History Help

It’s May already! Time for many of us to wrap up this school year and start thinking about next year. So this month we’ll be spending some time talking about curriculum: what’s new, what’s old, what we love, and maybe what we don’t love.

I would describe our home school as “relaxed, but traditional”. I’ve used primarily Bob Jones and Abeka from the very beginning. What I love about them is how structured and solid they are. You know you aren’t going to miss anything. This year we’re working our way through Abeka’s History of Our United States with my 3rd and 4th graders. It is absolutely loaded with information. At the beginning of the year I looked through some of the tests and realized that I didn’t know the answers to half the questions. I almost gave up on it thinking it was too much for my guys.

Now that we’re nearing the end, I’m glad we did it, but I feel like we need something fun to tie it all together. My kids love TV, so I decided to look for American History movies. I found two series that I really like. The first is probably geared more toward high school students and adults. It is the American Heritage Series by David Barton of Wallbuilders.  So far we’ve only watched the first disc (out of ten), but I really enjoyed it. He talked about many founding fathers that I’ve never read about in any textbook. He uses their original writings to prove that they were indeed Christian and that the Bible was the foundation they used to build our nation.

The second series is Drive Thru History by Dave Stotts. These are definitely more geared toward children, and they cover American History as well as Ancient and World History. We haven’t watched them yet, but I’m hoping to get them from the library over the summer.

Kendra is a stay-at-home homeschooling mother of four rowdy boys. Okay, three rowdy boys and one who is still sweet and cuddly. She’s been married to her high-school sweetheart for twelve years. When she’s not playing teacher, nurse, cook or housekeeper, she loves to read and write.