far we have found wonderful engaging read alouds from the time period that really enhance the learning experience.

This week I started having E read Sam Samurai as a reader, but the vocabulary proved frustrating for her so we started reading it as a read aloud. Most of the time we have a history reader and read aloud going, but this week we are finishing up The Tale of Despereaux, and E is reading a non history reader this week. The option lit for this week was Yoshis Feast. I never made it to the library this week but we will try next week!

Looking for more? Check out these other posts about Biblioplan!

Biblioplan: A Review

Why Biblioplan over Sonlight and Tapestry of Grace?

We used a sand castle mold for the sides and 4 plastic cups for the towers. (It's what we had on hand).

First time I allowed E near the stove. She did great!

History is fun and yummy!

Why Biblioplan over Sonlight?

(My experience is only with Core C.) 

Sonlight over BP:

Sonlight does have some components you will not get in Biblioplan, and these will make a difference for some.  

• Sonlight has comprehension questions for the literature as well as vocabulary built in. 
• Sonlight has page numbers to read daily whereas BP just tells you what to read that week, or if it is to be spread of 2 or 3 weeks. If it is to be spread over several weeks they will say something like (read pages 1-60 this week).
• The books are great! Historical fiction and other just wonderful books! Even using BP this year, we still are working at getting those great SL books in. 

Why Biblioplan over Tapestry of Grace?

Now, I must preface this with "I have never used Tapestry of Grace."  However, I do have year 2 and am pretty familiar with it. I chose Biblioplan over TOG for several reasons. My sister uses TOG and is thrilled with it. 

TOG over BP:

There are plenty of advantages of Tapestry of Grace that make it the right choice for many. 

Comprehension and discussion questions (I have often heard the discussions for dialectic and rhetoric are outstanding. 

There are so many components for older students and provides a full breadth of history, geography, Bible, government, and worldview. 

Literary analysis is built in.

Vocabulary is built in. 

Literature pages/student pages-- if you like worksheets, TOG does offer this component that. (BP does have worksheets and tests for middles and advanced). 

• Being strictly chronological made it seem jumpy to me. A week in Egypt, head to China, back to Egypt, on to India, back to China, Egypt again, etc. For my younger kids, I felt a little more continuity was needed. I didn't want to abandon chronological history, but the organization of BP was what I was looking for. 
• Story of the World was often so much information and so much breadth that I felt we were missing out on some depth. BP and specifically the Companion allows me to pick and choose what to go more in depth with, without me having to look elsewhere for the material.
• Church history. There were a parts of SOTW that I did not agree with Biblically. Also, I want a deep Biblical worldview and understanding of Biblical and church history for my children. Biblioplan provides this Biblical history in year one, church history in year two, and missionary studies in year three and four. There are "giants of the faith" each week highlighting a person from these areas. BP's timeline also shows where Biblical and church history tie into the rest of the world. Sure you could read the Bible or Trial and Triumph along with Story of the World and infuse church history, but I appreciate the succinctness BP gives to these areas in conjunction with the rest of the world. 
• Crafts: Story of the World tends to not have as many boy friendly crafts as BP, which tends to offer more "real" projects and less paper crafts.
• The book lists can be challenging in Story of the World, there are so many suggestions and picking those that will be great can be a challenge. I like using the BP and SL booklists because I know they will be great! 

Choosing history can be so confusing. What finally helped me decide was to think of what I wanted in a history curriculum. If we could study history any way I wanted (which we can!), what would a week look like? Then move backwards. Which curriculum is closest to that end? Biblioplan serves that purpose for us. It requires the least amount of tweaking to be just what we want. I love that Bibloplan is helping us to love history this year!