July 19, 2012!
Summer is half-way over!
We haven't done much... or I haven't done much. The kids have been off to camp, working, traveling overseas, leaving me. I don't like that last one.
I have spent some time looking at curriculum, planning our next year, praying over these things.
Guitar Man is coming home for school again.
He will be starting his junior year.
Yikes, homeschooling a highschooler, that idea is a little intimidating.
I have been tempted to use a boxed curriculum for him, like
Bob Jones or Christian Libery Press. I know he'd be okay with those, and would get the work finished. I want more than that for him, though.
I want him to be challenged, to think outside the box, to study history with a Christian world view, to read living books, to search for what he is passionate about and persue that passion.
Two years ago we used AmblesideOnline for our spine curriculum. We really enjoyed the books and scope/sequence. Last year, we used Sonlight as that spine. We used some of the books from AO as well.
We didn't enjoy Sonlight enough to fork out the money for it again.
While perusing the AO sight, the scope & sequence for my 11th grader, I came across a reference to
TruthQuest embraces the Charlotte Mason method, using living books. What I read truly excited me. The author of TQ, Michelle Miller, views history as this...
God initiates, man responds, history happens.
She says History is His story...
The scope and sequence is similar to AO, and can be used together. What I like about TQ, compared to AO, is that TQ has somewhat of an outline to go by. The Guides come with a Table of Contents, each chapter (if u call it that) consists of a commentary. Along with the commentary is a list of suggested readings, resources and fiction. We choose what we want to read from there.
I like that it has the outline to go by. I can read whatever commentaries I want, I don't have to read them all if I don't want to. But at least I know what and who I can read about, in that time frame we are studying, without having to do that research myself.
The Guides are inexpensive as well, another bonus!
The younger 2 are doing TQ Renaissance to Reformation.
I think Guitar Man will do the Age of Revolution I, II, and III.
We inherited a pastor's personal library a few years ago, and there are some amazing history books in there, some from the 1800's. Before 'those who know better' started changing history.
