What we attempted to achieve was to create a framework for an integrated curriculum with history as its core. One woman wrote out a wish list for the "ideal" curriculum that would include:
- flexibility
- chronology
- cross-curricular recommendations (integrating the arts and sciences, literature, geography and composition)
- core recommendations for an overview along with additional recommendations for a more intensive study
- usable with multiple ages, including suggestions for various age groups so that the whole family can work on the same theme at once, but each at their own level
- background information for the teacher, including Catholic perspectives and Church teachings
- litature-centered and integrated with writing: with recommendations for dictation, memorization and copywork
-suggestions for putting together student notebooks and timelines
-saints, scientists, composers, artists with biography recommendations by reading level within each corresponding era
-map outlines, timeline figures, laminated timeline cards
-vocabulary lists
-discussion questions
-a strong theme throughout regarding the reason to study specifictopics/eras: how it relates to our Catholic Faith/Church.
These were the initial goals that we had already begun to incorporate into writing our history program. During the summer of2001 we worked together - by email - to put all this into a usable framework that would fill as many of these wishes as possible.The result was our first edition of Connecting With History which included the study of ancient history and the Old Testament from aCatholic worldview. Our next goal was to come up with three more volumes filling out a four-year cycle of history studies covering all of world history, with the idea that once a family had gone through all four years of the cycle they would then go back to the beginning and begin again. As they cycled through a second time each child would be four years older than the first time and able to study the time periods at a deeper level.
In the meantime, however, life kept happening. In the spring/summerof 2002 our family made a major move from rural area to a semi-rural suburb in a nearby state. Meanwhile, my co-author has moved on to some other collaborative projects and was unable to work on further volumes of CWH. Once the dust had settled from our move I began working on the next volume of CWH by myself. By the next spring I was planning to have volume two ready for publication by mid-summer. July 15, 2003 our house caught fire and we lost most of our belongings and everything related to my business and the curriculum. Big set-back! Our subsequent family travails included displacement from our home for nearly a year, haggling with insurance company representatives, rebuilding our home, hastles with construction companies, sending off 2 more children to college within that year, and some stress-induced health problems that are ongoing. There was no time or energy for writing a curriculum!!
So CWH was once again put on the backburner until very recently.
Last fall/winter I began reconstructing my plans for CWH,Volume Two. We began publishing it unit-by-unit over the summer and continue to upload new units to download individually. Next spring, when the units are completed for Volume Two we'll publish them in hard copy form for sale. Then we'll start working on Volume Three in the same manner. You can see the ongoing work at the RC History website
ConnectingWith History is a continuing work in progress and your input can help us improve and expand upon our solid base!
